“The Hollow Men” Teaser Trailer + Interview

Ashley Denton is a man with a plan. The writer/director originally from Johannesburg has wrapped up his latest short film and dropped us a mail to tell us about it. His after-hours project is entitled The Hollow Men and follows the tale of two brothers who are in the last stages of completing a device that can manipulate time. See the teaser below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1tSP1xAzk

The trailer certainly got us interested and we wanted to more about Mr Denton’s take on the popular theme of time-travel. We sent letters, bust some heads, interrogated a badger or two, and eventually got an audience with the man himself. Hit the jump to read his thoughts on the project, the trial and tribulations of being a filmmaker, and the things in store for the future.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Ash. For those who don’t know you are, say a little something about yourself.

First off, thanks for giving me the opportunity to speak about my film. I’m a writer/director with an insatiable passion for making films. I have a full-time job at the moment but every hour outside of work is spent watching, writing, or talking about films. But I can’t complain about my job really because I work for Xbox as a video producer – playing games and speaking to game developers for a living is amazingly cool. I also have an unhealthy obsession with tech and gadgets.

Nice! You’re originally from Joburg, but now live in London. Why the move?

I had a great opportunity to attend film school in New York and after that London seemed like a good next step. I had lived all over the place before that though, like Denver and Edinburgh, but it was the ease of travel to Europe and the access to world cinema pretty much sold me on the idea of living in London. I miss South Africa like nothing else, but being the geek that I am the pull of cheap broadband and endless film screenings just kept me here. Lack of sun is starting to take its toll though.

You’ve spent the majority of your time working on The Hollow Men. Can you tell us how the project got started?

I think it’s been a year straight of working on ‘The Hollow Men’. I originally had the idea of creating four shorts based around the four seasons in nature. That way I could make four films with different stories, actors, themes, and styles depending on the season. The thread holding it all together would be the concept of seasons and how each story ultimately reflects on nature itself. It’s a bit pretentious but a great way to practise different story types and shooting styles and at the end they’d make up a nice package of films with a run-time of about an hour. So far I’ve done two in the series, ‘The Hollow Men’ being the second. The first film was called ‘A Spring Story’ based on, well, spring. ‘The Hollow Men’ is actually the winter story. The original concept came from a Star Trek episode I saw a long time ago which had a similar premise of the same moment repeating itself as the cast tried to disarm a bomb. With each reset they got further and further from their goal as the bomb’s timing wasn’t effected by the time jumps. It was pretty tense stuff.

The Hollow Men centres around a time-manipulation device, yes? That concept has been a fascination with people for some time now, does your film approach it from a different perspective, or would that give too much of the story away?

No no, we can talk about it without ruining the story. I think it is an original take on the time travel genre. I decided to never show the machine because unless you have a big budget the device will never look good and ultimately downgrade the story. The only bit we see is the mesmerizing glowing door with ominous sound eminating from it. They’re also not able to gain access to the device and the same brief moments reset over and over again it really ramps up the tension between the two characters. I loved the idea of two men, already pissed off with each other, being totally powerless to the forces of nature. It almost like the laws of physics reminding them that they shouldn’t meddle with what they don’t fully understand.

How did you go about funding the project – perhaps with Kickstarter or did get all your friends involved to keep costs down?

I funded it through IndieGoGo which is another Kickstarter type site. They were pretty new when I joined and had a fraction of the projects that they have now so they promoted my short quite a lot on Twitter and on their homepage. It helped get the word out there. They’ve been great through the fund raising effort actually.

Tell us about the obstacles you faced when making your short film?

This was hands down the most difficult shoot I’ve ever been on. The cast and crew were great, just technical problems really. We shot on a Sony EX3 with a Letus Extreme lens adapter which my DP and I had never used before. We decided to just throw ourselves into it and see what would happen. The lens kept falling off and even they guy we rented it from couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We also had wireless mics that would cut out in the middle of shot because of interference in the area, so we had to resort to relying on the boom mics mostly. It was a nightmare but it made the process that much more rewarding to finish.

The teaser trailer really whets our appetite and we’re really keen to see the full monty. When will that be available?

I’m in the process of sending it off to film festivals and in talks to sell the film to a prominent shorts distributor so fingers crossed on that one. But if that doesn’t happen I’ll make the full film available on http://whoarethehollowmen.com. I’m not really out to make money with this film, I’d rather build a fan base and continue making films for them.

You’ve taken to social media like a duck to water. How useful has it been in spreading news about your project?

Why thank you. Twitter and Facebook have been essential to the funding of the project. It really helps keep the dream alive and the fans informed about the whole process. When I was growing up I would consume every special feature on DVDs of my favourite films but with social media I’m able to get that stuff out there while we’re still working on the film. Twitpic-ing from set or putting up concept sketches is important to me because I love that kind of stuff and it makes me feel closer to a project.

Word has it that you’re going to have a preview screening in London towards the end of this month. When and where is that happening?

The first screening at the end of July is essentially a wrap party for everyone involved, so it’s a closed event right now. BUT if there are enough people interested in seeing it on the big screen I’d love to organise a public screening of the film. That would make my day. Otherwise the film will be available online shortly.

What’s in the future for SlapDash films?

So many things. I’ll keep it brief here but I could talk endlessly about my plans. I feel like I’ve made enough shorts now (16 of my own) to try my hand at a feature. With Hollow Men I finally feel that able to create a series of dramatic moments in a convincing and believable way. I’ve been dying to move onto features and I’m ready to do it. I’ve got a number of feature ideas kicking about, one of which is to adapt ‘The Bang Bang Club’ which is a superb SA novel with amazing characters but I think it’s already in production in true Hollywood style.

I’m currently writing two stories of my own – the first is a film noir set in London about a down-and-out jazz musician whose regular nightly routine is interrupted by a mysterious man providing irrefutable evidence pointing to the man who ruined the musicians life … as well as giving him an untraceable weapon. The second is about a real life program in the 1950s called ‘Operation Midnight Climax’ where government-funded prostitutes would lure men into CIA-run brothels to test the effects of LSD on them. I want to turn that into a ‘Hotel California’ meets ‘House of the Rising Sun’ story.

Follow the film or me on Twitter @slapdashash or keep an eye on the http://whoarethehollowmen.com site for details about upcoming projects.

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Good stuff! Best wishes to Ash, it’s always nice doing something that you love. If and when the full film gets released on the Internet, we’ll keep you, our loyal readers, in the loop.