Eran Creevy talks SHIFTY
A distinguished British urban thriller that also manages to engage intelligently with contemporary social issues, SHIFTY is the astonishing debut feature from writer/director Eran Creevy. He answers the questions posed by Jason Wood.
Jason Wood: SHIFTY is one of the first fruits of Film London’s Microwave scheme. How did working on a very tight budget and an 18-day shooting schedule influence your aesthetic and approach? And did the fact that means were so limited inspire creativity or just discipline?
Eran Creevy: Hailing from a background in pop promos and commercials I’m used to shooting on film, but I was aware that the scheme was keen for me to shoot digitally. They believed that it would help me both creatively and logistically, as I would be able to keep the camera running and do as many takes as I needed. However, having only an 18-day schedule, I was concerned that there would be pitfalls to shooting digitally. As far as I was concerned, how many times could I go again and keep the camera running without going seriously over schedule? It was going to be three takes per set-up at the most (one take if we felt we had it) and move on. So I pushed to shoot on film (Super 16), which ultimately we did, and I strongly believe the discipline and familiarity kept us tight and on schedule. It also looks better in my eyes. That’s not to say you shouldn’t shoot digitally, that’s just my preference as a filmmaker and how I like to work.
One direct outcome of budgetary constraints that ended up working in our favour was the scene where Daniel Mays visits the house of Valerie, the crack-head spinster played by Francesca Annis. In the script I’d written that her house was full of roaming cats, but unfortunately this would have meant cat-hire fees, handler fees, and possibly going over schedule as animals are notoriously tricky. It just seemed a possible headache. So I decided that she’d had all her old cats stuffed, and they’re dotted around her apartment in bizarre frozen poses. (You’d be surprised what comes up if you type ‘stuffed cats’ into Goggle.) Ultimately this scene gets one of the bigger laughs in the film and it worked in our favour.
JW: Are there elements of biography in your film?
EC: I grew up in a new town in Essex, and was an only child in a single-parent family. My mother is half-Sri Lankan and even though I look white, I have a strong Asian family background that I’m really proud of. Because of this, a lot of my best mates ended up being a mixture of Indian, Pakistani and English. We were a really tight crew of lads and still are. We would regularly experience racism together, which meant we would stand united and defend ourselves. I had no brothers or sisters to fall back on so this male bonding was imperative for me. When I finished making the film I realised that it’s a reflection on friendship, which I guess has always been an important factor in my life.
JW: There is a sense that the film is essentially about the fight for Shifty’s soul. I know this is a simplistic description but is that how you see it?
EC: That’s exactly how we see it. When you’re writing a script you have to sit with whomever you’re developing the script with (in this case my producers Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken) and work out what it is essentially about. I don’t mean the story beats or plot points, but the overall theme of the movie. The STAR WARS saga is about a dozen things but it’s ultimately about the struggle for Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader’s soul. This, at an early point, is what we decided Shifty was going to be about. We copied George Lucas, you found us out.
JW: Despite your limited budget you attracted an excellent cast. What was it about the project and your script that secured their participation?
EC: I think you can have the best intentions in the world, but if you have a bad script, you’ll get no one of quality onboard unless you have a hundred million budget. We worked hard for two years (on and off) writing the script, knocking out different versions, until we finally agreed on a draft that we felt embodied the type of movie we wanted to create. Daniel Mays was always top of the pile, ever since I saw him in a TV show called Funland. The script coupled with our all-out enthusiasm and energy when we met the actors probably convinced them to be in the film… I think you need to make people feel as if they’re in safe hands. Plus we kidnapped their family members. That helps.
JW: The film manages to be a very effective urban thriller whilst also having a distinct social-realist edge. Was this a combination that you were seeking and did you also wish to avoid some of the clichés that can afflict films that attempt either?
EC: I grew up on a diet of Ghostbusters, Back to The Future, Evil Dead II, Die Hard, Star Wars, etc. I love those movies, always have, and always will. I’m not going to lie to you and say ‘New German Cinema’ to sound intellectual. I do keep abreast of those styles and genres but when I was a kid, it was SUPERMAN 2, when he soars over Paris, that got my heart racing. When we made SHIFTY, Rory, Ben and I wanted to set a template for how we saw ourselves as filmmakers in the future. Obviously we had a limited budget and we were making a film about growing up on a council estate in Essex, but that didn’t mean the film had to feel parochial. SHIFTY has commercial sensibilities to a degree but that doesn’t mean it’s selling out. We wanted the film to be authentic in its portrayal of Essex, but I also wanted to give the viewer as thrilling a ride as possible. I think the reason why SHIFTY plays well to an audience is that it moves quickly, it is well acted and it gives you a genuinely non-generic outcome. I’m writing my next film, WELCOME TO THE PUNCH. It’s like a British version of Heat, Infernal Affairs and The Usual Suspects. Again, I want to achieve social-realist acting combined with the thrills that those films provide. I think we can do an epic crime thriller in this country without it feeling like an episode of The Bill.
JW: I recall interviewing Paul Andrew Williams for London to Brighton, expecting him to talk about film influences, and I was surprised that none of the films that could have been considered comparable had any bearing on his approach at all. Did you look at other works for inspiration or did you prefer to go along your own route and find your own voice?
EC: I was worried because a lot of the film is set in houses and on estates, and I feared that it was going to look like an episode of Brookside. I thought to myself: “How the hell am I going to make this work?” Ben and Rory suggested that I study the cinema of Roger Michell, who has made brilliant and unique films such as Enduring Love, The Mother and Venus alongside big Hollywood movies such as Changing Lanes and Notting Hill. The Mother in particular is shot almost entirely in one house, yet it feels fresh and very cinematic. There’s a particular scene in SHIFTY where the character Trevor comes downstairs and doesn’t want to sit with his family to have breakfast because of internal issues he’s suffering from. I was going to have a camera follow him down the steps and into the kitchen, then hold on his face and move back out again, but it all seemed a bit… rubbish. After watching The Mother, I realised the best way to play the scene was a simple shot of his family having breakfast. Then we cut to a reverse over Trevor’s back with the camera behind him, looking through the doorway at his family. Then he exits the frame. It’s simple: the doorway acts as an emotional barrier from his family and we explained to the audience in two shots this man’s headspace.
JW: The film has already attracted very strong reviews and been nominated for a number of awards. How satisfying is this for a first feature and how did you hope that the film would impact upon audiences?
EC: Being nominated for BIFAs was amazing. After the awards everyone was coming up to me saying: “Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t win anything…” and I was like:
“Are you kidding, I’m just happy to be here up against films like Slumdog Millionaire, In Bruges, Hunger, Somerstown…” Just to be amongst that calibre of filmmakers is enough for me. Obviously it’s amazing to be getting descent reviews as I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker since I was young, and it just feels nice that my mum and dad, my friends and my girlfriend can actually see that I’m not bad at something I’ve been wanting to do nearly my whole life. They can breathe a sigh of relief, as I can. I just hope I get to make more films. That’s all I care about, because I don’t know how to do anything else.
Shifty opens on 24 April. Read our Recommends article and watch the trailer.
