Hope in a Box

I don’t know where stories come from but it’s usually a convoluted path. Originally I was writing a script about an escape but in the end I didn’t manage to get out of the box. I realised I was more interested in the moment before the escape.

I loved the Hope in a Box story as it was so simple. Two strangers are stuck in a box. They have to work together to make their escape. That’s it. I just had to decide which way to go with the end.

In the very early years of cinema when Buster Keaton was just an assistant working under Fatty Arbuckle. Keaton said, the two of them only needed a beginning and an ending to start filming, because, if they new where they were coming from and where they were going to, the rest was just having fun.

What Keaton means is, once you know where you are going with the story you just have to work with good people, and bounce ideas back and forth and the world of the story expands exponentially and so it was with Becky and Richard as we had a whole lot of fun building the backstories so that there is a real world out there for each character unseen in the film.

I also wanted to film Hope in a Box because of the simplicity of the setting. You don't often get the chance to build a complete world for your actors. I art direct much of my work. I am a maker, be it props or sets and I understand the tactile feel of things, how the weight, the smell, the touch, all feed in to an actors process. We were able to make this wonderful cramped, chipboard smelling, boomy, wooden box for our two actors to be stuck in and fight against. With a small crew around it was like a little cocoon lit by chinks of light in dark shadows. Filming in small spaces feels as intimate as if the screen is whispering in your ear. The sound changes completely. It opens up personal space, removes barriers and makes, i hope, a very intimate performance.

We are surrounded by blockbuster films of super heroes, re-made and re-imagined, fighting their earthly angst to win against all odds. I like to do stories about little ordinary people, wallowing in angst and failing badly.

Dark humour reminds us of our frailties, that we are not the super-humans we see in the blockbuster films. Anything that reminds us of our vulnerability is good. It is when we are most emboldened and confident in our abilities, that we are most likely to make spectacular misjudgements and mistakes.

In conclusion. If It takes a hundred small people to fail for only one to succeed, remember, every one of those glorious failures mattered because we were one step closer to success.