Written, Produced & Directed by James Mansell
Animator & Executive Producer Hakim Ismail
An endless corridor of locked doors holds a man prisoner as his mind begins to disintegrate.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH JAMES
Welcome back to our Short of the Week series. What have you been up to since the last time we featured your film Ruptured?
Thanks! I've been concentrating on writing for the last few years, and developing short film projects. The Corridor was a brilliant lockdown project which we all found very cathartic throughout those rough months, so that kept me very busy. I'm prepping a new short film which I hope to shoot and complete by the end of the year.
So The Corridor is your first animated film, correct? Why did you choose animation?
It certainly is. I've made a lot of animated films for brands but nothing made independently. It was a combination of wanting to work with friend and animator Hakim Ismail, who saw Ruptured and really liked it, and wanted to work on something dark and nasty, and COVID coming along and stopping any live-action shooting for a while. I was heavily inspired by David Lynch's weird and wonderful internet shorts and wanted to do something completely different to what I'd done before, so I had the idea of an animated film. With Hakim, I pitched the idea of The Corridor, which was first meant as a live-action short, and we began developing it, and went from there. I'm also a huge fan of Richard Linklater's rotoscoped animation Waking Life, and have wanted to do something similar for a very long time. This isn't rotoscoped, but it's close.
Aside from the obvious, how is directing an animated film different from a live action?
We approached it the only way I knew how, so it wasn't as different as you'd think. Working closely with one person was challenging at times, but we still had actors and a story, so the elements of a live-action film were all there. We storyboarded the film together, as if we were shooting it, and I cut it together, as if it was footage, so it retains the feel of a conventionally shot, live-action film, with the added element of this abstract, surreal style of animation that Hakim achieved. This all added to the dream-like quality the film has. I'm not sure we could have achieved that tone if we shot live-action.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
The film took us 18 months to complete over lockdown. We really had to not worry about how long this took, and just went with the flow. Life was quite challenging for everyone, and we were working on this in our free time, so there were long periods of inactivity, which couldn't be avoided. Hakim and I worked closely throughout that period, exchanging ideas and references, and we slowly built the film. Ashley Pekri and Victoria Morrison, who were both in my film NightmARes, provided the voices, and the fantastically eerie music was by Grey Frequency. This all took a long time to come together. At some point, you just have to stop, as it can always improve with time. I think we'd burnt ourselves out on the idea and needed to stop, once it felt as good as it could get with the facilities we had. We're both really proud of the film, and it stands out as something quite different.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
I honestly think the biggest challenge is internal. Having the confidence and fortitude to keep going and stay positive is very difficult. Every filmmaker who hasn't had a 'break' yet sees other filmmakers getting opportunity's and directing feature films, which is really hard when said filmmakers are battling away on their own work and seemingly not getting anywhere. THE most important thing a filmmaker can do is keep the faith and keep working. If you work smart, adapt, learn and overcome challenges as best you can, and stay true to who you are as a filmmaker, and not forget the passion you have, you have the best chance of getting the opportunities you want. Also, don't dream of that Academy Award, or BAFTA, or Fangoria Chainsaw Award too much. While you're dreaming of winning, other filmmakers are getting on with making stuff. Concentrate with what's in front of you. That's all that matters right now.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Some animated films which inspired The Corridor and are most certainly worth checking out are Richard Linklater's Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. Both superbly bizarre and trippy. I also love Keith Maitland's animated documentary Tower. And lastly, I'd say check out the incredibly powerful Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman.