![]() ![]() ![]() Rachel Shelley: It’s an interesting thing, because I think a lot of indie movies are horror, aren’t they? I think it’s a really interesting place for directors to come as first or relatively new directors like The Children. What’s your relationship with the horror/thriller genre? Rachel, you’ve done horror before, like the film The Children. It has an AI, but it’s actually about the human experience. I mean, that’s what attracted me to this. It sounds like a science fiction book, but it’s not because it’s actually, at its essence, about the human experience. There’s a great book about an AI called “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is quite a recent book. It’s science fiction but only an element of that. I mean, I suppose big fans might say that all science fiction is character driven, but I feel like the really good ones are sort of bordering between the two. But that’s what’s quite interesting, because I think within that there is a subgenre of those films that kind of cross the line: they’re science fiction, but ultimately, they’re more character driven. Rachel Shelley: It’s funny because I wouldn’t call myself a fan of science fiction. So that’s why I felt for my first one, I wanted to do something sci-fi. I’m a real fan of sci-fi and I have been for years. Ex Machina was great and really inspired this movie. I mean, I read science fiction novels, and I love films like Man Who Fell to Earth, Andromeda Strain. How long have you been a fan of science fiction? And that was something that really drew me to this one. I just fell in love with it and love the fact that it was women in lead roles and in strong positions, because obviously I’m a female director and I want to show strong female characters. Stephen Hammond did an absolutely fantastic job of writing it he’s so talented. So I read it, and I was, like, two pages in and was blown away. So I expressed myself to exec producer Linden Bolduc and producer Rebecca Claire Evans.ĭriving back from Pinewood, we literally looked at synopses and I found this one. We’d actually selected another script that didn’t quite fit the criteria and I just didn’t feel quite right going ahead with it. And I knew I wanted it to be sci-fi, preferably around AI, but with a dramatic undertone, because that’s where I developed from when I directed shorts. Natalie Kennedy: Coming into making my first feature, I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to make. Natalie, what initially attracted you to directing BLANK? So yes, lots of preparations and lots of digging around in the character and her storyline and her arc and everything that happens to her, but a lot of it is there on the page. You just feel it viscerally when you first read it. I mean, you then obviously change things. I think when you respond like that to a script, it’s a good thing. ![]() I think Natalie said when she read the first few pages of the script, she could see it already immediately. It’s one of those scripts that when I read it, I almost knew immediately, exactly how it should feel. There were so many layers to Claire, her background, her story. When you’re in that place, it’s all about what’s going on inside your brain. My husband is a writer, so I’m very aware of that sort of writer’s position where you’re in your head, and you’re so in your head that you’re lost in your world, and nothing else really matters. I’ve just recently found out that the writer Stephen, had experienced that himself, and that’s where a lot of this came from-this idea that he had the story and he didn’t quite know how to put it on the page. And a fascinating element of it is obviously the blank page, the writer’s block. Rachel Shelley: I think the role had so many layers to her. Rachel, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how you prepare for this role. I somehow managed not to fangirl too hard. After screening and reviewing the film ( spoiler: I loved it), I had the opportunity to interview Shelley and Kennedy during their virtual press tour. Art imitates life, right? The new film BLANK follows author Claire Rivers as she navigates, confronts, and overcomes her writer’s block with the help-and insistence-of some high-tech AI.īLANK was directed by Natalie Kennedy and stars Rachel Shelley and Heida Reed. There’s an abundance of literary, cinematic, and artistic material that employs it as a plot device, often drawing from the creator’s own experiences. BLANK l Brainstorm MediaIf you’re a writer or artist of any kind, you’re more likely than not familiar with the circle of Hell that is creative block. ![]()
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