| EXCLUSIVE - Interview with Steve Lawson. Director of 'Just For The Record' |
| Written by Ben Mortimer |
 ‘Just For The Record’ is a forthcoming British film that turns the camera back on the world of low-budget filmmaking. Shot in ‘mockumentary’ style the film stars Rick Mayall, and features cameos from just about every major British actor working in the UK.
Hey U Guys were recently fortunate enough to catch up with the film’s director, Steve Lawson, outside a strip club in Essex, which was being used as a location for the movie. After a brief introduction we found a quiet area away from the crew and had a chat about the film.
HUG: This is your first time shooting a film isn’t it?
SL: Directing. I’ve done a bit of acting beforehand. I’ve done a bit of producing as well, but it’s the first time I’ve directed anything. Never done a short. Never done a commercial. Never done a music video.
HUG: Most people, first film they cast friends and family. You get Danny Dyer.
SL: We’ve got quite a big cast on this. We’ve got Rick Mayall, Craig Firabrass, Danny Dyer, Jeff Bell, Roland Manookian, Victoria Silverstead, Sean Pertwee. Danny Midwinter’s doing it. We’ve got Jamie Foreman… A good Brit cast.
HUG: So how did you get involved with [‘Just For The Record’]?
SL: I’ve got a business partner called Jonathon Sothcott who’s a producer. We met going back the middle of last year, through an actor called Billy Murray. It’s quite funny, because the script of this is based on a real film that took place last year, and was filmed, and… all went a bit pear shaped. So the script was written about what actually happened. Originally it was ninety-two pages; it was just talking heads [like a] documentary.
I was given the script, and I decided to add actions into it, add a few characters, a few… different bits, and it ended up coming out at one-thirty [pages]. So we’ve got a hundred-and-thirty page script and it’s full of actions rather than just talking heads.
HUG: That seems quite long.
SL: No, it’s fine. We normally go at about a minute per page for dramas, but because of what this is, it is a documentary… It’s a mockumentary, basically. Very ‘Spinal Tap’ meets ‘The Office’. With better actors. So you can get away with shooting one-hundred-and-thirty pages. It should come in, the way the film is looking, we’ll get about an hour and a half.
HUG: Presumably with the documentary style you’ll want to edit some of it down anyway.
SL: Yeah. Well, the great thing about this… There is a lot of actions around there but, you know. It is
 interviews with people; you can basically put the interviews where you want them so you haven’t got to necessarily follow the script, even though we will. So it works out well.HUG: So how’s the shoot going so far?
SL: The shoot’s been really interesting. I’ve been surprised. Everyone has bought something to the table, from the runners upwards basically. The actors have all created the characters, it was what was needed. Although it’s a comedy, it’s a very character driven movie, so when the actors come in and they bring the characters to life you’re pretty much half-way there.
HUG: You have quite a few cameo appearances in the film. Are they in character or are they themselves?
SL: The cameo appearances are all in character. All the actors in the film are character actors.
Ninety percent of British films, maybe even more than that don’t even see a DVD release, let alone theatrical or even get out there, so it’s putting the average British person into the position of an actor, and the great thing as well is that the actors and people involved have all been on sets, ninety-nine percent of them have all been on sets, and they can identify characters in the story.
HUG: So are the actors aware of who they are playing, the characters that are based on real people?
SL: No, not at all. I think with this, because the actors have all had things like this on projects... All the actors involved with this can identify people through their own past, through their own jobs that they’ve done before…
HUG: The production company’s got a fairly large slate ahead of it… are you involved with any [forthcoming films]?
SL: There’s a couple of projects going on at the moment. It looks like The Manor’s going to be the next one that we do, which hopefully we should be shooting around the end of September. [The Manor] is a very cult, arthouse British gangster film. It’ll be shot in a beautiful style. We’re going to look at taking it back, even though HD is new, pretty much in the cinema world, we’re going to look to take it back to thirty years ago, and shoot it very much in the style of ‘Get Carter’, ‘The Long Good Friday’, British classics like ‘The Professionals’, ‘The Sweeny’. We’re going to try to bring something like that to it.
HUG: That’ll be shot on film will it?
SL: No, we will be doing that on the Red [Red One digital film camera], we won’t shoot on film. To shoot on film, as beautiful as it is, it’s just not practical any more really when you look at what you can do on the Red.
If you get a good DOP [Director of Photography], and I’ve got to mention James Friend in this, because he’s responsible, when you see the film, for how beautiful it looks, and the shots. I’d like to also thank Jonathon Sothcott who’s our producer and my business partner for believing in me and getting on board, Gerry Toomey, our line producer is one of the best in the business; he’s done projects such as ‘Evita’, ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’, ‘The Commitments’, ‘Platoon’. Gerry’s one of the best in the business, and the First AD [Assistant Director] Dan Mumford, responsible as a First AD on ‘Doctor Who’ (a couple of series of ‘Doctor Who’), ‘Doghouse’, he’s done some big films.
Without them four people we couldn’t have done this so I want to thank them.
HUG: Presumably as a first-time director that sort of support is essential.
SL: To have the support, to go in and… To direct is an easy thing. If you get the right cast, and the actors can bring something to the table and are talented it helps. Obviously you have to have the script right. If the script’s right and it’s a good script it makes sense and it flows, if you get them two a director’s job’s very easy.
So to have them boys there though, to have the best in the business, and that’s what I put them down as, and they are. They are the best in the business. Gerry’s notorious for being the best in the business. Dan Mumford is regarded as being up there. James is new to the business, but mark my words: James Friend is going to be bigger than any of us. So that’s the way it goes with that one.
HUG: You’ve not got a set release date yet?
SL: Not got a set release date yet. Obviously we’re playing about with our options. The great thing about it with this, and the reason it hasn’t got a release date yet is because it is 100% independent. The funding all the way through has come from private people, so we haven’t had to go to any sales agents, distributors, or so on to get a deal and to get the money to finance the film. That’s the great thing about it.
HUG: So why was that then?
SL: You get the control to go and put a film out there that we want to do. To work with the actors, and to choose the actors we want to work with, and you can turn it over. I think we were doing this film about four weeks or five weeks before we started shooting, so we turned it around quite well getting everything done to it. That was the changes to the script, that was the financing side of things, we were getting the cast. We probably had two weeks getting the script ready, and we had two weeks prep, and then we were on the shoot.
HUG: Thanks very much for the interview. I’ll let you get back to getting everything wrapped up.
After the interview we continued to chat briefly. Although we’ve agreed to keep it under wraps for now stay tuned for some cool bits of casting news breaking in the next few days.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 05 June 2009 23:01 |
