Speaker 1: Hold you.
Speaker 2: He is bot It should die. People say good money
Speaker 2: to see this movie.
Speaker 1: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want cold sodas from a hot popcorn and no
Speaker 3: monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 2: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring done at all.
Speaker 1: We are not turning back to never make it. That's
Speaker 1: not try.
Speaker 3: Ever since I was a girl, I've had a longing
Speaker 3: for the water.
Speaker 4: To swim for me is like nothing else in the world.
Speaker 2: My name is Mercedes Glis. I'm a swimmer and I'm
Speaker 2: told you might train me.
Speaker 3: Colde, extreme fatigue.
Speaker 2: It's best the strongest of men.
Speaker 3: Well, thank god, I'm a woman.
Speaker 1: I understand the water's movements. It's rhythm, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: fancy it understands me too. What if I didn't make it,
Speaker 1: I'll wager you can arrive at a thousand reasons why
Speaker 1: you won't.
Speaker 2: All you have to do is hang on to the.
Speaker 3: One says you can write.
Speaker 4: We'll go down in history as the first British woman
Speaker 4: to ever swing the English Channel.
Speaker 3: With his ed of gay.
Speaker 4: Splashed onto the sand following the shock completion of an
Speaker 4: English Channel swiping.
Speaker 1: Horrible guests, please put there together and drinklesome.
Speaker 2: I am sure that woman's not to be trusted in
Speaker 2: this country. Ms Glydes, An unmarried woman at your age
Speaker 2: raised a suspicion.
Speaker 4: Isn't it best you step aside now and avoid further humiliation?
Speaker 1: ID swim I know you did, but they'll never believe you.
Speaker 4: Show them what you know to be true, that you
Speaker 4: can swing the English chapel Camarker, Are you sure that
Speaker 4: you want to carry on with There's no shame in
Speaker 4: a quitting.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not quitting.
Speaker 1: You've got to make it, You've got to it away.
Speaker 3: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 3: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 3: with Elliott Hassler all about his new film Vindication. Swim
Speaker 3: And is the story of a woman who crosses the
Speaker 3: English Channel way back in post World War One Britain.
Speaker 3: The film stars Kristen Callahan and John Locke. It will
Speaker 3: be hitting the US pretty durn soon. Definitely seek that
Speaker 3: one out And I hope you enjoy this interview. Can
Speaker 3: you kind of tell me how you got involved with
Speaker 3: movie making.
Speaker 5: I've always loved to AVOYE had a passionate film ever
Speaker 5: since I was really young. And then when I was
Speaker 5: ten years old, the school I was at at the time,
Speaker 5: instead of doing lessons for a week, they made a film.
Speaker 5: It was an optation of the line of the Wish
Speaker 5: and the Wardrobe, and that was wife has experience of
Speaker 5: making a film, obviously at a very amateur level, as
Speaker 5: it just kids in a classroom kind of fooling around,
Speaker 5: but that, yeah, I learned on a very crude scale
Speaker 5: of how films were made and how they were constructed,
Speaker 5: from the script and the production of it to the
Speaker 5: editing and the posts and all that. So I fell
Speaker 5: in love with it from that moment really, and then
Speaker 5: from then on, from the age of ten, I'd just
Speaker 5: been making little short films and with friends and family,
Speaker 5: and that kind of got bigger and better and.
Speaker 2: The quality just improved.
Speaker 5: And then when I was fourteen, I decided to make
Speaker 5: a feature about my great grandfather his experiences in the
Speaker 5: Second World War.
Speaker 2: So he was a prisoner of war in Italy. He
Speaker 2: escaped and he made this incredible.
Speaker 5: Two hundred kilometer journey across the country, basically evading the Nazis.
Speaker 2: And living with the resistance and things.
Speaker 5: So I turned that into a film over the course
Speaker 5: of three years and between the ages of fourteen and sixteen,
Speaker 5: and that for me was my film school. I'd never
Speaker 5: studied film and never been to film school, so I
Speaker 5: really learned a lot doing that.
Speaker 2: And it was a very amateur project.
Speaker 5: I was just friends and family on the weekends we
Speaker 5: were putting it together and stuff. It did incredibly well
Speaker 5: for what it was. I then got picked up for
Speaker 5: a UK and a US release. Last year we signed
Speaker 5: to deal with Paramount for it for France, UK and Italy.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's come out all around the world now
Speaker 5: and it's it's done incredibly well for what it was.
Speaker 2: So that was then what led me onto the Vindication Swim.
Speaker 3: That sounds so ambitious. I mean, how did you even decide, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do this and then just tackle that
Speaker 3: as a project. I mean three years to make this
Speaker 3: and from what I understand, you also starred in it.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you notice I'm not in Vindication Swim, but yeah,
Speaker 5: I did act in it. It was an ambitious thing,
Speaker 5: I think, especially trying to tackle the Second World War
Speaker 5: and a subject matter as grand as that. On a
Speaker 5: it was about three thousand dollars probably that we spent
Speaker 5: on it. Okay, cost next to nothing for a film.
Speaker 5: It was very ambitious at the time, but I think
Speaker 5: that was what was so interesting about it. It was
Speaker 5: quite a quite a grand story, but it was also
Speaker 5: a very family sort of oriented story. I'd grown up
Speaker 5: hearing these stories with my great grandfather and that was
Speaker 5: what inspired me to make it. So there was a
Speaker 5: real kind of family connection with it as well, which
Speaker 5: I think made it slightly smaller. But then obviously the
Speaker 5: story is grand. So yeah, it was a really fun
Speaker 5: one to spend three years working on.
Speaker 3: And how much help did you have with that? Was
Speaker 3: that like friends and family or did you actually employ people?
Speaker 5: Oh no, we didn't know. It was literally just friends
Speaker 5: and family. They just came and helped out. We we
Speaker 5: rented a few military uniforms and then that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But yeah, no, there was no sort of industry backing
Speaker 5: on it. It was very very grassroots.
Speaker 3: So how did you get the idea for vindication Swim?
Speaker 2: But that one?
Speaker 5: I was looking for another film to do after World
Speaker 5: War through the Long Road Home, and I kind of
Speaker 5: stumbled across this story of Mercedes glides, and then I
Speaker 5: learned that we were from the same hometown. She was
Speaker 5: born in Brighton on the south coast of England, which
Speaker 5: is where I'm from, and I'd never heard of her.
Speaker 5: I don't know who she was. I'd never heard of
Speaker 5: her Channel Swims or anything like that. And the more
Speaker 5: I read about how I thought, this is shocking that
Speaker 5: I don't know who this woman is, because she's incredible.
Speaker 5: But what she did back then in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 5: as a woman, to go out there and achieve all
Speaker 5: of that with the whole of society against you, and
Speaker 5: then to go battle mother nature itself in order to
Speaker 5: achieve her dreams, I thought there was something very powerful
Speaker 5: in that, and the shocked I didn't know her really,
Speaker 5: So the project was born out of that, this sort
Speaker 5: of idea of celebrating s extraordin women from my hometown
Speaker 5: and bringing her story back into.
Speaker 2: The world and putting it out there.
Speaker 5: The German element particularly was in Britain at the time,
Speaker 5: because obviously it's a few years after the First World War,
Speaker 5: so there was a lot of anti German kind of sentiment.
Speaker 5: So yeah, she had to face a lot of racism
Speaker 5: in that sense for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell me about your actress. I mean she is amazing.
Speaker 5: Yes, she was incredible. Kirsten did a fantastic job and
Speaker 5: this is sort of her debut screen performance. She really
Speaker 5: went the extra mile. We trained her up for three
Speaker 5: four months and over water swim training, intensive swimming training
Speaker 5: really before the production because she was adamant that she
Speaker 5: was going to do it all herself. She didn't want
Speaker 5: anybody doubles, She didn't want anyone else to step into
Speaker 5: missaid issue. She wanted to immerse herself in the water
Speaker 5: to really embody the character. So yeah, over the course
Speaker 5: of it took three years to do this one as well.
Speaker 5: It seems to be like a repairring theme there with
Speaker 5: my movies. So over the course of three years splashing
Speaker 5: around in the English Channel, person did everything up to
Speaker 5: four hours at a time in the water. It was
Speaker 5: really a feat of endurance for her bringing Mercedes to
Speaker 5: the screen as well.
Speaker 3: Also doing a period piece is a huge endeavor too.
Speaker 5: The period element paled in comparison to the challenges we
Speaker 5: faced dooting Our Sea, but it was nonetheless it is
Speaker 5: difficult bringing the nineteen twenties to life on a very
Speaker 5: tight budget. This wasn't a Hollywood film. We didn't have
Speaker 5: much money at all to throw at it. So what
Speaker 5: we did we relied on community support really for it.
Speaker 5: So things like the vintage cars in the film. What
Speaker 5: we do as we ring up car clubs and say
Speaker 5: we're making this film.
Speaker 2: We haven't really got money to pay you.
Speaker 5: But we can pay your gas, we can get drides,
Speaker 5: you lunch and all that, And I say, nine times
Speaker 5: out of ten they came back and say, don't worry
Speaker 5: about the gas, don't worry about the lunch. We just
Speaker 5: want to bring our cars along and want to be
Speaker 5: part of a film and experience that.
Speaker 2: And we just want to sell to break this story.
Speaker 2: So that was how we did it.
Speaker 5: Really, it was just relying on the very generous and
Speaker 5: good will of the community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how was it even putting this project together? I
Speaker 3: mean it's just again super ambitious.
Speaker 2: This was very ambitious.
Speaker 5: I'm a big fan of Jaws, and Spielberg an interview
Speaker 5: said that he would never recommend anyone go film out
Speaker 5: on the water and paraphrase with it there, but that
Speaker 5: was essentially the gist of it. So that for me,
Speaker 5: I thought it would be cool to go out there
Speaker 5: and do the opposite of what he said and try
Speaker 5: and film out out at sea, and I can see
Speaker 5: in hindsight why he said it.
Speaker 2: Because it's very difficult. But it came out of that.
Speaker 5: It was this sort of challenge that I wanted to
Speaker 5: pursue of shooting a movie out on the English Channel.
Speaker 5: I've always grown up right by the sea, so the
Speaker 5: English Channel was integral to my life, so it was
Speaker 5: nice to have that environment to work in. But yeah,
Speaker 5: that presented its own sort of levels of challenges that
Speaker 5: we just never foresaw it. Sometimes we go out there,
Speaker 5: we'd get maybe one or two shots in the can
Speaker 5: have to abandon the shoot because the wind would change
Speaker 5: or the type would change and it just wouldn't be
Speaker 5: safe to carry on.
Speaker 2: The very first day that we.
Speaker 5: Went out, everyone really bad sea sickness.
Speaker 2: We'd probably a little too rough to have actually gone out.
Speaker 5: And then John Locke, who played Somecedes coach in the film,
Speaker 5: he'd be vomiting over one side of the boat, then
Speaker 5: he turned to the other side of the boat, deliver
Speaker 5: his lines, and then go back to the other side
Speaker 5: to vomit again. I think that epitomized what we were
Speaker 5: up against we were out there, but also just how
Speaker 5: dedicated everyone was to bringing it to the screen.
Speaker 3: Well, I can't even imagine the challenges when it came
Speaker 3: to know the conditions of the skies and making sure
Speaker 3: that everything matched when it came to them. I'm sure,
Speaker 3: I'm sure the color grading must have been very difficult.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was quite challenging. We really paid painstaking attention
Speaker 5: to detail to that while we were making it. It
Speaker 5: was important that it didn't look like different days during
Speaker 5: the same scene because some scenes in the film, we'd
Speaker 5: shot parts of it on year one, picked it up
Speaker 5: in year two, couldn't get it all because something happened
Speaker 5: like the winds change, just whatever, and then had to
Speaker 5: finish it off in year free. They're three years apart
Speaker 5: some scenes, like the shots of being the actors and stuff.
Speaker 5: So yeah, doing that and making sure the clouds look
Speaker 5: the same in the background.
Speaker 2: And everything that was very challenging.
Speaker 5: I think there was only one shot where we actually
Speaker 5: had news visual effects to remove the clouds.
Speaker 2: Everything else we pretty much managed to nail.
Speaker 5: And then, like you say, with the advancement of color grading,
Speaker 5: it was fine tuning and tweaking with that. But we
Speaker 5: had a great team for the post production. We worked
Speaker 5: with Warner Brothers, Delaine Lee in London. Soo, so ASA
Speaker 5: should did our color He did the Crown, he did
Speaker 5: Mission Impossible. He's worked on some great, great stuff so's
Speaker 5: he's a fantastic colorists and he really he knew what
Speaker 5: he was doing and then did a fantastic job on
Speaker 5: this film. What did you actually shoot on It was
Speaker 5: a tiny little DSLR. It was nothing particularly great. Really,
Speaker 5: we just needed something that was small and lightweight and
Speaker 5: that we could fit in the waterproof housing.
Speaker 2: It's take it out as sea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, at least with Spielberg, I want to
Speaker 3: say a lot of that was shot in a tank
Speaker 3: rather than the actual you know, ocean. So that must
Speaker 3: have just been crazy to have the waves and nothing
Speaker 3: under your control, just at the mercy of nature completely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we really were.
Speaker 5: I mean, it gave us incredible respect for the sea
Speaker 5: and for the Engish Channel.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we had to take safety very seriously as well.
Speaker 5: We'd always bring a number of lifeguards out of us
Speaker 5: and the Coast Guard new and it was a big
Speaker 5: logistical kind of nightmare really just to arrange one shoe
Speaker 5: and we were out there for three years.
Speaker 2: So this went on for a long time.
Speaker 3: The scheduling must have been a nightmare too. Just to
Speaker 3: make sure that your people had free time, that they
Speaker 3: were able to come out and be part of that shoot.
Speaker 5: We rotated the crew that we were using on it
Speaker 5: just for that reason. It was hard to get everyone together,
Speaker 5: so we had a range of different safety people and
Speaker 5: stuff who we could pull in at different times. But
Speaker 5: obviously the actors they've got to be the same. So
Speaker 5: what was fortunate in that case was COVID had hit
Speaker 5: in the middle of the shoe, so no one was
Speaker 5: doing anything, so all the actors weren't booked on other
Speaker 5: roles or anything like that. They were all still around
Speaker 5: so we were able to grab them. But I think
Speaker 5: if we were doing it now we would really struggle
Speaker 5: to have everybody in that location over the course of
Speaker 5: pre summers.
Speaker 3: What kind of safety precautions did you have to do
Speaker 3: just because of COVID.
Speaker 5: Filming out and sea was quite helpful because we didn't
Speaker 5: have anyone bothering us for as turing we were complying.
Speaker 2: We complied as much as we needed to.
Speaker 5: But obviously being out there was made a lot easier
Speaker 5: than filming on land.
Speaker 2: But it was quite good. In the UK, COVID is
Speaker 2: one of the film.
Speaker 5: Injury was one of the things that COVID didn't really
Speaker 5: impact that badly. They still allowed us to go out
Speaker 5: to film provide we had the right paperwork and things,
Speaker 5: which we did. Yeah, it didn't really impact it in
Speaker 5: a particularly negative way, I don't think, aside from it
Speaker 5: pushed the production back by say about a year. Aside
Speaker 5: from that, I think it helped the production. May people
Speaker 5: were more generous and I think more willing to help
Speaker 5: out because they wanted to get back out do something
Speaker 5: isn'tink creative, of do something fun after being locked away
Speaker 5: for so long.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I keep going back to Spielberg, but also thinking
Speaker 3: of you know, just how young you are and how
Speaker 3: young he was when he was starting out, and just
Speaker 3: the disrespect that he got from so many people. Did
Speaker 3: you run across that at all?
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people didn't think the film
Speaker 5: was going to do particularly well or even get finished
Speaker 5: because of the challenge that were be taken on for ourselves.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of doubters on it, for sure.
Speaker 5: I don't really pay that much attention to it really
Speaker 5: because I knew in my head what we were doing,
Speaker 5: and I had a vision of what the film was
Speaker 5: going to be and how.
Speaker 2: We were going to do it.
Speaker 5: I just went ahead and just nose down and carried
Speaker 5: on with what I was doing. And I think for me,
Speaker 5: I think that's the best way of dealing with situations
Speaker 5: like that, is to just be confident in your own
Speaker 5: ability and confident in yourself and just go on from there.
Speaker 5: But the film, it really did incredibly well, and it
Speaker 5: shut everyone up after it came out, and it had
Speaker 5: a great release here in the UK. Release this pretty
Speaker 5: indie film for a long time was way beyond what
Speaker 5: we'd anticipated. We thought we would get maybe one or
Speaker 5: two weeks in theaters, and we ended up having this
Speaker 5: sort of huge eighteen week run across three hundred theaters
Speaker 5: in the UK, which was totally unexpected but incredible to see.
Speaker 5: And then off the back of that, now we're coming
Speaker 5: out to the US to bring the come to audiences
Speaker 5: out there.
Speaker 3: I really liked your time structure that you had in
Speaker 3: the script, and I was curious, did you always intend
Speaker 3: to tell it in that kind of fractured timeway.
Speaker 2: That kind of came about in the edit.
Speaker 5: Actually it was always slightly fractured, but I think we
Speaker 5: then changed around a little bit more because there was
Speaker 5: a subplot in the film that we it wasn't serving
Speaker 5: any purpose, so we cut it out and then used
Speaker 5: that sequence as part of a flashback and it works
Speaker 5: a lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was gone out of the edit and trimming
Speaker 2: it down.
Speaker 5: We shot so much footage for this film that I
Speaker 5: think the first cut came in at about three and
Speaker 5: a half hours, which for an income was just far
Speaker 5: too long, so we trim it back to a cool
Speaker 5: ninety minutes to see. Obviously, whenever we stuff had to
Speaker 5: go and we had a little bit of reorganization to do.
Speaker 3: Are you going to release, say, deluxe Blu ray with
Speaker 3: all that edited footage?
Speaker 5: I think the version we've got is nice because it's
Speaker 5: a nice type film. I think it tells the story
Speaker 5: and the way it ought to be cold. I think
Speaker 5: I think you go down a rabbit hole with that.
Speaker 5: I we like Francis four Coppler still tinkering away with
Speaker 5: it while I'm in my eighties.
Speaker 3: Have you only directed stuff that you've written or have
Speaker 3: you directed things that other people have written as well?
Speaker 2: So far, it's only been my own what I've written myself.
Speaker 5: I'd be open to it if the right script came along,
Speaker 5: but it's just worked out so far that I've only
Speaker 5: directed in my own words.
Speaker 3: What are you planning on next?
Speaker 5: As I've got a couple of films on the go.
Speaker 5: One's a sort of a true crime thriller set on
Speaker 5: the south coast of England the nineteen thirty so it's
Speaker 5: a much darker turn than Vindication Swim, but I think
Speaker 5: it's always nice to do a bit of a segue
Speaker 5: and go on and do something that's a lot different.
Speaker 5: And then there's a First World War survival thriller sort
Speaker 5: of film as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, great scripts were both of those.
Speaker 5: One I've co written and then one I've written myself,
Speaker 5: and we're just pitching them out at the moment, trying
Speaker 5: to raise the funds.
Speaker 3: More challenges with period pieces, it sounds.
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, I tend to be drawn to those. I
Speaker 5: think there's a lot to be found in kind of
Speaker 5: these old stories that it's something quite nice about unearthing
Speaker 5: them and then bringing them to the screen for myself
Speaker 5: as the director. When you walk onto set, particularly Invinication
Speaker 5: Swimen is very much like this. When we did the
Speaker 5: street scenes and stuff, you walk onto set and it
Speaker 5: feels as though you've stepped back in time, as all
Speaker 5: these people in old clothes, there's all these old cars
Speaker 5: and stuff, and it's a really cool experience. So then
Speaker 5: for me, my job is to make that translate for
Speaker 5: the audience so they can feel what I'm feeling, as
Speaker 5: if I've really immersed myself in this world. And I
Speaker 5: think there is something very interesting about doing that on
Speaker 5: a period film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the costumes and Vindication swim are amazing and everything
Speaker 3: looks so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are all original.
Speaker 5: We managed to source pretty much, you know, an entire
Speaker 5: wardrobe of original nineteen twenties pieces. We sort of went
Speaker 5: all over the place looking for them, like thrift stores, eBay.
Speaker 5: We went everywhere trying to find these old pieces of clothing.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I thought for sure you had just a
Speaker 3: genius customer.
Speaker 5: No, I don't think we created any new costume for
Speaker 5: the film. Even the swimsuit that Mercedes Lights wears in
Speaker 5: the film, that was an original nineteen twenties woolen bathing
Speaker 5: suit that we had to stitch up in between shoots
Speaker 5: because it would start pulling apart in the sea or
Speaker 5: where we were using it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like woolen bathing suit that must have been
Speaker 3: so heavy when she got out of the water.
Speaker 5: It's tiny when you first put it on because it
Speaker 5: shrinks up, and then once you go in the water
Speaker 5: it becomes this baggy sort of mess.
Speaker 2: That we have had this routine where everyone on the boat.
Speaker 2: We would turn.
Speaker 5: Around to allow persons to come out, and they quickly
Speaker 5: put a towel on, and then we would turn back
Speaker 5: around again because these things they just become so baggy
Speaker 5: once they get wet.
Speaker 3: With your earlier film it was more not professional, but
Speaker 3: with this you have professional actors. How was that experience
Speaker 3: of directing professionals.
Speaker 5: Obviously there's a huge difference in terms of the quality
Speaker 5: of the acting. Obviously, working with pros, they know what
Speaker 5: they're doing, and the poor says they are always going
Speaker 5: to be a lot sharper. It's nice in a way
Speaker 5: because I think it makes my job easier. I don't
Speaker 5: have to direct quite as intensely as I would with
Speaker 5: an actor who, well, someone who's not a professional actor
Speaker 5: you're trying to coax the performance out of and whereas
Speaker 5: with this you can do a few rehearsals, then you
Speaker 5: can sit back and then the character finds itself within them,
Speaker 5: which which I think is a nice experience.
Speaker 2: So it was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was definitely a good fun thing to look
Speaker 5: at the kind of the comparison of working with the
Speaker 5: amateur actors in the first film and then moving on
Speaker 5: to pros in this one. But yeah, it's a different
Speaker 5: ball game, really, and it's nice to work with people
Speaker 5: who are really on the ball with it.
Speaker 3: Is there a good place online for people to keep
Speaker 3: up with you and your work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just they can follow me.
Speaker 5: It's just my name at Elliott has there on Instagram
Speaker 5: or through the film at Vindication Swim Film also on Instagram,
Speaker 5: and then you have my website and things like that
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Elliott, thank you so much. This is great talking with you, sir.
Speaker 2: Oh no worries. Thanks so much for having me on.
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