"If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it already." So starts director Charlotte Parry's new fantasy short, as half-nymph Sienna sits captive under the watch of protagonist Melodie.
It’s February 2017 and we’re in the English countryside. Director, Charlotte Parry, is standing in a forest with a camera, umbrellas and three pointy-eared, elf-like nymphs. Although this may sound like another trip to Middle Earth, Parry has created a unique world of her own in the darkness of the local forest overlooking the Thames. She’s yelling at her actors. “You need to be more sneering, more condescending.” Parry calls to one of the actors. She’s not cross, in fact she’s far from it, as she instructs her cast through the scene and laughs as they run through the woodland, covered in mud past dog-walkers.
It’s February 2017 and we’re in the English countryside. Director, Charlotte Parry, is standing in a forest with a camera, umbrellas and three pointy-eared, elf-like nymphs. Although this may sound like another trip to Middle Earth, Parry has created a unique world of her own in the darkness of the local forest overlooking the Thames. She’s yelling at her actors. “You need to be more sneering, more condescending.” Parry calls to one of the actors. She’s not cross, in fact she’s far from it, as she instructs her cast through the scene and laughs as they run through the woodland, covered in mud past dog-walkers.
"You want to have the DNA of a good fantasy film," says the director, "but you want the excitement and gripping storyline of a science-fiction or action film. The audience want to be part of the story, part of the action."
Like the films that inspired Parry to create this short epic, Halfbreed starts with immediate action, throwing the audience into the struggle of Sienna, a half-nymph who's hunted by the Woodland Queen and her minions. On set, today is dedicated to the scenes involving the encounters with the villain, the Woodland Queen (Olivia Bunton), as the protagonist Melodie (Sophie Slade) prepares to take her captive, Sienna (Amelia Mather), to the Woodland Queen. The weather is dull, a brief of drizzle of rain still hanging on the air, and the crew are silent as the action ensues, all clutching hold of umbrellas in case the rain returns.
As costume designer and director, Parry has had to apply and shape three pairs of prosthetic ears to her cast - rather than relying of CGI effects to add a supernatural element to the characters. “I looked at elves and other fantasy science-fiction characters,” she says, “the way they look, dress and act.” The film may be a fantasy, but if its head is in the clouds, its feet are on the ground: the spectacle looks grubby, painful, the cast and crew are all shivering from the chill of the English weather, tired from a hard day of filming in the unpredictable weather. A crew member states that they are always working fast, dedicated to as much of the action on set as possible as the day passes quickly from light into darkness in a mere couple of hours. Parry states that she “intended to film in the twilight zone between light and dark, shooting sections of the film in a dusky period where the light has begun to dim”.
Fantasy short films are notoriously difficult to pull-off, most have floundered both due to poor effects and leaving the audience unable to connect with the characters. Parry reckons the problem is initially misplaced loyalty. “Sometimes fantasy fans are too loyal to the conventions of the films they know and recognise.” Here, the decision was made to create a whole new race of characters in shape of the nymphs, separating from the fantasy conventions of elves. Melodie is a cold-hearted individual with a traumatic childhood, under the control of the Woodland Queen. “Mel is a lone wolf. She’s cynical. And she’s sceptical.” Says actress Sophie Slade. “And so it’s her journey to become something beyond herself where she can feel like she belongs.”
“It’s not like stereotypical films, where you’ve got a light and a dark side,” says Parry. “There are no singularly good and bad characters, making the audience truly think about their characters and to really get inside the characters head. The whole idea is to make the audience sit there and wonder: should I be feeling that, or should I be backing this character?”
Like the films that inspired Parry to create this short epic, Halfbreed starts with immediate action, throwing the audience into the struggle of Sienna, a half-nymph who's hunted by the Woodland Queen and her minions. On set, today is dedicated to the scenes involving the encounters with the villain, the Woodland Queen (Olivia Bunton), as the protagonist Melodie (Sophie Slade) prepares to take her captive, Sienna (Amelia Mather), to the Woodland Queen. The weather is dull, a brief of drizzle of rain still hanging on the air, and the crew are silent as the action ensues, all clutching hold of umbrellas in case the rain returns.
As costume designer and director, Parry has had to apply and shape three pairs of prosthetic ears to her cast - rather than relying of CGI effects to add a supernatural element to the characters. “I looked at elves and other fantasy science-fiction characters,” she says, “the way they look, dress and act.” The film may be a fantasy, but if its head is in the clouds, its feet are on the ground: the spectacle looks grubby, painful, the cast and crew are all shivering from the chill of the English weather, tired from a hard day of filming in the unpredictable weather. A crew member states that they are always working fast, dedicated to as much of the action on set as possible as the day passes quickly from light into darkness in a mere couple of hours. Parry states that she “intended to film in the twilight zone between light and dark, shooting sections of the film in a dusky period where the light has begun to dim”.
Fantasy short films are notoriously difficult to pull-off, most have floundered both due to poor effects and leaving the audience unable to connect with the characters. Parry reckons the problem is initially misplaced loyalty. “Sometimes fantasy fans are too loyal to the conventions of the films they know and recognise.” Here, the decision was made to create a whole new race of characters in shape of the nymphs, separating from the fantasy conventions of elves. Melodie is a cold-hearted individual with a traumatic childhood, under the control of the Woodland Queen. “Mel is a lone wolf. She’s cynical. And she’s sceptical.” Says actress Sophie Slade. “And so it’s her journey to become something beyond herself where she can feel like she belongs.”
“It’s not like stereotypical films, where you’ve got a light and a dark side,” says Parry. “There are no singularly good and bad characters, making the audience truly think about their characters and to really get inside the characters head. The whole idea is to make the audience sit there and wonder: should I be feeling that, or should I be backing this character?”
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