Simon Ellis

After graduating from Nottingham Trent University in 1995 with a Fine Art degree, Simon Ellis specialised in stills photography. He has since written and directed 17 short films and a handful of music videos resulting in more than 40  awards and a number of retrospective programmes at film festivals worldwide. He has recently completed his first feature film, Dogging: A Love Story (out in Spring 2009)

LWLies: Simon, you’ve worked with Cinema 16 before. What do you like about it?

Ellis: There are a lot of short film DVD compilations springing up but Cinema 16 is one of the minority that really puts itself out there and gets seen. I think its relative popularity is probably due to the inclusion of established directors’ early and often unseen shorts, therefore widening its appeal to a more general public than the competition. When you have these titles balanced with work by new directors, you are spreading the word in a big way and I’m lucky enough to have been invited twice.

LWLies: What do you make of the other shorts on the DVD? It’s quite a mix of styles and directors.

Ellis: I’ve only previously seen three of the other films. Forklift Driver Klaus is a late-night festival classic.

LWLies: Your film, Soft, focuses on so-called ‘happy slapping’ and street violence. Were you worried about being drawn into the tabloid war about the issue? And do you have an opinion on it all?

Ellis: The focus was never on happy slapping. It’s a story about fear and emasculation. The mobile phone element was a late addition to the script, which I had written two years earlier. Street violence was always an ingredient but the mobile phone’s main function was to provide an aesthetic divide between the two ‘worlds’ in which the opposing characters exist.

My personal opinion on the phenomenon is that it’s hopefully on the wane as the novelty of phone cameras wears off. That may be wishful thinking and who am I to know the statistics, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the availability of the technology itself has played a big part in encouraging such crap. New-toy syndrome, you might say.

LWLies: Soft has won awards everywhere from Sundance to Romania and has just been nominated for a British Independent Film Award. What is it about it that has made it so successful? Did you expect such international appeal?

Ellis: I think the desire to crush one’s tormentors is a universal one, and the bigger the antagonism, the bigger the desire.  I’ve had so many people say to me that they felt guilty about really wanting to see these little bastards get their dues, despite knowing that it’s wrong. However, the film was never intended to be a revenge story and this aspect of it is the least interesting to me. All the core emotions are in the pot: fear, anger, courage, pride, shame, self-loathing, and I think that men, especially men, recognise the inner-turmoil as the father is slowly stripped of his masculinity in front of his son.

From visiting so many international festivals over the years I was confident that the material would export well, but never to the extent that it would win so many awards. At the end of the film some audiences members shout, some jump out of their seats, some squirm, and some are utterly silent, and that’s beautiful to me. I’ll probably never experience it again.

LWLies: You’ve toured the world’s film festivals, both competing and judging. What do you make of them?

Ellis: The sheer number of festivals that I visit says something about what I think of them. Although competing and judging are obviously very different things, the festival experience remains the same. I watch films, I meet filmmakers, and, er, get a little bit pissed. To screen at festivals and not attend whenever possible is like cooking your dinner then leaving it in the kitchen, never knowing what it tastes like.

LWLies: Does the medium of the short film appeal in its own right, or is it a stepping stone to feature films?

Ellis: This is an issue I am forever talking about. To be clear, I see short films as a distinct medium, quite aside from feature films. Lots of filmmakers don’t see it that way and, more often than not, you can see it in their work. I would be happy making only shorts forever if I could survive that way.  Alas, I’ll struggle to try and make features in order to fund my shorts, haha.

LWLies: Do you think there’s an indifference to the form in Britain? If so, how can that be changed?

Ellis: It’s not really for me to say. There’s always an audience and more screening events pop up all the time. The more technology becomes affordable, the more people are making films; art students, for example. Then there is the internet, so it’s logical to deduce that the more filmmakers there are, the more interest there is. There are plenty of people dotted around the country who are doing good work and pushing things forward in their own way, which is great.  The Wall Is A Screen team from Germany, who screen short film programmes on public wall spaces with an amassing audience of passers-by, have started touring their event around Europe and have done quite a few shows in the UK already. I’ve screened with them several times. When Soft screened on the side of a huge building next to some wasteland in Hamburg there were almost 1,000 people in attendance. If the influence of these forms of exhibition doesn’t massively increase the awareness of shorts then I don’t know what does.

LWLies: You’ve mentioned that most short films are too long. Is there a perfect length?

Ellis: I’ll revise that and say that ‘a lot’ of them are too long. They should simply be as long as they need to be. I think there’s often a temptation to pad a film out for the sake of an increased running time.

LWLies: What’s your new feature film about and what was it like making a full-length film compared to a short?

Ellis: It’s the pre- and post-production phases that pose most challenges. The first thing is that the feature wasn’t my script, and even though I was very much involved in the writing process, it’s a big difference. The actual shooting was familiar enough territory. Shorts had me well prepared and the only major difference was the stamina required. Working for five weeks with one day off each weekend, and watching rushes, or talking with your actors in the spare hours begins to take its toll.  The biggest learning curve of all has been post-production because there are more people in the mix and there’s more at stake. Unlike a short film, investors rightly expect to make their money back, so there are compromises. Although it wasn’t ever intended, I wound up editing the entire film alone, from scratch, which is one thing I won’t do again for a whole number of reasons. Generally speaking, as far as feature films are concerned I still have an awful lot to learn. It doesn’t come easy.

LWLies: You mention in your blog that one of the aspects of your new film, Dogging, forms the basis of a new Judd Apatow-style Hollywood comedy. Is that frustrating?

Ellis: I never said it ‘forms the basis’ of anything but I still haven’t seen said film and have no choice but to avoid it like dogshit. It’s just a particular technique I worked out that means a lot to me and nothing to anybody else. I haven’t seen it done before but I don’t watch enough feature films, so maybe it has. I’ve since been convinced by those concerned for my heart that nobody will care or even notice. I felt like punching a thousand faces and jumping out of a window when I first found out though.  I once made a short that travelled very well and was requested by a number of agencies on the promise of potential work, only to see the same idea popping up all over commercials for the next couple of years. Now that was frustrating because some overpaid parasite was tucking into a fuck-off steak while I was eating beans on toast.

LWLies: What are your experiences of the British film industry – talent, funding, distribution, etc.?

Ellis: The export of UK short film to international festivals is very strong, so there is no question of the talent. The UK Film Council and Film4 have injected an enormous amount of funding into short film with their nationwide digital shorts and Cinema Extreme slates over the last six years. Distribution is another matter, if you mean sales. My sales agent is based in Ireland and I have no complaints at all. In terms of festivals, I distribute all of my films personally, which takes up a filthy amount of time.

LWLies: You originally studied photography – what made you move into film? Given the number of artists who move into film, are there similarities between the two.

Ellis: Just because cinema is largely a commercial enterprise doesn’t mean it’s not art. You could devote pages to this subject alone because there is a world of difference between filmmakers who have something to say and jobbing directors who are drafted in for artless templates designed purely to generate money. Films are a complex, multi-layered format from their conception, their construction, right through to their exhibition. It’s never an exact science.

My degree was in Fine Art, drawing more than painting, before concentrating on photography. I was dabbling in little Super8 or animation ideas at the same time, but never narrative work. The best I can say is that I moved into films because I got bored and it felt suitably challenging in a way that photography ceased to be at the time. It was also a question of practicality because continuing photography meant setting up a darkroom as the digital revolution had yet to begin. Nottingham Trent University were really good about me coming in and continuing to use the facilities after graduating but you can only stand so many students accidentally flooding the darkroom with light or mixing the chemicals before you have to concede that you shouldn’t be there anyway.

LWLies: You’ve also made some music videos. Is that something you’d like to explore further?

Ellis: Only privately, for relief. I recently shot a super-quick performance video for a great local band called Swimming, but I’m not at all interested in having to deal with that industry, which is fairly unbearable.