The York-made film The Knife That Killed me calls on a lot of high-tech trickery. Charles Hutchinson reports on the film, talks to those who made it and offers his verdict

SUNDAY'S York premiere of The Knife That Killed Me heralds the dawn of a new age of Yorkshire cinema as the silver screen makes room for the green screen.

York directors Marcus Romer and Kit Monkman will be on hand after the 6.30pm screening at City Screen for a question and answer session, where you can learn more about the new technology that brought Anthony McGowan's teenage northern novel to cinematic fruition at the cutting-edge film studios on a converted pig farm at Bubwith, near Selby, at a cost of £3 million.

In a nutshell, Romer, artistic director of Pilot Theatre, the multi-media company in residence at York Theatre Royal, oversaw the screen adaptation and worked on scenes at Bubwith with his actors, as he would in Pilot's rehearsals.

Scenes were then filmed next door by Monkman, rather than on location, with the green-screen technology adding everything around the cast afterwards as Monkman worked as much like a painter as a film-maker.

Add rain. Add grimy streets. Add writing chalked on imaginary walls, with the wording taken from the design plans to represent the turbulent thoughts of teenager Paul Varderman, a schoolboy whose journey to his death is told in flashback, as he narrates his memories of what led to the fatal moment when his life was cut short.

What green screen can create is the internal and external world at once; what someone is doing and thinking at the same time, all portrayed in a film format with none of the blurred edges of conventional cinematography.

Post-production work at the University of York film, television and theatre department then completed the look.

"It's an extraordinary facility, right at the height of technology that out guns all those film studios in Soho," says Kit.

York company Green Screen Productions's debut film all began with a Leeds book more than six years ago.

"Kit and I had been working on a couple of projects and we'd been looking for good stories to tell," said Marcus, as he addressed cast, crew, friends, family and invited guests at a screening at the National Media Museum's Pictureville cinema in Bradford on Tuesday last week.

"We wanted to find a story with a first person narrative, and Anthony's book was the one. We approached him within two weeks of its publication! It was set in Yorkshire; it suited the green-screen technology, and I knew working with the actors would be like being in a constant rehearsal room with the black floor and white tape."

Kit had grown up loving the look of the films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

"They were invariably made in the studio and the films had a look that connected them with theatre, and there's something about the two mediums connecting that's absolutely brilliant," he says.

"Our thing is to show again that they can connect and we're trying to find a cinematic language to do that, bringing cinema back to its theatre roots, where the audience is very much more present in the viewing experience."

Kit notes how the weirder the special effects a big-budget movie uses, the more the audience is passive. "The 'reality' in those films is presented as a fait accompli, rather than with the audience as collaborators," he says.

Using green screen technology and creating such richly detailed cinematic imagery brings the audience more into the film. "Green screen is the ultimate theatrical set you can create," says Marcus. "With all those layers on screen, the film is more of a 'whydunit' than whodunit.

"If you stop any frame, there are things there that give you clues to what's going on in Paul's psyche, and we wanted everything to help towards that. Everything on screen is in focus, as it would be in Paul's head, which is where it differs from past films."

These factors, especially the viewer's ability to freeze-frame a moment on screen, should see The Knife That Killed Me come into its own when released on DVD by Universal Pictures UK , the film's distributors.

That said, the film's visual impact is one of its strengths on the cinema screen too, not least in conveying the teenage thoughts of Paul.

"When you're in that school world, you don't know what it's like to be outside. You don't have that knowledge, and that's why that environment can be incredibly scary," says Marcus. "That's the world we present."

Knife crime is at the heart of the film, but while both directors agree The Knife That Killed Me should ask questions, Marcus stresses it is not a message movie; it is broader than that, looking at issues surrounding growing up in a claustrophobic atmosphere amid peer pressure.

"It does have a message in there, but it wasn't our intention just to say, 'hey kids, don't mess with knives'," he says. "There are positive messages in there about relationships."

The key to any film is the relationship between good storytelling and memorable screen imagery and this one was no different, albeit that each director had to focus on differing aspects in driving towards a common goal.

"The biggest challenge, because the filming was so experimental, was that we had a running joke that we didn't know if it would be remotely watchable," says Kit.

"One of the things we experimented with was multiple takes and multiple lenses, so each viewer's eye is drawn to different things; they make individual choices, rather like in the theatre."

It would not work, however, "if we didn't have the narrative driving through it", says Marcus. "But I knew we had some stonking performances, some great children in the cast, so we could just let the creative team do their magic as we knew the story was there in its essence."

Kit will learn lessons from The Knife That Killed Me as he continues to use the green screen format.

"It took time to work out which visual language worked best," he says. "There are bits in there that you know could have been shot as a soap opera, bits that are not quite 'real' and are more distracting when you're watching them than when it's more abstract or bizarre."

It will be interesting to see what happens next down on the old farm in Bubwith.

The Knife That Killed Me (15) will be shown at City Screen, York, on Sunday at 6.30pm, followed by a Filmmaker Q & A with Marcus Romer and Kit Monkman. Box office: 0871 902 5726 or picturehouses.co.uk/york

• Only One Question for...co-producer Thomas Mattinson

Where does The Knife That Killed Me go next after Sunday's York premiere, Thomas?

"The intention is to release it to film theatres later this summer. And yes, we are intending to release it on DVD at the end of autumn, with Universal handling that release."

 

Together again in Knife roles

YORK actors Andrew Dunn and his partner Andrina Carroll both play teachers in Green Screen Productions’ debut feature film, The Knife That Killed Me, but this is not their only York cinematic endeavour this year.

Both also appear in Cathy Denford’s short film, On The Edge, above, made by Risky Things Productions, and Dinnerladies star Andrew also has a role in MilesTone Films’ low-budget serial killer romp, Whoops!.

“We’ve been together for a long time and have worked together at various stages of our lives, at different times in our careers when we will have changed in the years in between,” says Andrina.

“So we do surprise each other when we perform together, having seen each other in separate things. Every time we act together it’s different.”

Andrew agrees. “It will always be influenced by what we’re doing in the story, the characters we play,” he says.

“It’s always different because we’re playing different people each time, and playing them at different stages in our own lives,” says Andrina. “It would be interesting to revisit roles we did together before, now that we’ve had different life experiences, working with different people.”

“It’s always nice to work with someone you know so well,” says Andrew.

“Especially when you’re working in a condensed period of times, as we were with On The Edge, where we’d worked with Cathy at the beginning of the script-writing process, so we didn’t have to discuss things on the set as we were ready to go.”

Cathy filmed her 28-minute short in five days last November, with Andrew and Andrina playing two rough sleepers who meet in York and start a relationship that gives them the confidence to rebuild their lives and re-engage with society. The film is being submitted to film festivals, including the Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, so watch this space as to where and when it can be seen.

Meanwhile, Whoops!, a low-budget serial killer comedy filmed in York in 2012, has already toured the Vue cinema circuit under the Raindance umbrella in June but still awaits its York debut.

Andrew was cast against type as a sleazy estate agent in pinstriped suit and pink tie. “He’s lecherously inclined,” he says. “I’m only in it for a few scenes but I meet a grisly death. Death by clipboard; killed by the leading lady – I play her boss – who keeps on accidentally killing people.

“We actually filmed one scene in the estate agents where Andrina and I bought our house.”

Whoops! will have its moment, but first you can see Andrew and Andrina in the teenage school death movie The Knife That Killed Me on Sunday evening at City Screen. “I’m the good-guy teacher who tries to look after the young lad [the lead character Paul Varderman] when he arrives at his new school,” says Andrew.

“And I’m playing the nasty teacher, Mrs Eels,” says Andrina. “I spoke to the writer, Anthony McGowan, who told me she was based on a teacher at his school in Leeds. He said she was a monster!”

 

Review: The Knife That Killed Me (15), 90 minutes, City Screen, York, Sunday screening ***

THIS is a landmark film for York film-making, the first to emerge from the city’s cutting-edge company Green Screen Productions.

It is the work of two directors who have made their mark in other enterprises, Marcus Romer as artistic director of teenage theatre specialists Pilot Theatre, and Kit Monkman, of KMA, the interactive kinetic light installation specialist with an eye for the big scale.

Green screen film-making takes them into new territory, albeit one where Romer applies his multi-media theatre skills, adapting Anthony McGowan’s novel and working in theatre-style rehearsals with a cast that combines the familiar likes of Reece Dinsdale, Andrew Dunn and Andrina Carroll with burgeoning teenage talent.

Monkman, for his part, wants to take films back to a time when they were closer to theatre, while using the latest technology to involve the viewer more, giving them more to see or more imagery from which to choose where they will focus.

Green screen involves the actors effectively working to a blank canvas, in this case at a converted pig farm in Bubwith, after which Monkman and his creative team add all the imagery, be it the weather conditions, the lorry that Dinsdale drives or the writing on imaginary walls that convey the state of mind of Yorkshire comprehensive new pupil Paul Varderman (Jack McMullen, from Waterloo Road).

It is not giving anything away to say that teenage narrator Paul is the victim of the aforementioned fatal knife wound, because he tells his story in flashback, and the narrative is very much in the Pilot style in a story that doesn’t preach about knife crime but makes the point anyway.

Even Monkman has acknowledged that the narrative sometimes veers close to soap opera, but it certainly has impact. The commercial dilemma, however, rests with who will watch this £3 million ground-breaking film. A class of Hackney schoolchildren said they wished it had looked more real, one reaction that suggests a teenage audience will buy into the story but maybe not its high-tech presentation.

By contrast, cinema buffs wanting the 20th century’s great art form to move into the 21st century will find more in the filming technique than the Grange Hill meets Quadrophenia story, which is unlikely to appeal to them if Memento is their benchmark.

Green screen fills the screen with rich imagery , perhaps too much, so unless you wait for the DVD release when you can freeze-frame, but the performances do still burst through the screen, and the design looks fantastic, all greys and whites and blacks and occasional colour in the manner of the red coat in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

More than a mere novelty, The Knife That Killed Me has the air of an experiment but one well worth exploring further.