Category: Cleft Lip

L to R Karen Lauke (sound), Mark Duggan (Assistant Director/cinematography), Shemin B Nair (Production Assistant), Erik Knudsen (producer, writer and director), Miranda Benjamin (actress), Stuart Samuels (special effects), Reece Douglas (actor), Kane Rattray (Sales and Marketing), Keith French (actor), Richard Mulhearn (stills photographer), Janet Knudsen (producer) and Meriel Pym (Production Designer).

Erik Knudsen and Janet Knudsen were pleased to be able to host the first Cleft Lip production meeting. The stars of the film had an opportunity to meet the key production team and visa versa. It was a whole day’s meeting, which started with general introductions where people were able to share past experiences. Erik Knudsen then held a screening session where he showed clips of films from filmmakers who have influenced his approach to filmmaking. Inevitably, they included extracts from films by Ozu (Equinox Flower), Dreyer (Gertrud), Bresson (L’Argent) and Tarkovsky (Mirror). It is fair to say that the cast in particular were not familiar with these filmmakers and it offered Erik Knudsen a chance to contextualise and discuss intentions for Cleft Lip.

This section was then followed by a leisurely lunch where Kane Rattray led a discussion about how the project is using social media as a first stage of a distribution strategy. Cast and crew, of course, will be central to participating in the promotion of the project even before the film starts shooting. The team also discussed how the project will be documented as a creative process.

Actors left after lunch and the afternoon was devoted to a scene by scene discussion of key creative, technical and logistical challenges. A rough schedule was also put in place.

On the basis of this most productive day, everyone in the team now has a clear idea of what needs doing and by whom and we can now go away and start work in earnest on pre-production creative, technical and logistical preparations.

As Gagarin said: ‘let’s go!’