Film still of Hell or High Water © 2016 Coman Movie, LLC. Tous droits réservés
Hell or High Water, interview with David MacKenzie
Two outlaw brothers and a Ranger hot on their heels: Scottish filmmaker David MacKenzie is full of enthusiasm for his picaresque road-movie, presented in Un Certain Regard.
What inspired you to begin work on this film?
The experience of reading a script that you really feel and that seems to do exactly what you want it to do at exactly the right time is very rare. My reaction was immediate when I fell for Taylor’s script (a from-the-heart spec script that had gone through almost no development process). I was drawn to the poetry and empathy of the characters, the atmosphere of the landscape, the understanding of people and place, the situation. I loved the connection to the great American films of the past – as well as the rich seam of themes connected to the America of today. For a Scottish film-maker the distillation of pure Americana was incredibly attractive.
Please describe your working method and the atmosphere on set. Any anecdotes to share?
I believe everything in film making is about that moment when the cameras are running. All the rest is just preparation and emphasis. I think you need to treat these shooting moments as unique creative spaces and you need to be free enough with the material to allow these moments the maximum opportunity to be special. It's highly intuitive. My ideal atmosphere on set is one of freewheeling excitement with a little bit of anxiety about where the journey’s going to go next. I like a bit of chaos and I like a bit of improvisation and I hate the inertia of big old fashioned film-making. I like my cast to feel comfortable and appreciated with full permission to go where they need to go for their performance.
Of course you need a great team to make that possible. My first AD French American Nicolas Harvard was superb at letting us play while balancing the schedule needs sensitively. I was often awed by his ‘grace under fire’ and extraordinary organisational skills.
This was the sixth film DP Giles Nuttgens and I have made together so we’ve become semi-telepathic and know how to squeeze the most out of a day. Giles operates as well and is almost superhuman in his stamina and creativity. Most of our films have been made in the ever-changing weather of Scotland, so it was a joy to be in the sun-drenched desert – although it was the wettest summer New Mexico has ever been and we were often shut down by lightning storms. But in many cases we were able to bend the rules and shoot interiors without electricity, some of which are in the finished film.
I try to shoot fast and intuitively and edit almost immediately. Editor Jake Roberts has cut my last 3 films this way and it now feels like a method I always use – although it's only relevant if you are shooting digitally and have immediate access to the material. It gives a great intensity to the process, really encourages everyone and shows up problems early on in the process.
I have no monitors except for a very small one for me right by the camera because I believe we should be looking at what’s in front of us and not the video feed. I am very uncomfortable with the ‘video village’ of monitors that seems to have become standard. To me it’s a creeping disease in modern film-making that encourages people to sit down and seek shelter. It becomes a centre of inertia that brings down the energy of the whole film. I was successful in doing so in this film and the result was that we were much quicker and more free to do what we wanted to do than if we'd been connected to this unwieldy umbilical cord.
I want to shout out to everyone who made the film what it is, so a big thanks to everyone including the sound department led by Andrejs Prokopenko who made the best of some of the worst sound challenges he could have had (like fast driving scenes with dialogue) with great skill and humour; the beautiful costume designs and choices of Malgosia Turzanska and team that took on the limits of the western palette and made it sing; everyone in the hair and make up departments who made the cast look so great and so real – thank you.
Please share a few words about your actors
I was very privileged to work with my great cast and we had a wonderful creative time making the film. The shoot divided itself into two parts, based on availability. For the first part of the shoot we were with the outlaws Chris and Ben. We had very little time to shoot Chris before he had to go to another film, so we shot fast in a very energised way, which was thrilling and intense. Ben and Chris completely inhabited their cowboy parts and the whole thing all clicked into a fabulous immediacy and wild west vibe. I loved working with them and we became good friends.
Jeff and Gil arrived the day before Chris had to leave and after the brief transition of the final scene of the film between Chris and Jeff – in a scary day with a lot of dialogue and complexity that really should have been two days – we shifted out emphasis to being with the lawmen – not entirely because outlaw Ben was still with us and still had his showdown to run. Immediately there was a different vibe as we adjusted to much less time pressure and more normal shooting days. But we didn’t lose our freewheeling style which Jeff and Gil slotted into beautifully. We had so much fun and joy discovering the material and improvising around it.
I love working with actors and this film was a hugely positive experience of that special creative alliance between cast and director. My thanks to all of them.
What sources of artistic inspiration have you drawn from in your work?
Mostly other films but a bit of art, photography and literature. I like to immerse myself in the world we are trying to describe. In this project there was a bit of immersion in the images, stories and sounds of the Midwest. I have had country music running round my head for the last year.
