With the new movie Apocalypse Clown being released in UK cinemas on the 1st of September we caught up with BAFTA Award Nominee & Director George Kane to chat about the movie, filmmaking and more for another exclusive on Blazing Minds.
1. What is your process for directing a film?
I was involved in the development of both Discoverdale and Apocalypse Clown since day one – the first existed for barely a week before we began shooting, the other nearly 10 years! So I haven’t come to them cold. In my experience, the process for a low budget film is to hone the script like you’re an editor who’s already working on the cut, and to try make it as tight and clear and as achievable as possible on paper, before you get on set. After that, try your best to protect as many of your ideas and creative choices from the inevitable compromises required by lack of time, money and the location limitations. Know what the most important things in the story are. Once you’ve figured that out – cast brilliant people! Easy. For comedy, so much of it is about figuring out the funniest and most economical way to stage each scene and deciding how the visuals and the tone of the piece should work together. Inventiveness, flexibility and practicality… and making it up as you go along.
2. How do you work with actors to create the best performances?
Cast the right people, who are hopefully on the same page as you, and then give them the room to figure out what they’re going to do with the role. If you’re lucky enough to have cast some really smart, funny people, then you’d be insane not to take advantage of their new ideas. For Apocalypse Clown, I knew Funzo wouldn’t work in Natalie’s natural US accent so I asked her to work on a free-floating non-specific European accent so that we could never really place where the character was from. I was delighted with what she came back with.
Rehearsal time is so important for everyone to relax, clarify any confusion or ambiguities and settle into the script. I find that, once the cast have had the opportunity to offer up their ideas, try things out and get an idea of the blocking of the scene, things can move much more quickly on the set. You can spend more time honing the performances and making things funnier, rather than spending too much of that time working stuff out while the crew wait around! You can hit the ground running with a greater feeling of collaboration. I also carry a large whip.
3. What was your vision for Apocalypse Clown?
Despite our limited budget, the ambition was to make an out and out, unpredictable, joke-filled high-concept comedy with a sense of scale and cinema. We’re not here to make another quirky little indie comedy with a few sad bits and an uplifting ending. The big, broad theatrical comedy is a rare beast these days and, with these great characters, these jokes and this ridiculous and original premise, I felt we just had to swing for the fences and throw everything we could at it. Imbue this relentlessly silly material with as much Hollywood-inspired action/adventure juice as possible – anamorphic images, rich and textured locations and production design, a massive score and completely committed performances. It’s a clown movie with Mad Max and Roland Emmerich on the brain. For me, I wanted it to have the anarchic spirit of classic Mel Brooks and the Marx Brothers, along with the epic storytelling of Ben Stiller’s work on Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. My dream is for audiences to laugh their asses off for 100mins and leave asking “where the fuck did that come from??” I’m still a little amazed we were allowed to make it.
4. What techniques do you use to ensure a film is cohesive and flows well throughout the story?
It’s just judgement and instinct. Having a background as an editor helps greatly. Tracking the character beats and plot points is just a constant process in script development and, the more that that’s been interrogated along the way, the less you have to worry about in the edit. On set, it’s then all about clarity of storytelling, putting your camera in the right place and knowing what the key information is, both visually and in performance. But I tend to have all that figured out by the time I get there.
5. Was there any tight timelines or challenging locations and how did you tackle them?
All the time, every damn day. Non-stop. We shot the whole thing in 23 days, and were mostly limited to a certain travel radius – so shooting a cross-country road trip in one Irish county requires a certain level of invention… Everything in the small town of “Naherbawn” had to be shot in one day, as we had to shut down the centre of the town and control traffic. That was day one. We made it by the skin of our teeth! Two cameras helps, and an organised and experienced assistant director is key. Torrential rain forced us to shoot all the forest tent scenes in one day. David Earl caught Covid across some key climactic scenes in the Big Top and we had to shoot entirely out of sequence with a body double. One of our producers had to throw on the pink gown at one stage! Again, my editor instincts helped me navigate that without missing anything – and also my past TV experience dealing with something very similar. The central wilderness was a deeply inhospitable environment the cast won’t forget in a hurry. They had to perform in their pants quite a lot. I was also very lucky to have a very fast, nimble and can-do DoP in David Grennan, who was able to roll with the punches and keep it all looking lush and cinematic despite the constant curveballs.
6. What were some of the best moments while filming Apocalypse Clown?
I often felt like we were getting away with something, which was great fun. All things considered, the cast were a joy and genuinely loved the opportunity to make something as unapologetically silly and ambitious as this. So we laughed a LOT. One of my favourite moments was watching David, Natalie and Fionn perform together in the little yellow car – the scene where the clowns try to revert to their old selves. They were all so great in the roles and, in scenes like this, you can really see their chemistry and their enjoyment of each other’s work. The scenes with Tadhg, Amy and Ivan in the house of “Tim from Bromanz” were also a delight to film. And I dressed my Dad as a clown and stuck him in the funeral scene, which was very enjoyable. On a personal level, I unexpectedly ended up filming a lot of this film in Kildare, not too far from where I grew up, in locations connected to my childhood. I spent the production sleeping in my childhood bedroom, which is where I decided to become a filmmaker! I’ve shot very little at home in Ireland, so that was nice and poetic for me.
7. How much does this movie differ from other movies/shows that you have directed?
It mainly differs in that it’s a project that I’ve been working on for a decade, with my friends. In TV, I usually land on a project after it’s been through years of development – or it’s already been airing on TV for a few years without my involvement. So, as weird as it is, Apocalypse Clown is the most personally involved I’ve ever been in a project. And being an independent low budget film, there’s no guarantees you’ll actually make it to shoot day one, until you’re actually there. In TV, that fear isn’t usually there. Finally having these scenes performed and these lines spoken by such funny people – that was an especially cathartic and joyous experience. It was finally happening!
I’ve been directing comedy of varying degrees of silliness for 15 years now, so once I was on the ground with the actors, this shoot wasn’t all that different from anything else I’ve made. But I doubt I’ll ever get to make something as ridiculous as this, with such freedom, so close to home, ever again! It’ll always be special to me.
8. What other projects do you have upcoming that you can mention?
I’m developing a very different feature project of my own with Screen Ireland and my friends at Tailored Films in Dublin. A psychological drama with a dark sense of humour, set mostly in Montreal. As for TV, I’ve recently directed three episodes of a new Apple TV series starring Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh – The Completely Made Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. It’s got a stacked cast of comedy greats, like Hugh Bonneville, Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Jessica Hynes, Asim Chaudry… the list goes on. It’s also very very silly. That should be out sometime next year
9. What tips would you give aspiring filmmakers who are just starting their careers?
It’s easy for me to say “just go make stuff”, but obviously not everybody has the same levels of access to the equipment or resources. But if you can find a way – make the friends, find the collaborators, use what you’ve got, be smart and practical and do your best to keep making things and sharing them. Even if the films don’t set the world on fire, the relationships and connections you make can lead to unexpected places years later, and the film you make could be the thing that eventually gets you in the door with the right person. I made a simple no-budget short film as an experiment in 2008 – shot on Mini-DV in just over a day, paid for in pizza. Seven years later, it was a big part of why Phoebe Waller-Bridge wanted me to direct Crashing. So you never know!
APOCALYPSE CLOWN will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 1st September. Available to watch now on Prime Video and Netflix. Read our review here.
Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.
