BENJAMIN

Benjamin is a film inspired by my own painful attempts at love, having prioritised my career over anything else from the age of thirteen. It is an exploration of what it would take to break someone free of their loneliness and depression, of their carefully constructed ‘self’. I came to understand that I, like Benjamin had been seeking the love of an audience, when what was really needed was some actual intimacy. Benjamin shows that journey, forcing a character to confront the limitations of their defence mechanisms and see that without them, they would be free.

I was sat on the train coming home from the Edinburgh Fringe, I opened my laptop and just started to write scenes from every relationship I had ever been in. Two relationships stood out as the most conflicted and funny. One of the relationships took the lead and the second relationship became the basis for Benjamin’s film within the film.

I had fun contrasting the pretentious film the character makes - ‘no self’, where the presence of the filmmaker is very evident, the shots consciously showy and deliberate, with the hopefully more invisible choices we made. The challenge was to make something romantic, yet authentic, so the scenes are purposely not overly lit, overtly designed or graded, the goal was to make the love story feel like it was just being subtly captured.

The ending came about only because I didn’t call ‘cut’ straight away when we shot the last scene. I really loved what Collin Morgan did once he’d run out of lines. And in the edit, we felt like his instinctive response was exactly the ending that both the film and the character needed.

Colin Morgan is very funny and completely believable, which is rare. I was keen for Colin to act in his own accent. (this will be the first time Colin acts in his own accent.) My only concern was his body. I asked if he thought he could become a bit less of a hunk by the time we started shooting but in the end thought that the character's obsession with Buddhism could possibly also extend to doing too much yoga.

Noah’s character was a little trickier to cast. We auditioned a lot of very talented British actors but something always felt a little off. In story terms, we just needed Noah to be from somewhere other than London and I think the original idea was to have him be from Yorkshire. Then in desperation I asked the casting director if we could maybe find a French or Spanish Noah. I then remembered a young French actor called Phenix Brossard I’d seen in a film the year before. And when Phenix came from Paris to audition, his chemistry with Colin was just incredible. He was so loose and French! There’s a bit where the character takes his top off in the script. All the other actors who auditioned, had quite appropriately mimed taking their t-shirts off and Phenix just threw his off and went to kiss Colin. It felt like something was really happening.

I worked with James Righton to create the music. We had such a great time in his basement studio coming up with Noah’s songs. Phenix sang each of the songs live and we put together a band of musicians rather than actors to play his bandmates. James also acted as musical director on those shooting days.