An Interview with Award Winning London Filmmaker PRANO BAILEY-BOND

Having just walked away with the award for Best Music Short at London Short Film Festival 2012 for her latest music video House, Graham Bywater has a chat with London-based, Welsh-born independent filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond and attempts to find out exactly what inspires her to produce such consistently exciting and off the wall material and where she sees her enchanting vision taking her next.

: Prano in character for Poltergeist

Prano, how does it feel to have won six awards for your work and what have you felt about the competition you have been up against?

Having your work recognised and celebrated is really rewarding. As an independent filmmaker, the majority of my time is spent delving around inside my mind’s imagination coming up with ideas – and you don’t always know how they’re going to turn out or whether people will like them – you just dive in… Take House for example – that came about when I found a derelict house round the back of where I was living; I kind of fell in love with the grotty, shabby place and was desperate to shoot something there before it got renovated. After hearing Cool Fun’s track the concept came together like a tornado of inspiration and I roped a few talented, unsuspecting friends together (artists, performers, dancers, organised ones and ones who could cook).We made House happen on a pretty much non-existent budget.

When you’re working with almost literally no money its hard to know if things will go your way – it’s a beg, borrow, steal situation – but everything came together like a dream and now it’s out winning awards; I’d never have guessed that when I first stepped into that musty, cobweb-ridden building. Awards are the cherry on the cake when you’ve made a film that you’re really pleased with and that the audience enjoy. I’m not really sure what to say about the competition – I prefer not to think competitively as it can be quite destructive to my creativity. I’ve loved a lot of the work that my films have been in competition with – when you think the competition is good it’s even more of a compliment to win.

With your latest award winner House (above), I was reminded ever so slightly of some of Lucio Fulci’s haunted house films, and cinematographically, also perhaps a bit of David Lynch. Would you say there were any direct influences that you feel inspired you to get your vision together?

I grew up on a ‘healthy’ diet of Lynch – I remember borrowing my sister’s ‘I killed Laura Palmer’ T-shirt when I was in primary school and being questioned quite suspiciously about it by my fellow peers.I think my work is probably influenced by Lynch, but his style is so of its own that I would always steer away from letting myself be too consciously influenced by his films. No one else can be Lynch – he does it best.I’m pleased when people compare me to talented filmmakers whose work I don’t know that well – Fulci would come under that bracket. I would say that I’m more inspired by haunted houses, or locations in general, than by Fulci, but maybe I have that in common with his own dark mind? … Pretty much all my films have been about, or inspired in some way by a house or building! I couldn’t tell you why. The House of Virgins was shot in the house I grew up in (it looked very different then); I wanted the house to really embody the lead character’s repression and issues – she was almost a part of the place. I’m always on the look out for new locations that might spark ideas.

And of your peers, would you say there are other up-and-coming directors and filmmakers that we should be on the look out for?

Going around the film festivals there’s definitely some exciting talent out there – one film I love (which is actually shot by my Director of Photography Annika Summerson) is Until The River Runs Red by Paul Wright. Others that have stuck in my head are Sis by Deborah Haywood and Paris/Sexy by Ruth Paxton. These films have all won awards and I’d love to see these filmmakers do really well. The thing I can say for all these filmmakers is that they have their own unique voice, which is so important when you’re starting out – that people can identify your style.

So, tell us a bit about how you got started and about your earliest work. It seems horror films are quite a big inspiration to you. Has this always been the case and if so can you tell us what your personal favourite viewing was growing up?

I used to draw and paint a lot, pretty odd stuff, and I always wanted to bring my drawings to life. After I left school at 16 I studied performing arts. More and more I started using video within the theatre productions we did. I even used a dance choreography assignment to learn to edit by splicing together parts of my favourite films and getting the dancers to copy the movements – it was an excuse to learn to edit and avoid dance. The choreography was pretty weird. My final performance was called Kill Her If You Can, Lover Boy and was based on The Evil Dead and The Company of Wolves. That was pretty weird too. I love theatre, but being a bit of a control freak found film much more suited to me. My first sort of proper film, still whilst on the performing arts course, was called Sinister Shadows and was a film noir about two men in an eternal battle to kill one another over a long lost grudge, that was inspired by a passage from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

: Still from Short Lease

My film taste has always been pretty dark… I used to watch the same films over and over again when I was little: The Lost Boys especially, anything by The Marx Brothers or Lynch, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks, Braindead and Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson, The Fly by David Cronenberg. I also remember seriously loving Flatliners! The boy who haunts Kiefer Sutherland’s character in that film was part inspiration for the red hoodie character in Poltergeist …There’s also an unashamed homage to The Shining in Poltergeist – I used to watch The Shining about once a week – I have deep love for that film. I was a huge, massive, ginormous Red Dwarf fan when I was younger– I would literally watch those episodes over and over and over again, series 3 to 5 being my favourites, and I also loved The Young Ones. I was probably as much into comedy as horror to be honest, but a combination of the two is always great! Tod Browning is another director who I adore – in particular of his films I especially love Freaks andThe Unknown.

And what have you seen recently that you could say has inspired your ideas?

An older film I saw recently which is going on my favourite film list is Dead of Night (1945) – I saw it this week and totally love it! I also saw Melancholia a month or so ago and thought it was immense. I was waiting to be disappointed by Lars Von Trier after loving Antichrist so much, but he came up trumps again. I saw A Matter of Life and Death (1946) for the first time last year and would seriously recommend that to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s hard to say if I’m directly influenced by these films, I definitely clock reasons why they’re so great, or techniques they’ve used that my be applicable to my own work, but in terms of where my ideas come from in their purest form that can be anything; a dream, a song, a house, a newspaper article, stories or experiences, or, as with Steak Love, a steak!

You have also been working very hard on your documentary work over the last twelve months and have spent some time abroad filming for charity. Did you find this broadened the scale of your ideas for filmmaking and how did you find this experience?

It was an incredible experience; I learned such a lot, both personally and posing as a documentary filmmaker.The charity I was working with is called Hope and Compassion– they do amazing work to improve the lives of disabled children in developing countries. I lived in an orphanage in Amritsar, Punjab for nearly a month; many disabled children in India are abandoned because parents don’t know how to look after them, or some think it’s a curse that their child has been born differently or simply can’t afford to feed a mouth that wont eventually earn its own keep. It was really hard work, but I’m so glad I did it! I think we should all do things in our lives to help others, whether abroad or at home, and it’s great that filmmaking has allowed me to do this and to widen my life experience. It’s hard to say if it’s affected my ideas creatively yet; it definitely affected me personally and also made me think about why I’m fascinated by dark, mysterious stories…

I’ve been working in the capacity of editor over the past 6 months or so on some exciting documentaries with Soul Rebel Films. Working as an editor on documentaries is great because you often have a real say in developing the narrative; it can be really creative.A few years ago I also worked in reality TV in Nigeria, living there for nearly a year. That was amazing! I’d love to make a fiction film in Nigeria – I have an idea brewing. It’s such a colourful, crazy place paralleling ancient mystical worlds with super modern worlds – it can be a dangerous place too, but my experience of the country and people was completely positive. I’d love to go back. Travel certainly feeds my interest in other people, cultures, beliefs, spirituality… Many people think that their own culture and belief is correct; I love looking at things from other points of view.

: Prano

How much input do you yourself have when you are working? It would appear that in your video Poltergeist you not only directed and edited but also played every character in the video! And that’s quite a few costume changes! Do you have a team of colleagues as such without whom….?

Poltergeist was so much fun to make, despite being incredibly bruised and battered by the end of the shoot! I peeled a mask off in shot, for effect, but it should have been removed using chemicals due to the glue it was stuck on with, so I ended up pulling out bits of my hair and eyebrows. We’re meant to suffer for our art though innit! … I like working with small crews and the aim on Poltergeist was to have minimal people involved in order for us to get really carried away and not worry about sticking to schedules and all the boring, normally necessary stuff – it was organised and planned but within that framework there was lots of room for creativity. Poltergeist was unique in that respect; normally I would work with larger crews (there were only two of us on set, whilst make up and body double got involved when necessary). Filmmaking is predominantly a collaborative art form and whilst I might come up with the idea, the people I work with always bring their own expertise and creativity to it.

I’ve been lucky to find great collaborators who I really trust and love to work with; it’s invaluable to work with people who ‘get’ you and your ideas and are willing to go that extra mile to make things go just right. My right hand woman is my DOP Annika Summerson – she’s super talented and I couldn’t do what she does. I collaborated with writer and filmmaker Jennifer Eiss on Short Lease, which was really cool – we have a lot in common in terms of taste, but we’re also quite different so there was a real marrying of ideas there, which I think worked really well.I enjoy collecting talented people up, most of my regular crew are within the creative/visual departments; art, costume, make up, choreography, but I’d love to find a great producer for fiction work too – I don’t have one of them yet.

How much does the music play a part in your films? It would seem to be quite integral to your recent work but do you have a general idea how you plan to score them in advance?

Music and sound should be integral to any filmmaker. Sound can dominate image and it’s such a powerful tool to have on your side. When it comes to music videos the image is born from the song – I always work fresh with a new track, although I do have ideas for which I’m waiting for the right track to come along. I’m keen to make videos for all kinds of music genres – I’ve got a great idea for a rock video when the right band and track reveal themselves. With fiction I work the other way around – the sound and music is designed to serve the narrative and atmosphere of the film. How I score my future projects will always depend on that film’s requirements– I like to keep an open mind and adapt working methods to suit the project at hand.

: More character action from Prano in Poltergeist

What is next for you then? Do you have any plans for a feature length film? I’m sure I’m not the only person who would love to see that happen!

Thanks! You’re not the only person – I would like that too, and so would my Mum! I’m currently working with a writer to develop my first feature, which is obviously top secret. I’d love to say more but my lips are sealed. I also have a couple of ideas for short films, which I’m aiming to make in the meantime. Right now I’m in pre-productionon for a really cool music video project for which my production designer, Damien Creagh, is building a cardboard forest consisting of 152 trees! He’s a hero! We’re shooting that next week at CINECO in Brentford and I can’t wait to see it all come together.

Are there any particular film festivals you enjoy more than others and is there one in particular you would like to see your first feature film played at?

This week has been the London Short Film Festival, which is one of the best short film festivals; the programming and organising is excellent. One that sticks out in my memory from last year is the European Independent Film Festival in Paris – not only is it in a beautiful city but it really is a filmmaker’s festival and so much fun! Obviously being a horror filmmaker/fan, Frightfest is top of the list, and another (smaller) excellent horror festival is Sheffield’s Celluloid Screams, which wins for the best name too! I also love Camerimage in Poland, which is a cinematography-focused festival. I think most filmmakers are aiming for the same ones ultimately – Cannes, Berlin, Venice… the ones that have been around the longest, have the best reputations and screen amazing films!