October 21, 2025 • 22 mins
Mike White dives into the making of Vindication Swim with writer-director Elliott Hasler, whose ambitious period drama brings to life the extraordinary true story of swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Set in the 1920s, the film follows Gleitze’s struggle for recognition and the grueling endurance required to overcome both physical and societal barriers. Hasler discusses the challenges of recreating open-water sequences, capturing the era’s atmosphere, and honoring a pioneer whose determination made history.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hold you.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
He is bot It should die. People say good money
to see this movie.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
They want cold sodas from a hot popcorn and no
monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring done at all.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
We are not turning back to never make it. That's
not try.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Ever since I was a girl, I've had a longing
for the water.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
To swim for me is like nothing else in the world.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
My name is Mercedes Glis. I'm a swimmer and I'm
told you might train me.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Colde, extreme fatigue.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's best the strongest of men.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, thank god, I'm a woman.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I understand the water's movements. It's rhythm, and sometimes I
fancy it understands me too. What if I didn't make it,
I'll wager you can arrive at a thousand reasons why
you won't.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
All you have to do is hang on to the.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
One says you can write.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
We'll go down in history as the first British woman
to ever swing the English Channel.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
With his ed of gay.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Splashed onto the sand following the shock completion of an
English Channel swiping.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Horrible guests, please put there together and drinklesome.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I am sure that woman's not to be trusted in
this country. Ms Glydes, An unmarried woman at your age
raised a suspicion.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Isn't it best you step aside now and avoid further humiliation?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
ID swim I know you did, but they'll never believe you.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Show them what you know to be true, that you
can swing the English chapel Camarker, Are you sure that
you want to carry on with There's no shame in
(02:47):
a quitting.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
No, I'm not quitting.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You've got to make it, You've got to it away.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
with Elliott Hassler all about his new film Vindication. Swim
And is the story of a woman who crosses the
English Channel way back in post World War One Britain.
The film stars Kristen Callahan and John Locke. It will
(03:29):
be hitting the US pretty durn soon. Definitely seek that
one out And I hope you enjoy this interview. Can
you kind of tell me how you got involved with
movie making.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
I've always loved to AVOYE had a passionate film ever
since I was really young. And then when I was
ten years old, the school I was at at the time,
instead of doing lessons for a week, they made a film.
It was an optation of the line of the Wish
and the Wardrobe, and that was wife has experience of
making a film, obviously at a very amateur level, as
it just kids in a classroom kind of fooling around,
(03:59):
but that, yeah, I learned on a very crude scale
of how films were made and how they were constructed,
from the script and the production of it to the
editing and the posts and all that. So I fell
in love with it from that moment really, and then
from then on, from the age of ten, I'd just
been making little short films and with friends and family,
and that kind of got bigger and better and.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The quality just improved.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
And then when I was fourteen, I decided to make
a feature about my great grandfather his experiences in the
Second World War.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So he was a prisoner of war in Italy. He
escaped and he made this incredible.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Two hundred kilometer journey across the country, basically evading the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And living with the resistance and things.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
So I turned that into a film over the course
of three years and between the ages of fourteen and sixteen,
and that for me was my film school. I'd never
studied film and never been to film school, so I
really learned a lot doing that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And it was a very amateur project.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
I was just friends and family on the weekends we
were putting it together and stuff. It did incredibly well
for what it was. I then got picked up for
a UK and a US release. Last year we signed
to deal with Paramount for it for France, UK and Italy.
So yeah, it's come out all around the world now
and it's it's done incredibly well for what it was.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So that was then what led me onto the Vindication Swim.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
That sounds so ambitious. I mean, how did you even decide, Okay,
I'm going to do this and then just tackle that
as a project. I mean three years to make this
and from what I understand, you also starred in it.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I did.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yeah, you notice I'm not in Vindication Swim, but yeah,
I did act in it. It was an ambitious thing,
I think, especially trying to tackle the Second World War
and a subject matter as grand as that. On a
it was about three thousand dollars probably that we spent
on it. Okay, cost next to nothing for a film.
(05:46):
It was very ambitious at the time, but I think
that was what was so interesting about it. It was
quite a quite a grand story, but it was also
a very family sort of oriented story. I'd grown up
hearing these stories with my great grandfather and that was
what inspired me to make it. So there was a
real kind of family connection with it as well, which
I think made it slightly smaller. But then obviously the
story is grand. So yeah, it was a really fun
(06:07):
one to spend three years working on.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And how much help did you have with that? Was
that like friends and family or did you actually employ people?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Oh no, we didn't know. It was literally just friends
and family. They just came and helped out. We we
rented a few military uniforms and then that kind of thing.
But yeah, no, there was no sort of industry backing
on it. It was very very grassroots.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So how did you get the idea for vindication Swim?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
But that one?
Speaker 5 (06:32):
I was looking for another film to do after World
War through the Long Road Home, and I kind of
stumbled across this story of Mercedes glides, and then I
learned that we were from the same hometown. She was
born in Brighton on the south coast of England, which
is where I'm from, and I'd never heard of her.
I don't know who she was. I'd never heard of
her Channel Swims or anything like that. And the more
I read about how I thought, this is shocking that
(06:53):
I don't know who this woman is, because she's incredible.
But what she did back then in the nineteen twenties
as a woman, to go out there and achieve all
of that with the whole of society against you, and
then to go battle mother nature itself in order to
achieve her dreams, I thought there was something very powerful
in that, and the shocked I didn't know her really,
So the project was born out of that, this sort
(07:14):
of idea of celebrating s extraordin women from my hometown
and bringing her story back into.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The world and putting it out there.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
The German element particularly was in Britain at the time,
because obviously it's a few years after the First World War,
so there was a lot of anti German kind of sentiment.
So yeah, she had to face a lot of racism
in that sense for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, tell me about your actress. I mean she is amazing.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yes, she was incredible. Kirsten did a fantastic job and
this is sort of her debut screen performance. She really
went the extra mile. We trained her up for three
four months and over water swim training, intensive swimming training
really before the production because she was adamant that she
was going to do it all herself. She didn't want
anybody doubles, She didn't want anyone else to step into
missaid issue. She wanted to immerse herself in the water
(07:59):
to really embody the character. So yeah, over the course
of it took three years to do this one as well.
It seems to be like a repairring theme there with
my movies. So over the course of three years splashing
around in the English Channel, person did everything up to
four hours at a time in the water. It was
really a feat of endurance for her bringing Mercedes to
the screen as well.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Also doing a period piece is a huge endeavor too.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
The period element paled in comparison to the challenges we
faced dooting Our Sea, but it was nonetheless it is
difficult bringing the nineteen twenties to life on a very
tight budget. This wasn't a Hollywood film. We didn't have
much money at all to throw at it. So what
we did we relied on community support really for it.
So things like the vintage cars in the film. What
(08:43):
we do as we ring up car clubs and say
we're making this film.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
We haven't really got money to pay you.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
But we can pay your gas, we can get drides,
you lunch and all that, And I say, nine times
out of ten they came back and say, don't worry
about the gas, don't worry about the lunch. We just
want to bring our cars along and want to be
part of a film and experience that.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And we just want to sell to break this story.
So that was how we did it.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Really, it was just relying on the very generous and
good will of the community.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, how was it even putting this project together? I
mean it's just again super ambitious.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This was very ambitious.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
I'm a big fan of Jaws, and Spielberg an interview
said that he would never recommend anyone go film out
on the water and paraphrase with it there, but that
was essentially the gist of it. So that for me,
I thought it would be cool to go out there
and do the opposite of what he said and try
and film out out at sea, and I can see
in hindsight why he said it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Because it's very difficult. But it came out of that.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
It was this sort of challenge that I wanted to
pursue of shooting a movie out on the English Channel.
I've always grown up right by the sea, so the
English Channel was integral to my life, so it was
nice to have that environment to work in. But yeah,
that presented its own sort of levels of challenges that
we just never foresaw it. Sometimes we go out there,
we'd get maybe one or two shots in the can
(09:59):
have to abandon the shoot because the wind would change
or the type would change and it just wouldn't be
safe to carry on.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The very first day that we.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Went out, everyone really bad sea sickness.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
We'd probably a little too rough to have actually gone out.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
And then John Locke, who played Somecedes coach in the film,
he'd be vomiting over one side of the boat, then
he turned to the other side of the boat, deliver
his lines, and then go back to the other side
to vomit again. I think that epitomized what we were
up against we were out there, but also just how
dedicated everyone was to bringing it to the screen.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well, I can't even imagine the challenges when it came
to know the conditions of the skies and making sure
that everything matched when it came to them. I'm sure,
I'm sure the color grading must have been very difficult.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
Yeah, it was quite challenging. We really paid painstaking attention
to detail to that while we were making it. It
was important that it didn't look like different days during
the same scene because some scenes in the film, we'd
shot parts of it on year one, picked it up
in year two, couldn't get it all because something happened
like the winds change, just whatever, and then had to
(11:01):
finish it off in year free. They're three years apart
some scenes, like the shots of being the actors and stuff.
So yeah, doing that and making sure the clouds look
the same in the background.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And everything that was very challenging.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I think there was only one shot where we actually
had news visual effects to remove the clouds.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Everything else we pretty much managed to nail.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
And then, like you say, with the advancement of color grading,
it was fine tuning and tweaking with that. But we
had a great team for the post production. We worked
with Warner Brothers, Delaine Lee in London. Soo, so ASA
should did our color He did the Crown, he did
Mission Impossible. He's worked on some great, great stuff so's
he's a fantastic colorists and he really he knew what
(11:40):
he was doing and then did a fantastic job on
this film. What did you actually shoot on It was
a tiny little DSLR. It was nothing particularly great. Really,
we just needed something that was small and lightweight and
that we could fit in the waterproof housing.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It's take it out as sea.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, I mean, at least with Spielberg, I want to
say a lot of that was shot in a tank
rather than the actual you know, ocean. So that must
have just been crazy to have the waves and nothing
under your control, just at the mercy of nature completely.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, we really were.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
I mean, it gave us incredible respect for the sea
and for the Engish Channel.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But yeah, we had to take safety very seriously as well.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
We'd always bring a number of lifeguards out of us
and the Coast Guard new and it was a big
logistical kind of nightmare really just to arrange one shoe
and we were out there for three years.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So this went on for a long time.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
The scheduling must have been a nightmare too. Just to
make sure that your people had free time, that they
were able to come out and be part of that shoot.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
We rotated the crew that we were using on it
just for that reason. It was hard to get everyone together,
so we had a range of different safety people and
stuff who we could pull in at different times. But
obviously the actors they've got to be the same. So
what was fortunate in that case was COVID had hit
in the middle of the shoe, so no one was
doing anything, so all the actors weren't booked on other
(13:03):
roles or anything like that. They were all still around
so we were able to grab them. But I think
if we were doing it now we would really struggle
to have everybody in that location over the course of
pre summers.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
What kind of safety precautions did you have to do
just because of COVID.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Filming out and sea was quite helpful because we didn't
have anyone bothering us for as turing we were complying.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
We complied as much as we needed to.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
But obviously being out there was made a lot easier
than filming on land.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But it was quite good. In the UK, COVID is
one of the film.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Injury was one of the things that COVID didn't really
impact that badly. They still allowed us to go out
to film provide we had the right paperwork and things,
which we did. Yeah, it didn't really impact it in
a particularly negative way, I don't think, aside from it
pushed the production back by say about a year. Aside
from that, I think it helped the production. May people
were more generous and I think more willing to help
(13:54):
out because they wanted to get back out do something
isn'tink creative, of do something fun after being locked away
for so long.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Sorry, I keep going back to Spielberg, but also thinking
of you know, just how young you are and how
young he was when he was starting out, and just
the disrespect that he got from so many people. Did
you run across that at all?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I think a lot of people didn't think the film
was going to do particularly well or even get finished
because of the challenge that were be taken on for ourselves.
There was a lot of doubters on it, for sure.
I don't really pay that much attention to it really
because I knew in my head what we were doing,
and I had a vision of what the film was
going to be and how.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We were going to do it.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
I just went ahead and just nose down and carried
on with what I was doing. And I think for me,
I think that's the best way of dealing with situations
like that, is to just be confident in your own
ability and confident in yourself and just go on from there.
But the film, it really did incredibly well, and it
shut everyone up after it came out, and it had
(14:55):
a great release here in the UK. Release this pretty
indie film for a long time was way beyond what
we'd anticipated. We thought we would get maybe one or
two weeks in theaters, and we ended up having this
sort of huge eighteen week run across three hundred theaters
in the UK, which was totally unexpected but incredible to see.
And then off the back of that, now we're coming
out to the US to bring the come to audiences
(15:16):
out there.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I really liked your time structure that you had in
the script, and I was curious, did you always intend
to tell it in that kind of fractured timeway.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That kind of came about in the edit.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Actually it was always slightly fractured, but I think we
then changed around a little bit more because there was
a subplot in the film that we it wasn't serving
any purpose, so we cut it out and then used
that sequence as part of a flashback and it works
a lot better.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, that was gone out of the edit and trimming
it down.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We shot so much footage for this film that I
think the first cut came in at about three and
a half hours, which for an income was just far
too long, so we trim it back to a cool
ninety minutes to see. Obviously, whenever we stuff had to
go and we had a little bit of reorganization to do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Are you going to release, say, deluxe Blu ray with
all that edited footage?
Speaker 5 (16:04):
I think the version we've got is nice because it's
a nice type film. I think it tells the story
and the way it ought to be cold. I think
I think you go down a rabbit hole with that.
I we like Francis four Coppler still tinkering away with
it while I'm in my eighties.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Have you only directed stuff that you've written or have
you directed things that other people have written as well?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So far, it's only been my own what I've written myself.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
I'd be open to it if the right script came along,
but it's just worked out so far that I've only
directed in my own words.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
What are you planning on next?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
As I've got a couple of films on the go.
One's a sort of a true crime thriller set on
the south coast of England the nineteen thirty so it's
a much darker turn than Vindication Swim, but I think
it's always nice to do a bit of a segue
and go on and do something that's a lot different.
And then there's a First World War survival thriller sort
of film as well.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So yeah, great scripts were both of those.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
One I've co written and then one I've written myself,
and we're just pitching them out at the moment, trying
to raise the funds.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
More challenges with period pieces, it sounds.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Like, yeah, I tend to be drawn to those. I
think there's a lot to be found in kind of
these old stories that it's something quite nice about unearthing
them and then bringing them to the screen for myself
as the director. When you walk onto set, particularly Invinication
Swimen is very much like this. When we did the
street scenes and stuff, you walk onto set and it
feels as though you've stepped back in time, as all
these people in old clothes, there's all these old cars
(17:25):
and stuff, and it's a really cool experience. So then
for me, my job is to make that translate for
the audience so they can feel what I'm feeling, as
if I've really immersed myself in this world. And I
think there is something very interesting about doing that on
a period film.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, the costumes and Vindication swim are amazing and everything
looks so good.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, those are all original.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
We managed to source pretty much, you know, an entire
wardrobe of original nineteen twenties pieces. We sort of went
all over the place looking for them, like thrift stores, eBay.
We went everywhere trying to find these old pieces of clothing.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's amazing. I thought for sure you had just a
genius customer.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
No, I don't think we created any new costume for
the film. Even the swimsuit that Mercedes Lights wears in
the film, that was an original nineteen twenties woolen bathing
suit that we had to stitch up in between shoots
because it would start pulling apart in the sea or
where we were using it.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, I like woolen bathing suit that must have been
so heavy when she got out of the water.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
It's tiny when you first put it on because it
shrinks up, and then once you go in the water
it becomes this baggy sort of mess.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That we have had this routine where everyone on the boat.
We would turn.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Around to allow persons to come out, and they quickly
put a towel on, and then we would turn back
around again because these things they just become so baggy
once they get wet.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
With your earlier film it was more not professional, but
with this you have professional actors. How was that experience
of directing professionals.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Obviously there's a huge difference in terms of the quality
of the acting. Obviously, working with pros, they know what
they're doing, and the poor says they are always going
to be a lot sharper. It's nice in a way
because I think it makes my job easier. I don't
have to direct quite as intensely as I would with
an actor who, well, someone who's not a professional actor
(19:12):
you're trying to coax the performance out of and whereas
with this you can do a few rehearsals, then you
can sit back and then the character finds itself within them,
which which I think is a nice experience.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So it was.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah, it was definitely a good fun thing to look
at the kind of the comparison of working with the
amateur actors in the first film and then moving on
to pros in this one. But yeah, it's a different
ball game, really, and it's nice to work with people
who are really on the ball with it.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Is there a good place online for people to keep
up with you and your work?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, they just they can follow me.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
It's just my name at Elliott has there on Instagram
or through the film at Vindication Swim Film also on Instagram,
and then you have my website and things like that
as well.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Well.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Elliott, thank you so much. This is great talking with you, sir.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh no worries. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Swaying Sleep weekend.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
I found some real cool fum and the.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Cans from the patio juice bee. Well that's where still
the bee. So the sway hashmash did the sway crashcash,
(20:39):
I'm waiting back down at swam suit Rid used to
sway hashash in this way.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Make your calm and take your feet to a dark
coat to the squitty feet wave your hands where does that?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And next sharp by some on the stand. I would
make the spe a loved among mariage, as to the
(22:13):
back of a.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
M of age, speak
Speaker 6 (22:27):
Of
Hold you.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
He is bot It should die. People say good money
to see this movie.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
They want cold sodas from a hot popcorn and no
monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring done at all.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
We are not turning back to never make it. That's
not try.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Ever since I was a girl, I've had a longing
for the water.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
To swim for me is like nothing else in the world.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
My name is Mercedes Glis. I'm a swimmer and I'm
told you might train me.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Colde, extreme fatigue.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's best the strongest of men.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, thank god, I'm a woman.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I understand the water's movements. It's rhythm, and sometimes I
fancy it understands me too. What if I didn't make it,
I'll wager you can arrive at a thousand reasons why
you won't.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
All you have to do is hang on to the.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
One says you can write.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
We'll go down in history as the first British woman
to ever swing the English Channel.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
With his ed of gay.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Splashed onto the sand following the shock completion of an
English Channel swiping.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Horrible guests, please put there together and drinklesome.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I am sure that woman's not to be trusted in
this country. Ms Glydes, An unmarried woman at your age
raised a suspicion.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Isn't it best you step aside now and avoid further humiliation?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
ID swim I know you did, but they'll never believe you.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Show them what you know to be true, that you
can swing the English chapel Camarker, Are you sure that
you want to carry on with There's no shame in
(02:47):
a quitting.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
No, I'm not quitting.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
You've got to make it, You've got to it away.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
with Elliott Hassler all about his new film Vindication. Swim
And is the story of a woman who crosses the
English Channel way back in post World War One Britain.
The film stars Kristen Callahan and John Locke. It will
(03:29):
be hitting the US pretty durn soon. Definitely seek that
one out And I hope you enjoy this interview. Can
you kind of tell me how you got involved with
movie making.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
I've always loved to AVOYE had a passionate film ever
since I was really young. And then when I was
ten years old, the school I was at at the time,
instead of doing lessons for a week, they made a film.
It was an optation of the line of the Wish
and the Wardrobe, and that was wife has experience of
making a film, obviously at a very amateur level, as
it just kids in a classroom kind of fooling around,
(03:59):
but that, yeah, I learned on a very crude scale
of how films were made and how they were constructed,
from the script and the production of it to the
editing and the posts and all that. So I fell
in love with it from that moment really, and then
from then on, from the age of ten, I'd just
been making little short films and with friends and family,
and that kind of got bigger and better and.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The quality just improved.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
And then when I was fourteen, I decided to make
a feature about my great grandfather his experiences in the
Second World War.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So he was a prisoner of war in Italy. He
escaped and he made this incredible.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
Two hundred kilometer journey across the country, basically evading the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And living with the resistance and things.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
So I turned that into a film over the course
of three years and between the ages of fourteen and sixteen,
and that for me was my film school. I'd never
studied film and never been to film school, so I
really learned a lot doing that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
And it was a very amateur project.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
I was just friends and family on the weekends we
were putting it together and stuff. It did incredibly well
for what it was. I then got picked up for
a UK and a US release. Last year we signed
to deal with Paramount for it for France, UK and Italy.
So yeah, it's come out all around the world now
and it's it's done incredibly well for what it was.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So that was then what led me onto the Vindication Swim.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
That sounds so ambitious. I mean, how did you even decide, Okay,
I'm going to do this and then just tackle that
as a project. I mean three years to make this
and from what I understand, you also starred in it.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I did.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yeah, you notice I'm not in Vindication Swim, but yeah,
I did act in it. It was an ambitious thing,
I think, especially trying to tackle the Second World War
and a subject matter as grand as that. On a
it was about three thousand dollars probably that we spent
on it. Okay, cost next to nothing for a film.
(05:46):
It was very ambitious at the time, but I think
that was what was so interesting about it. It was
quite a quite a grand story, but it was also
a very family sort of oriented story. I'd grown up
hearing these stories with my great grandfather and that was
what inspired me to make it. So there was a
real kind of family connection with it as well, which
I think made it slightly smaller. But then obviously the
story is grand. So yeah, it was a really fun
(06:07):
one to spend three years working on.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And how much help did you have with that? Was
that like friends and family or did you actually employ people?
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Oh no, we didn't know. It was literally just friends
and family. They just came and helped out. We we
rented a few military uniforms and then that kind of thing.
But yeah, no, there was no sort of industry backing
on it. It was very very grassroots.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
So how did you get the idea for vindication Swim?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
But that one?
Speaker 5 (06:32):
I was looking for another film to do after World
War through the Long Road Home, and I kind of
stumbled across this story of Mercedes glides, and then I
learned that we were from the same hometown. She was
born in Brighton on the south coast of England, which
is where I'm from, and I'd never heard of her.
I don't know who she was. I'd never heard of
her Channel Swims or anything like that. And the more
I read about how I thought, this is shocking that
(06:53):
I don't know who this woman is, because she's incredible.
But what she did back then in the nineteen twenties
as a woman, to go out there and achieve all
of that with the whole of society against you, and
then to go battle mother nature itself in order to
achieve her dreams, I thought there was something very powerful
in that, and the shocked I didn't know her really,
So the project was born out of that, this sort
(07:14):
of idea of celebrating s extraordin women from my hometown
and bringing her story back into.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The world and putting it out there.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
The German element particularly was in Britain at the time,
because obviously it's a few years after the First World War,
so there was a lot of anti German kind of sentiment.
So yeah, she had to face a lot of racism
in that sense for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, tell me about your actress. I mean she is amazing.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Yes, she was incredible. Kirsten did a fantastic job and
this is sort of her debut screen performance. She really
went the extra mile. We trained her up for three
four months and over water swim training, intensive swimming training
really before the production because she was adamant that she
was going to do it all herself. She didn't want
anybody doubles, She didn't want anyone else to step into
missaid issue. She wanted to immerse herself in the water
(07:59):
to really embody the character. So yeah, over the course
of it took three years to do this one as well.
It seems to be like a repairring theme there with
my movies. So over the course of three years splashing
around in the English Channel, person did everything up to
four hours at a time in the water. It was
really a feat of endurance for her bringing Mercedes to
the screen as well.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Also doing a period piece is a huge endeavor too.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
The period element paled in comparison to the challenges we
faced dooting Our Sea, but it was nonetheless it is
difficult bringing the nineteen twenties to life on a very
tight budget. This wasn't a Hollywood film. We didn't have
much money at all to throw at it. So what
we did we relied on community support really for it.
So things like the vintage cars in the film. What
(08:43):
we do as we ring up car clubs and say
we're making this film.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
We haven't really got money to pay you.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
But we can pay your gas, we can get drides,
you lunch and all that, And I say, nine times
out of ten they came back and say, don't worry
about the gas, don't worry about the lunch. We just
want to bring our cars along and want to be
part of a film and experience that.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
And we just want to sell to break this story.
So that was how we did it.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Really, it was just relying on the very generous and
good will of the community.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, how was it even putting this project together? I
mean it's just again super ambitious.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
This was very ambitious.
Speaker 5 (09:17):
I'm a big fan of Jaws, and Spielberg an interview
said that he would never recommend anyone go film out
on the water and paraphrase with it there, but that
was essentially the gist of it. So that for me,
I thought it would be cool to go out there
and do the opposite of what he said and try
and film out out at sea, and I can see
in hindsight why he said it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Because it's very difficult. But it came out of that.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
It was this sort of challenge that I wanted to
pursue of shooting a movie out on the English Channel.
I've always grown up right by the sea, so the
English Channel was integral to my life, so it was
nice to have that environment to work in. But yeah,
that presented its own sort of levels of challenges that
we just never foresaw it. Sometimes we go out there,
we'd get maybe one or two shots in the can
(09:59):
have to abandon the shoot because the wind would change
or the type would change and it just wouldn't be
safe to carry on.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
The very first day that we.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
Went out, everyone really bad sea sickness.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
We'd probably a little too rough to have actually gone out.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
And then John Locke, who played Somecedes coach in the film,
he'd be vomiting over one side of the boat, then
he turned to the other side of the boat, deliver
his lines, and then go back to the other side
to vomit again. I think that epitomized what we were
up against we were out there, but also just how
dedicated everyone was to bringing it to the screen.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Well, I can't even imagine the challenges when it came
to know the conditions of the skies and making sure
that everything matched when it came to them. I'm sure,
I'm sure the color grading must have been very difficult.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
Yeah, it was quite challenging. We really paid painstaking attention
to detail to that while we were making it. It
was important that it didn't look like different days during
the same scene because some scenes in the film, we'd
shot parts of it on year one, picked it up
in year two, couldn't get it all because something happened
like the winds change, just whatever, and then had to
(11:01):
finish it off in year free. They're three years apart
some scenes, like the shots of being the actors and stuff.
So yeah, doing that and making sure the clouds look
the same in the background.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
And everything that was very challenging.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I think there was only one shot where we actually
had news visual effects to remove the clouds.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Everything else we pretty much managed to nail.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
And then, like you say, with the advancement of color grading,
it was fine tuning and tweaking with that. But we
had a great team for the post production. We worked
with Warner Brothers, Delaine Lee in London. Soo, so ASA
should did our color He did the Crown, he did
Mission Impossible. He's worked on some great, great stuff so's
he's a fantastic colorists and he really he knew what
(11:40):
he was doing and then did a fantastic job on
this film. What did you actually shoot on It was
a tiny little DSLR. It was nothing particularly great. Really,
we just needed something that was small and lightweight and
that we could fit in the waterproof housing.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
It's take it out as sea.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah, I mean, at least with Spielberg, I want to
say a lot of that was shot in a tank
rather than the actual you know, ocean. So that must
have just been crazy to have the waves and nothing
under your control, just at the mercy of nature completely.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, we really were.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
I mean, it gave us incredible respect for the sea
and for the Engish Channel.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But yeah, we had to take safety very seriously as well.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
We'd always bring a number of lifeguards out of us
and the Coast Guard new and it was a big
logistical kind of nightmare really just to arrange one shoe
and we were out there for three years.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
So this went on for a long time.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
The scheduling must have been a nightmare too. Just to
make sure that your people had free time, that they
were able to come out and be part of that shoot.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
We rotated the crew that we were using on it
just for that reason. It was hard to get everyone together,
so we had a range of different safety people and
stuff who we could pull in at different times. But
obviously the actors they've got to be the same. So
what was fortunate in that case was COVID had hit
in the middle of the shoe, so no one was
doing anything, so all the actors weren't booked on other
(13:03):
roles or anything like that. They were all still around
so we were able to grab them. But I think
if we were doing it now we would really struggle
to have everybody in that location over the course of
pre summers.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
What kind of safety precautions did you have to do
just because of COVID.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
Filming out and sea was quite helpful because we didn't
have anyone bothering us for as turing we were complying.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
We complied as much as we needed to.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
But obviously being out there was made a lot easier
than filming on land.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But it was quite good. In the UK, COVID is
one of the film.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Injury was one of the things that COVID didn't really
impact that badly. They still allowed us to go out
to film provide we had the right paperwork and things,
which we did. Yeah, it didn't really impact it in
a particularly negative way, I don't think, aside from it
pushed the production back by say about a year. Aside
from that, I think it helped the production. May people
were more generous and I think more willing to help
(13:54):
out because they wanted to get back out do something
isn'tink creative, of do something fun after being locked away
for so long.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Sorry, I keep going back to Spielberg, but also thinking
of you know, just how young you are and how
young he was when he was starting out, and just
the disrespect that he got from so many people. Did
you run across that at all?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I think a lot of people didn't think the film
was going to do particularly well or even get finished
because of the challenge that were be taken on for ourselves.
There was a lot of doubters on it, for sure.
I don't really pay that much attention to it really
because I knew in my head what we were doing,
and I had a vision of what the film was
going to be and how.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
We were going to do it.
Speaker 5 (14:34):
I just went ahead and just nose down and carried
on with what I was doing. And I think for me,
I think that's the best way of dealing with situations
like that, is to just be confident in your own
ability and confident in yourself and just go on from there.
But the film, it really did incredibly well, and it
shut everyone up after it came out, and it had
(14:55):
a great release here in the UK. Release this pretty
indie film for a long time was way beyond what
we'd anticipated. We thought we would get maybe one or
two weeks in theaters, and we ended up having this
sort of huge eighteen week run across three hundred theaters
in the UK, which was totally unexpected but incredible to see.
And then off the back of that, now we're coming
out to the US to bring the come to audiences
(15:16):
out there.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I really liked your time structure that you had in
the script, and I was curious, did you always intend
to tell it in that kind of fractured timeway.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That kind of came about in the edit.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Actually it was always slightly fractured, but I think we
then changed around a little bit more because there was
a subplot in the film that we it wasn't serving
any purpose, so we cut it out and then used
that sequence as part of a flashback and it works
a lot better.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, that was gone out of the edit and trimming
it down.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We shot so much footage for this film that I
think the first cut came in at about three and
a half hours, which for an income was just far
too long, so we trim it back to a cool
ninety minutes to see. Obviously, whenever we stuff had to
go and we had a little bit of reorganization to do.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Are you going to release, say, deluxe Blu ray with
all that edited footage?
Speaker 5 (16:04):
I think the version we've got is nice because it's
a nice type film. I think it tells the story
and the way it ought to be cold. I think
I think you go down a rabbit hole with that.
I we like Francis four Coppler still tinkering away with
it while I'm in my eighties.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Have you only directed stuff that you've written or have
you directed things that other people have written as well?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
So far, it's only been my own what I've written myself.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
I'd be open to it if the right script came along,
but it's just worked out so far that I've only
directed in my own words.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
What are you planning on next?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
As I've got a couple of films on the go.
One's a sort of a true crime thriller set on
the south coast of England the nineteen thirty so it's
a much darker turn than Vindication Swim, but I think
it's always nice to do a bit of a segue
and go on and do something that's a lot different.
And then there's a First World War survival thriller sort
of film as well.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So yeah, great scripts were both of those.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
One I've co written and then one I've written myself,
and we're just pitching them out at the moment, trying
to raise the funds.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
More challenges with period pieces, it sounds.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Like, yeah, I tend to be drawn to those. I
think there's a lot to be found in kind of
these old stories that it's something quite nice about unearthing
them and then bringing them to the screen for myself
as the director. When you walk onto set, particularly Invinication
Swimen is very much like this. When we did the
street scenes and stuff, you walk onto set and it
feels as though you've stepped back in time, as all
these people in old clothes, there's all these old cars
(17:25):
and stuff, and it's a really cool experience. So then
for me, my job is to make that translate for
the audience so they can feel what I'm feeling, as
if I've really immersed myself in this world. And I
think there is something very interesting about doing that on
a period film.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah, the costumes and Vindication swim are amazing and everything
looks so good.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, those are all original.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
We managed to source pretty much, you know, an entire
wardrobe of original nineteen twenties pieces. We sort of went
all over the place looking for them, like thrift stores, eBay.
We went everywhere trying to find these old pieces of clothing.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's amazing. I thought for sure you had just a
genius customer.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
No, I don't think we created any new costume for
the film. Even the swimsuit that Mercedes Lights wears in
the film, that was an original nineteen twenties woolen bathing
suit that we had to stitch up in between shoots
because it would start pulling apart in the sea or
where we were using it.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, I like woolen bathing suit that must have been
so heavy when she got out of the water.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
It's tiny when you first put it on because it
shrinks up, and then once you go in the water
it becomes this baggy sort of mess.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
That we have had this routine where everyone on the boat.
We would turn.
Speaker 5 (18:35):
Around to allow persons to come out, and they quickly
put a towel on, and then we would turn back
around again because these things they just become so baggy
once they get wet.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
With your earlier film it was more not professional, but
with this you have professional actors. How was that experience
of directing professionals.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Obviously there's a huge difference in terms of the quality
of the acting. Obviously, working with pros, they know what
they're doing, and the poor says they are always going
to be a lot sharper. It's nice in a way
because I think it makes my job easier. I don't
have to direct quite as intensely as I would with
an actor who, well, someone who's not a professional actor
(19:12):
you're trying to coax the performance out of and whereas
with this you can do a few rehearsals, then you
can sit back and then the character finds itself within them,
which which I think is a nice experience.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
So it was.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah, it was definitely a good fun thing to look
at the kind of the comparison of working with the
amateur actors in the first film and then moving on
to pros in this one. But yeah, it's a different
ball game, really, and it's nice to work with people
who are really on the ball with it.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Is there a good place online for people to keep
up with you and your work?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, they just they can follow me.
Speaker 5 (19:44):
It's just my name at Elliott has there on Instagram
or through the film at Vindication Swim Film also on Instagram,
and then you have my website and things like that
as well.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Well.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Elliott, thank you so much. This is great talking with you, sir.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh no worries. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Swaying Sleep weekend.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
I found some real cool fum and the.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Cans from the patio juice bee. Well that's where still
the bee. So the sway hashmash did the sway crashcash,
(20:39):
I'm waiting back down at swam suit Rid used to
sway hashash in this way.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Make your calm and take your feet to a dark
coat to the squitty feet wave your hands where does that?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And next sharp by some on the stand. I would
make the spe a loved among mariage, as to the
(22:13):
back of a.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
M of age, speak
Speaker 6 (22:27):
Of
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