FOLLOWING was always planned as an ultra-low budget film, so the substance
of the film was both inspired by and planned around the shooting style
which we developed to accommodate our limited resources.
The script was written along the lines of what I see as the most
interesting aspect of film noir and crime fiction; not baroque lighting
setups and sinister villains, but simply that character is ultimately
defined by action. In a compelling story of this genre we are continually
being asked to rethink our assessment of the relationship between the
various characters, and I decided to structure my story in such a way as to
emphasize the audience's incomplete understanding of each new scene as it
is first presented.
I saw the hand-held, black-and-white 16mm cinematography as a way of
tapping into the cinematic feel of film noir, whilst giving it a different
spin by shooting the scenes in a more modern documentary style. By
operating the camera myself and by using minimal lighting, I was able to
place the actors within each location in a relatively natural and
interference-free environment. Extensive rehearsal in the months before
shooting meant that on each shoot the actors were able to quickly and
efficiently adapt the scene to the location we found ourselves in, and the
hand-held, "newsreel" style camera work let me be spontaneous in blocking
out the scene, generally shooting just two long singles which were then
intercut. I feel that this gave certain scenes an energy and spontaneity
which would have been hard to achieve using more conventional production
methods.
Even for a "no-budget" film our production methods were extreme. All of us
were in full-time employment throughout the production, meaning that we
were only able to shoot on Saturdays. As a result, it took us a year to
get all the filming done, a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to pay
for all the stock and processing from my salary without getting into debt.
Knowing from the outset that our restrictive shooting "schedule" would
require unusually dedicated actors, I asked Jeremy Theobald (for whom I had
written the central role) to come on as a producer, and as such to help
find the other actors we needed. Realizing that stage experience would be
an asset in terms of getting through each scene first time (I needed a
usable take every time we rolled the camera), Jerry looked back into his
college drama society days and found Alex Haw and Lucy Russell, both of
whom agreed to not cut their hair or leave the country unexpectedly for as
long as it would take (I told them three months). We rehearsed two
evenings a week for six months before shooting anything. The actors
developed a familiarity with the material which meant that the finished
film could be edited using almost exclusively first of second takes, and
which allowed us to set up and shoot entire scenes in the two hours or so
which we were sometimes given in our locations.
Locations were begged, borrowed, stolen... for the most part the film was
shot in our own friends' flats. The main location was my parents' house,
which worked perfectly - not only because the house is great, but also
because the catering was excellent. The only hitch came when the house was
burgled and ironically enough, some of the items which are stolen in one of
our fictional burglaries, were stolen in real life. Thankfully we had most
of what we needed although some of the inserts I had planned were now
impossible to shoot.
