Not Now, Never Now

The idea for the film sprung on me in April 2018, while I was on a personal creative retreat in the countryside reading an article by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh where he said:
‘If you have a chance to go up there on the moon for a week, when you get back to Earth you'll find that Earth is the best place, the only place you want to be. Just looking at the grass and listening to the creek, you can be very happy."

As I sat looking over the rolling countryside hills, at a view which eventually became a set in the film, the story of Esha and her father Nanda rushed to my mind almost immediately. I needed to capture the essence of these words in a story, something concise and emotional that would instantly resonate with an audience.

As a filmmaker, I had been dreaming and longing myself to shoot on 16mm film again, and this film presented a perfect opportunity to do this, as we travel through her life from child to adult.
I felt that shooting in 16mm would create a warm nostalgic feeling for the audience. In a world rapidly pushing more and more towards cleaner and more sterile digital images, 16mm was an essential almost tactile medium and I want the audience to feel the outside world and nature in this beautifully imperfect medium.

While watching this film, I wanted the viewer to experience Nanda’s desire to help his daughter process her loss as he tries time and time again to connect with her, inadvertently only pushing her further away until the end, when she finally gets it.
There is a bittersweet feeling by the end as well, because I feel on some level the film is also about chasing your dreams, and working so hard with laser focus on achieving some lofty goal that you miss everything else that's going on in your life.

I really wanted to juxtapose the image of Esha looking up at the moon longing for her mother when Nanda tells her the meaning of her name, in the middle of the film, and then being on the desolate moon all alone at the end looking up at the earth longing for her father and for her home, so in a way this idea explains the title “Not Now, Never Now.” Exploring the idea of being present and facing life in every moment rather than running away from the painful or uncomfortable, or chasing what you long for, because if not now, then when?

There were a number challenges in getting this film made, we had several small shooting blocks over the course of 2019, our first attempt at the moon landing sequence we shot in a quarry and got rained out, but this was seemingly divine intervention as the space suit really needed a lot of work and so we wrapped early and spent time over the course of the year re working the suit where we finally shot the moon landing in a makeshift studio at the end of 2019.

For this film I was inspired by the work of Satyajit Ray, especially his film Pather Panchali, as well as Terrence Malick’s “Thin Red Line”. I loved the Apu trilogy and felt a deep connection to it as it reminded me of the country life in Trinidad, where I’m from. Thin Red Line inspired me for the way that Malick contemplates and captures nature and man’s place within it.

Working with these actors and actresses was special because I wrote this film with Dinesh in mind, I had worked with him on a feature film as AD a few years prior and I knew I would love to work with him as an actor, so in many ways knowing this inspired me to write the character of Nanda. I also incorporated the bharatanatyam dancing into the script because I was friends with Alana who plays adult Esha, and I knew she would bring an amazing performance to the table, so when she agreed to do it I was overjoyed, I knew we would have something really cinematic on our hands. I didn't know our young lead Priyanka before, and we went through a fairly thorough casting process before finding her, but she was just a gem, a joy to work with and a really promising young actress who really embodied the character of Esha.

Working with this crew was amazing because I’ve worked with most of them many times, we have great synergy and they’re some of the best Trinidad & Tobago has to offer. Everyone was so generous with their time as most people worked pro bono to make the film come to life on the meager budget we had. I really wanted to spend as much money on screen as possible, and the crew understood that and supported it, so to all of them I’m grateful. We have a great dynamic and work through challenges well.

We were fortunate to get the equipment for this film because a local production company that I knew owned an Aaton XTR Prod 16mm film camera, and they agreed to rent it to us at a reduced rate for the film, it’s one of the only film cameras on the island, and shooting on film was of paramount importance to me, the whole look and feel of the film hinged on it in my mind.
I’m excited to say that Tim Stipan who colored Black Swan, Moonrise Kingdom, The Wrestler and The Greatest Showman color graded this project for us, he is also an avid 16mm lover and was happy to collaborate with us which was amazing.
We had some delays creati
ng this film because after shooting in the end of 2019 and picture editing in early 2020 the world was hit by the pandemic. I had only one VFX artist working with me, and he was giving me time in between his actual job and so over the course of the following three years we plugged away back and forth when we could to try and get the moon landing sequence completed.

This film will always be special to me because it ended up being a project that spanned some of the biggest milestones in my life, its gone on longer than I had hoped but I’ve come to learn that everything happens in the time it’s meant to.

Warm regards,
Oliver Milne