Concrete Playground Meets Film Director Tim Van Dammen

Better known for his award-winning music videos and short films, Auckland director Tim van Dammen has taken the most famous love story ever written and with the help of composers Michael O'Neill and Peter van der Fluit, turned it into a trailer trash pop opera.

Concrete Playground sat down with Tim to find out a bit more about Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song ahead of its 2013 New Zealand International Film Festival premiere.

First of all congratulations on having your film included in the festival, you must be stoked?

Yeah, it's going to be good. It'll be nice having a big premiere at The Civic. It's a great festival, y'know. When we did our first screening to the cast and crew it was a massive relief that everyone got it and laughed.

I think the premiere might get a little bit rowdy. It's a bit like the old Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings I used to go to. Because everyone knows the story they'd start screaming and yelling. I think it might be a bit like that.

So you are well known as a music video director, did you envisage this film as an extension of that?

The way it happened was over the years I've built a team of people up and we've made over a 100 music videos. We were going to make our own film but then I got an email from Michael and Peter saying they had composed an album based on Romeo and Juliet and wanted to know if I could turn it into a film. I went away and thought about how I could make it work.

For me to want to do it I had to be able to make it look awesome. I also thought it needed to have a comic tone. I thought if we treated it really earnestly it would be too alienating for an audience because rapping and Shakespeare is quite a shock to the system.

How did you manage that balance between comedy and tragedy?

I wanted it to start off as a comedy and for everyone to empathise with the characters and then have the comedy fade out and the drama fade in.  Romeo and Juliet is never done as a comedy so when you do that you have to make sure it works. It takes a while to get into the guts of the story so you have to hold the audience's attention until the two main characters meet. We didn't have the budget to have big spectacular helicopter chases and petrol stations exploding like they have in Baz Luhrmann's film but what we could do is have a bunch of laughs.

Why did you chose to set it in a campground?

I wanted to make it in Romanian gypsy style. They are supposed to be living in a rubbish dump. The idea behind that is one; it's funny and two; it's really far away from the original text. Also, it means our art department we can basically get for free. We just filled the screen up with rubbish so it saved a huge amount of money. Your costumes you can get from the Salvation Army, it just cuts the costs right down. Also, people living in campervans is the closest New Zealand equivalent that we could get to people living in a rubbish dump.

Were the lyrics sung by the actors?

No, I wanted to cast people purely for their look and anyway the voices were already recorded. I wanted to go for a really interesting looking cast. I didn't want it to be distracting but I wanted it to give as much visual impact as possible.

Are the lyrics faithful to the text?

The songs have been edited but it is all the original text. It's already written in iambic pentameter which is sort of a rhyme anyway so it translates to music really easily.

Where was the location?

Waipu Cove campground up north. It's just a beautiful beach but the reason I chose it is it had all the different sets I needed within about a one kilometre radius so that was really handy for the production to run smoothly.

What were the biggest challenges of the project?

Shooting night after night for weeks can wear you down. It becomes quite mentally taxing to stay really focussed and to keep driving the production. But we didn't really have any issues because we'd planned everything out so well.

Who would you expect to enjoy this film? Is it more targeted towards the younger generation?

My specific target was for young people but I think it will have quite broad audience appeal. Someone who's interested in Shakepeare will find it funny and I think young kids will like it because it's so silly. But it also has this really strong romantic line too. Once you get over the fact it's an opera then it really sucks you in.

So what's you're next film project?

We're working on something which is almost ready to go. It's sort of like an early New Zealand Western set in the 1830s. All I've ever really wanted to do is make films about early New Zealand history. That's my absolute passion.