Concrete Playground Meets ‘How To Meet Girls From A Distance’

Director Dean Hewison (above right) and actor Richard Falkner (above left) have achieved what most people would consider impossible: they wrote, shot and edited a film all within six months. Toby, played by co-writer Richard, is the central character of the romantic comedy How to Meet Girls From a Distance. He hasn't had too much luck with the ladies so when he falls for Phoebe (Scarlet Hemingway) he tries a new tack, find out everything he can about her first via Facebook.  As the tagline to the film goes:  "Get to know her, then meet her".

By day Richard works as a film handler at the New Zealand Film Archive and Dean is an asset manager at Weta Digital. When their idea for the film won the inaugural Make My Movie competition, both men took time off and put in a superhuman effort to get the low budget film made. It premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival and from November 1st it will be on general release around the country. Concrete Playground has a chat with these long time friends about how they pulled it off.

I imagine you must be excited about the film coming out and the fact it received pretty good reviews at the film festival?

Richard: Yeah man, it completely surpassed any expectations that we ever had when we won the competition. We initially just wanted to get a film made. Everything else has been a bit of a bonus really. The fact that people like it and that's it's getting a general release is amazing for us. We're all stoked with what we've pulled off.

Dean: Yeah, totally. It's the sort of thing where winning the prize has the potential to turn it into a nightmare. The potential of not completing the film for whatever reason was pretty much ever present.

Have you worked on other creative projects together before?

Dean: Yeah, me and Richard have worked on theatre shows and lots of short films in general together for quite a few years now.

I'm guessing your bosses were good about you taking time off for the project?

Dean: I got seven weeks off so the rest of it was a bit of a mish.

Richard: The deadlines at the New Zealand Film Archive are a little more relaxed because almost everyone involved in our films is already dead.

Was the film in any way based on people you know?

Dean: No, it's purely fictional.

Richard: We did find inspiration for some character traits in elements of our friends.

Dean: It's really just an extension of what we all do anyway. I mean you've LinkedIn stalked me.

It was research! (I had earlier checked their job titles with them which I admitted to finding on LinkedIn. I got Dean's wrong, he was less than impressed).

Dean: You call it research but we all know it's stalking.

Richard: Where's the line? We just take it to absurb lengths to kind of make the point, I guess.

You guys must be very good friends to have survived this process?

Richard: Yeah, absolutely. And also the whole team. One of the great things about this film being so successful is it's fuelled the hope that we can all get together and do it again. I think that in itself is a really awesome result. Everybody from the set designers to the runners, as far as I know, would all really like to work together again. It's fantastic because they were all really good at what they did.

How long did it take to put the film together?

Dean: The draft script we did in eight days but all up it was six months.

So, did you cope with the pressure of that okay?

Dean: I think so.

Richard:  In a way there wasn't really time for us to even consider the pressure. Every aspect of it was so intense that you couldn't think about it, you just had to keep moving. If you didn't just keep pushing on the only alternative was failing.

If you could repeat the process, would you do it again under those time restraints?

Dean: Definitely not. I don't think anyone should do that.

At the same time it must produce a real sense of achievement?

Dean: Definitely, it was a trial by fire. With the lack of money we had people could have lost enthusiasm pretty quickly. To have the premiere six and a half months after starting writing meant no-one got over the project. The production didn't go on for so long that people started burning out. Otherwise you can get into the trap of spending way too long editing.

In terms of learning lines, it must have been so challenging. I imagine you would've done quite a bit of ad-libbing?

Richard: Not really, no. There was the advantage that I'd co-written it so I had the right intentions in mind. I knew what we wanted out of the lines.

Dean: Also, he was there fighting with us over what every single line was going to be so he knew what would happen if he tried to improvise.

Richard: Yeah, that's true. But it was madness during the shoot. The production office was based in my house because the co-producer Ruth is actually my girlfriend. We'd get up first thing and she'd be organising stuff. Sometimes I'd have to go pick up catering and then I'd head off to the shoot and do the scenes. Then at the end of the day I'd maybe have a couple of other errands to do and then have to come home and learn lines.

There's this song that I do. I got home one night and thought: 'Oh my god, the song is for tomorrow'. I hadn't had time to practise it or anything. I just had to go berserk trying to get it into my head for an hour before I went to sleep.

Dean: And then we were running out of time the day of the shoot so we ended up having to do the entire song in one take.

Richard: The pressure didn't really abate.

I read in an interview that you realised just before shooting one of the scenes that you hadn't finished writing the dialogue.

Richard: That was actually the very last scene on the very last day of shooting.

Dean: It happened that way because we had to keep putting off the scene. We kept running out of time to shoot it. We were running out of time on the last day too but we mananged to squeeze it into two shots - one for Richard and one for the lady playing his mum. They only got one chance each.

Richard: We just had to have a two minute pow wow about the lines before we kicked into it.

Dean: Yeah and luckily they pulled it off.

Was it nerve-wracking attending the premiere?

Dean: We were terrified, yeah. I mean, who'd want to just sit there and watch all your jokes fall flat. Happily, that didn't happen.

So do you think comedy is your thing or would you like to work in other genres as well?

Dean: I definitely think no matter what genre we worked in we'd bring an element of comedy into it. Not to say we don't want to try other things out. An idea we're playing with has got some film noir undertones in there but it's still funny.

So tell me, why should people go to see this movie?

Dean: Well, despite the conditions it was made in, it's actually really funny. It's quite a feel good kind of a film I think. It's quite light. It's got it's moments of creepiness and darkness but it's all in good humour.

Richard: And despite having the rom-com tag, it's not particularly mushy, you know? It has broad appeal, which is cool.

Dean: There are filthy jokes but ones your mum will like.

Okay, not too questionable then?

Dean: Well, it depends how filthy you mother is.

Richard: It might have some surprises too.

Dean: Definitely, it's not the most predictable film out there, that's for sure.

Click here to read the Concrete Playground review of HTMGFAD