INTERVIEW WITH TIM PORTER FOR HIS SHORT FILM 'JUGGLING'

My very good friend Tim Porter, who has contributed to the site in the past is currently in pre-production on his short film JUGGLING, a psychological drama centred around the breakdown of the family unit. Please click read more to read the interview I did with Tim and to find out how you could be part of creating something special.

WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO WRITE THIS FILM?

Teaser poster

I was originally supposed to make another film called The Consequences of Silence, but that was rejected by the University due to it's length as it was written as feature film, but they said the piece had to be between 15-20 minutes, so I basically took an Element from that which was a mother and son relationship, having one of them disabled and the son repressing feelings inside of him and basically rolled all that into one of my core fears which is the fear of loosing MY mum and work it into a fictional story about a young man working a 9-5 job in the city who does have the opportunity to leave the house, with the money he earns and the jobs he does, but still decides to stay with his disabled mother, not just because of how strongly he cares for her but because he feels guilt that he's unable to care for her in these particular years. It's very autobiographical and I wanted to get it off of my chest really, to see if that would help me in some way which is pretty much the reason I started to write this.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THEMES THAT RUN THROUGH THE SCRIPT?

I see this as the beginning of Key themes that will be in future works of mine, Definitely the breakdown of the family unit. In my own life I have been raised by a single mother and it's something I've always wanted to explore. As I go through University, you learn about things like Freud and the Oedipus complex and I started to think about my relationship with MY mother and what it is that makes me feel so strongly towards her.

As I've gotten older and witnessed my own mother get more and more Ill, I've naturally gotten guilty while I have been out and she's all alone, I think's all this stuff like Insecurity, vulnerabilty, not being able to communicate physically with my mother, my inner emotions pretty much.

With this particular film I've taken elements of my own life, things like my life outside of home and the possibility of a relationship and basically put it to my biggest fear. The film is essentially me expressing everything I feel inside.

So the main themes of this film are The breakdown of the family unit, the idea of people repressing

feelings and there's a a lot of stuff about abandonment like what would happen if they were to lose this person.

THERE ARE THREE MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE FILM, COULD YOU GIVE US A LITTLE INFORMATION ON THEM?

The first character is called Andrew, he's the protagonist of the film, he's 27 years old and he works in the city and he's trying to balance his social life and potential love life with his home life with his mother and he's failing to get a grip on either and this stresses him out. He's basically walking a fine line between childhood and adulthood and it's damaging him, psychologically. Jill on the other hand is almost the complete opposite of Andrew. Where as Andrew goes home and has to clean up, do the dishes, wash the clothes as his mother is unable to care for herself, Jill is independent but much like Andrew, she is a sort of an outcast, Neither of them are able to fit in with the cosmopolitan, metrosexuals that are in their group, so are naturally drawn to each other. Jill tries to make Andrew aware of her feeling for him, but Andrew, being inexperienced at relationships, doesn't notice and is scared, Scared of progression, commitment to a woman who is not his mother. Andrew's mother, Olivia, is broken inside, she's lost her femininity, her independence as she can't was her self, clothe her self or take care of her self and relies heavily on Andrew to care for her to which she feels guilt as she believes she is holding him back. There's a line in the script in which Olivia brings this to Andrew's attention. It's a kind of conflict between these three people and once they meet, get along and everything starts to look up, a cruel hand of fate kinda changes everything forever, that will hopefully leave the viewer with feelings of Shock and sadness at what happens.

WHAT WERE YOUR MAIN INFLUENCES ON THE WRITING OF THIS FILM?

Well as you know from first hand experience, I have a love for dark cinema and have been stuck for too many years in Japanese cinema, but for this film, I wouldn't say any of this is linked to that what so ever, if anything, visually this will take a more Gritty, dare I say, Fly-on-the-wall-esq style, as we are looking into these characters lives, I imagine it will come across as very Ken Loachian in that respect as he focuses on people working in different area's all time, it's very working class.

WHERE DID THE TITLE 'JUGGLING' COME FROM?

It was kind of spontaneous really, I was sitting and thinking “what is the guy really doing?” because even in the early drafts, this guy lives in two different worlds at the same time and is trying to separate them, if you are juggling balls, your main goal is to keep them up in the air, to manage them and if you drop them then you fail, so basically I though that's quit a good idea, I could actually link that to what the concept of this film is, one guy trying to juggle all these different thing , so it pretty much just came out of the blue and I decided to run with that. It's never really had any other title apart from one which was Pysho-sexual Warefare but that didn't really express what the film was about and makes it sound like the most awesome grindhouse movie that's never been made, but with Juggling, it was one of those things that just clicks in your head.

YOU ARE CURRENTLY IN PRE-PRODUCTION, CAN YOU JUST GIVE US SOME INFORMATION ON HOW THAT IS GOING?

Currently we're still finalizing the crew, we have about 85% locked down to the project, we have our main lead, Terry Sweeney, who has a video circulating around Youtube with him talking abou the character of Andrew. (Link at the bottom) The Storyboards and the Shot list are nearly completed and we have a finished script. We're finalizing locations as we speak but the main hindrance of the pre-production is the budget, we were originally going to have a £2000 budget but only three people in the group have been able to finance the film, myself, the editor of the film and the executive producer. We currently trying to raise some extra cash to help push the budget up because and £1300 it's still shootable but at the same time it isn't because we need particular equipment, the film's going to shot on 35mm film, it's not the camera but the processing and the colour grading which is going to cost and we're trying to find an affordable office space, but so far the cheapest we can find at the moment is £400. In order for the film to really pack a punch and to kick the audience and get them really invested in the characters, it needs to look professional. The decision to shoot of film came from my previous short, Somnium, which we shot on 16mm and after we showed it we got a lot of great feedback on how good it looked. I think the problem with modern film making is that everything looks the same, everything is digital and film is almost obsolete, but as we still have the opportunity to use film in a educational way, we should use it to show it's full potential. I want the audience to look at it and say this doesn't look like a student film as most student projects are shot on DSLR's (Digital Cameras) and come across visually as less professional looking.

AS A WRITER/DIRECTOR, WHO INFLUENCES YOU, IN YOUR DIRECTING AND WRITING STYLE?

For me, at a young age I wasn't really exposed to violent films until around age 11 when I accidentally saw From Dusk Till Dawn and that pretty much changed everything and leading on from that I saw the films of Quentin Tarantino, watching Battle Royale for the first time and following that direction of films. For me though key directors who have influenced me are people like, Ken Russell (The Devils), Takeshi Kitano (Hana-Bi) and I'm very interested in Social-realism films from people like Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Andrea Arnold who I would say is a major major influence on this film Particularly Fish Tank, which I saw in the cinema and which blew me away and it dragged me in, it made me feel like I lived on one of these council estates, it was completely believable and totally engaging, that's the kind of film I want to create with this. Another would be Shane Meadows, Meadows has this unique filming style, He has a social-realist approach to it but he makes genre pictures, Dead Man's Shoes being the prime example of social-realist genre film, a revenge drama set in a real location with real people but it still has the genre style to it.

IN REGARDS TO RAISING FUNDS, CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW AND WHERE PEOPLE CAN DONATE TO THE BUDGET?

There are actually two ways you can donate money, there's the IndeGoGo account which is at www.indegogo.com/juggling, if you go through that you'll get special gifts once the film is done, there is a list of things you can get, i'll run through these quickly....

$5 – you will get a special thank you on the ending credits of the film.

$15 – You will get a thank you and a digital download copy of the film

$25 – you will get the above plus a DVD copy of the film

$50 – The above plus a set of production stills and behind the scenes photos

$65 – The above plus an exclusive poster

$250 –The above plus an Associate Producer credit on the film.

$500 – The above plus an Executive Producer credit on the film

the second option is to go straight through to me via PAYPAL as Indegogo do take fee's but Paypal will give us the complete amount.  


You can also visit the film's OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGE. 


Terry Sweeney talks about the character of Andrew and the plot of the film.