Natasha Block met up with cinematographer Ben Davis BSC and Gerald McMorrow to discover more about how Franklyn, the story of four lost souls divided by two parallel worlds, created a galvanising effect across the UK filmmaking establishment.
Gerald McMorrow is sitting in the Electric Cinema’s members club on Portobello road sipping coffee and reflecting the emts of the last five months, when more than three years of development on his debut feature film Franklyn have finally come to fruition.
‘There are still. Few weeks to go” he says, “We’ve got til April to finish it.”
For now Franklyn is being prepped for post-production VFX at Double Negative following an intensive offline schedule, Plus the immediate obstacle remains for Hnaway Films, which is how to promote. A film that stubbornly straddles several genres.
‘Franklyn is a unique movie” says Ben Davis, appearing fresh from the school run. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it.” As with Thespian X McMorrow’s outstanding short film, Franklyn dips its toes into the science fiction/fantasy realm. But both Davis and McMorrow are keen to see it released from the constraints of that sort of labelling.
“Personally I don’t think the film is about that,” stresses Davis. “I think that it is the story of four people. All damaged in some way, finding answers. What is nice is that we’ve been allowed to make something as unusual as this and that’s down to the faith of Jeremy Thomas and Alexandra Stone at The Recorded Picture Company, taking risks that other companies aren’t prepared to take.”
Team Effort
Many individuals have put their energy into McMorrow’s debut feature and all involved have determinedly made the £5m raised by Film4, the UK Film Council and Aramid Entertainment, work for them. Franklyn is a detailed tale, following the lives of four characters - played by Ryan Phillipe (Crash), Ebva Green (Casino Royale), Sam Riley (Control) and Bernard Hill (Lord off the Rings) - as they each struggle to face their personal demons. The film is at times surreal, gritty, gothic and even romantic, and each story thread has its own careful styling, which brought Davis’ cinematographic skills to the fore.
McMorrow’s background as an Assistant Director brought him and Davis, then a focus puller, together for the first time in the mid nineties on the set of an American Express commercial in Budapest.