In The Mood

How to make a short film: first, secure the services of the Sexiest Woman in the World.

In 1944, a Polish violinist (a foreigner, with an unfamiliar foreign accent) did a spot on Henry Hall’s popular Radio Guest Night on the BBC Home Service. The broadcast attracted the interest of British Intelligence who visited the next day to interview everyone involved. It transpired that they thought the violinist may somehow have been broadcasting coded messages to the Nazis. Henry Hall was my grandpa. Fifty years later, when he told me the story, I remember making a joke about tap dancing and morse code. For the next ten years, I transferred that idea from notebook to notebook until, eventually, in 2007, I developed it into a script for my first short film IN THE MOOD. This was how my version of the story ended up:

London, June 1944 – a Dance Studio.

In a letter slipped under the door, buttoned-up, Nazi spy Eva receives details of the upcoming D-Day invasions. She puts on her special, radio-transmitting tap-dance shoes and begins to pass on the intelligence in Morse code to a waiting German submarine.

However, as Eva taps out her message, the sound of Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ wafts in through an open window from a nearby gramophone. Eva tries to fight it, but soon she’s completely possessed by the sound of the swing music and ends up dancing with wild, joyful abandon. Not so buttoned-up now!

Meanwhile, on the submarine, the thrilling rhythm of her tap dance is so irresistible and bewitching that even the two Nazi radio-operators find themselves dancing together in the cramped space. The crucial intelligence is forgotten and the course of the war averted.

When the record ends, Eva is exhausted but changed forever.

For obvious reasons, protagonists’ journeys in short films aren’t always epic. There just isn’t time. In IN THE MOOD, the transformative record is being played by a couple of American GI’s, one of whom is black. At the end, Eva crosses to the window of her dance studio to discover the source of the magical music and locks eyes with him. I loved the idea that Eva starts as a Nazi, and six minutes later, she’s in love with a black GI. That did feel epic.

I’ve written many things over the years, but nothing that has ever come out as quickly or easily as that script. I wrote with the freedom of someone who had no expectations that it would ever be made. There are a few rules when writing short film scripts, mostly governed by budget: nothing ‘period’, no licenced music, and no submarines. Hmm... At least there were no children or animals, I guess.

I was on a writing course when I wrote it, and two fellow students, and friends, were director Hannah and cinematographer Peter (at that time, I still wouldn’t have been able to tell you exactly what a cinematographer did, or why they were necessary, let alone important). They both read the script and liked it. And that validation was enough; I still wasn’t thinking of it as something that could be made. For a start, we had no money. But Hannah and Peter felt differently. They both felt the script was fun enough to attract a big name to play Eva, and if we got a big name, we’d get the money.

We made a short list of big names - some actors, some dancers - but either we weren’t ultimately convinced by them, or they were absurdly unreachable (I think Nicole Kidman and Catherine Zeta Jones were on the list at one point; not so much unreachable as delusional). When initial enthusiasm and belief were waning, I had a flash of lateral inspiration... Whilst forensically researching possible talent (erm... watching trashy TV), I chanced upon Kelly Brook who was presenting a dance competition called Dirty Dancing - a tribute to the film’s twenty-year anniversary. Kelly Brook was not only a model, presenter, and actress, but two years previously she’d been crowned the Sexiest Woman in the World by FHM, one of the UK’s leading ‘lads mags’ that had suddenly become mainstream. One way or another, Kelly Brook suddenly had a very high profile. And on the Dirty Dancing show she was styled in what, to my untutored eye, looked like a 40’s-ish (50’s if I’d have joined the dots with Dirty Dancing); vintage, anyway.

I found Kelly’s agent’s email address (Oh! ‘Kelly’ is it, now?) and fired off an enquiry. The response was short and to the effect of: “How much?” My second email was even more obsequious and charming than my first and basically explained that while we were all (all?) professionals, IN THE MOOD was a passion project, and the entire cast and crew would be donating their time. In other words: “We have no money.” Surprisingly, the agent found my my candour disarming. Kelly agreed to a meeting.

There’s a joke that the royals must think the whole world smells of fresh paint because wherever they go, five minutes ahead of them is someone is frantically touching up the paintwork. I wondered if it was like that with Kelly and men; did she think we were all slack-jawed, goggle-eyed idiots? Beauty will do that. It did it to me. Luckily, our female director Hannah clearly reassured Kelly that we weren’t just perverts with iPhones. However, Kelly also wanted reassuring that this was going to be a quality production, which meant, in her mind, old-fashioned, celluloid film rather than digital. She’d just appeared in Agatha Christie’s Marple series for TV, and that had all been shot on 16mm film, so that was where she’d set the bar. The meeting was going well, so Hannah thought it was time to unleash our cinematographer Peter to field Kelly’s technical questions about film. As it happens, we’d already decided to shoot on 16mm film, so Hannah handed over to him to expound on its merits. Now, Peter’s pretty Alpha, a bit geezer-ish even, so it was a risk. But he’s also passionate about what he does and how he does it. He waxed lyrical about saturation and resolution and texture, and we were almost out of the woods, when Kelly asked:

“So, if 16mm is so good, why do people bother using 35mm?”

Peter didn’t answer right way. He took his time.

“Well, 35mm’s just... It’s just... It’s just the dog’s bollocks!”

Gulp! But Kelly just laughed. Men! Again! Anyway, one way or another, blokey Peter and mooning, gormless me weren’t enough to put Kelly off. By the end of the meeting, she was in. Now all we needed was everything else...

I knew nothing about how large a crew is needed to make even a short film: fifteen on set for the shoot, and the same again for pre- and post-production. However, we sent out emails, now with Kelly’s image as an attachment, and by the end of the week we were fully crewed-up. In fact, we could have had double the numbers: “I could carry her stuff for her”, “I could stir her tea,”, “I could cut the crusts off her sandwiches.” And all working for nothing, which is more common on short films than you might think, and more justifiable: everyone knows that short films aren’t ‘commercial’ as such; it’s not like as an electrician, or a sound guy, you’ll be donating your time only for the producers to rake in the profits. There won’t be any profits. There’s no market for short films. In fact, short films cost money. Which brings us, as ever, back to budget...

No matter how generous cast and crew are with their time, you still need to transport everyone to the set, and you still need to feed them (and feed them well) and you need props and wardrobe (bloody ‘period’ films!), and film stock (bloody Peter and Kelly!), and you still need locations (that bloody submarine!). We worked out our budget and figured that we’d need to come up with around £3,000, plus location fees. Although fees were only half the problem: where the hell were we going to find a submarine?

Funnily enough, we solved the submarine problem while we were working on our period wardrobe problem. I’d noticed that once a month, HMS Belfast (a second world war ship now permanently moored as a museum next to London Bridge) hosted a get-together for swing music enthusiasts. Judging by the promotional material, it looked like most of the men came dressed as WWII GI’s. Which, indeed, they did, and they turned out to be chatty, highly knowledgeable (with, perhaps an over-meticulous attention to detail), and keen to lend us what we needed for our two GI’s. Having bought our tickets to board the Belfast, we discovered that we were also allowed to do the tour. And during the tour, in a corner of the engine room, Hannah and Peter suddenly started exchanging glances and nods and making framing shapes with their fingers and thumbs. It was clear to them that, with a wee bit of film trickery - the addition of a single, low-wattage, red lightbulb, and an occasional sonar ‘ping’ from the sound department in post production - the cramped space, with its grey painted walls, and dials and cabling, could be transformed into our submarine radio room. Dastardly filmmakers! For half a day’s filming, provided we’d agree to work with a restricted crew, it turned out that they’d charge us just £50.

Finding a dance studio was rather different. There were lots of them in and around London (to keep transport costs down), but most were either modern-looking, extremely expensive, or both. We eventually settled on Cecil Sharp House, the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. We had one condition, and so did they: ours was that we wanted to repaint the studio in a colour that was more period (and paint it back to its original yellow again afterwards); and theirs was that they wanted us out by four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon because that’s when Lancashire clog dancing was scheduled. As it turned out, we ended up slapping on the final brush-full of yellow paint at three fifty-five, just as the early arrivals were stepping into their clumpy, wooden footwear.

There were still a couple of unusual elements of the film that we needed to source: a choreographer, and a pair of radio-transmitting, tap shoes. The choreographer, Stewart, turned out to be a friend of someone’s mum and came fresh from working with Wayne Sleep in the West End. Kelly got on well with him and the two of them worked feverishly trying to come up with a tap dance that, in the first part (before she’s ‘converted’ by the music), contained some Nazi symbolism: Hitler salutes and swastika shapes with Kelly’s arms and legs.

We’d been lucky when it turned out someone in the crew’s mum knew a choreographer, but we were even luckier when it came to the tap shoes. We were browsing the shelves of high street electronics shop Maplin and literally bumped into fellow browser Rob, who turned out to be a special-effects designer whose credits included prop making for films such as Alien and Star Wars. He loved the challenge of our little project. In the finished film, Kelly slides the metal tap on her heel aside to reveal a tiny circuit of transistors, resistors, even a little bulb. She then clicks a micro-switch – again enhanced by a ‘peep’ from the sound department – and voilà: a convincing transmitter worthy of a sci-fi mega-movie.

So, we were almost ready. Finally, we taped X’s on the windows of the dance studio to make them look like they’d been air-raid-proofed, and filming began: two days in the dance studio, followed by a day onboard HMS Belfast.

My memory of the shoot was that they were long days that went by in a flash. My role, as writer and producer, was to stay out of the way and let everyone get on with their jobs. Staying out of the way meant making sure everyone was properly fed and watered. On the first afternoon, laden with customised coffees from the local hipster café, I bumped into Kelly’s boyfriend (who was also staying out of the way). Kelly’s boyfriend was Hollywood ‘A’ lister Billy Zane. I introduced myself and we shook hands.

“Great script, man.”

I mean, he was the baddie in TITANIC, for God’s sake, the highest grossing film of all time! I’ll take it.

My next involvement came after we’d ‘wrapped’ and had the film ‘in the can’. As you can see, I’d become quite taken with the world of film-making!

The first process after the shoot is when the director and editor sift through all the coverage to see what footage they have and what they’ve missed and from that, carving out a rough cut. It was then that the producer is allowed in, and I was thrilled to see that the footage looked uncannily as I had seen it in my mind’s eye. It was also at this ‘rough cut’ stage that we all realised that there was a little too much of Kelly dancing. Mesmerising though she was, as far as the story was concerned, “we get it!” After a certain amount, more doesn’t enhance the story; it’s just a pretty girl dancing (okay, very pretty, and dancing fabulously). In fact, there comes a point when we start to get impatient to see what’ll happen when the music stops.

After a rough cut comes (no surprise) a fine cut, then ‘picture lock’, which is time for the two final processes: the ‘grade’ (which gives the whole film a uniform ‘look’ – vibrant, cold, moody, etc.); and the sound design, which includes sound effects (those pings and peeps, etc.), Foley (footsteps, doors opening and closing, etc.), ADR (additional dialogue replacement – re-recording mumbled lines), and music. While the grading team did their work on the pictures, Kelly and I were sent to a studio in Soho to add some sounds. At the very end of the film, Kelly looks out at the GI, smiles, and gives a little giggle, and director Hannah wanted a selection of giggles to choose from. So, Kelly sat in a sound booth, while a technician and I sat at a mixing table (enough knobs, switches and slides to launch a spaceship) and gave direction into a microphone.

“Can we try one slightly lighter. That’s it. Lovely. Thanks. Now a bit breathier. Thank you. Girlier? Lovely. Can you do flirtier..?”

Once Kelly had left, the technician held up the finished giggle reel and waggled it at me.

“If you’re still short of funds, you could always pop this on eBay!”

We didn’t, of course. What may not have fetched quite the same price on eBay would have been a video of my contribution to the ADR: in the same cramped booth, I performed the whole of Kelly’s dance, swishing and furling the skirt I’d had to wear so that we could capture some realistic fabric noises.

Which, finally, brings us to the music and, specifically, to In the Mood, the Glenn Miller song that was central to Kelly’s dance and to the whole film. We were sailing high because, in the meantime, the picture-locked (music-less) version of the film had won us some cash funding from the UK Film Council: £3,000. The licence we needed to use the song was called a synchronization licence and we hoped £3,000 would be enough. Unfortunately, it turned out that all the rights were owned by a giant, multi-national corporation that had no interest in negotiating with amateurs like us over its inclusion in a short film. When they demanded $10,000 (much more than the whole film had cost to make), it wasn’t their opening position; it was: take it or leave it.

So, while £3,000 was not enough to buy the licence for the Glenn Miller version, it was enough to pay a band to record our own version, hire a studio in Bridgend, Wales (home of the Phil Dando Big Band) for an afternoon, and secure permission for the resulting version to be played at film festivals for a year. For this stripped-down licence, we hadn’t been negotiating with Evil Global Corp, but with the lawyers who represented the estate of the song’s composer, Joseph Garland. I imagined a lawyer in a dusty office in Manhattan, like an old-time gumshoe detective, answering one of those old candlestick phones, where you shout into the mouthpiece and hold the earpiece separately.

Where the sound department had elevated us (those sonar pings to suggest the submarine; the peep when Kelly turns on her heel transmitter; the Spitfire-like plane noise when she opens the window that reminds us we’re in 1944), ultimately, it was music that torpedoed our submarine film.

IN THE MOOD premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and went on to be shown at festivals all round the world, winning awards from Portugal to Mumbai. It became known as a ‘festival darling’: popular, fun, uplifting, easy. It didn’t hurt that it was short (six minutes, so easy to schedule), that it had almost no dialogue, no swearing, or violence, or sex, or drugs, and could be enjoyed equally by men and women, and boys and girls, of any age. It was just a shame we were never able to sell it to the streamers, or airlines, or cinema chains. As one sales agent commented: “Like the surgeon said: the operation was successful, but the patient died.”

There is another way of looking at it, that fans of irony and all things ‘meta’ may enjoy: our little film was about someone trying to make a broadcast but being sabotaged by the song ‘In the Mood’; you could say exactly the same thing about our short film.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, do, please, subscribe! Thank you. Jonathan