"We tried to enjoy the process of our own work"

"We tried to enjoy the process of our own work"
"We tried to enjoy the process of our own work"
Anonim

Szabolcs Hajdu's latest film Ernellá's Wolves won the Karlovy Vary festival's grand prize, Kristályglóbus, almost out of nowhere (and the director, who also plays the male lead, won the best actor award at the same place). The film was shot in record time, with almost no money, in the apartment of the director-actor couple, Hajdu and his actress wife, Orsolya Török-Illyés, their children also play in it, Hajdu's college students handled the cinematography tasks, and they could not even spend on marketing. The film, which was originally filmed at the Maladype theater's performance dissecting everyday topics (marriage, moving abroad, children), has since then toured quite a few countries and festivals, and will soon be shown in cinemas: it will be shown in Hungary at Cinefest and in apartment screenings for the first time, and then from next week, September Anyone can watch it from the 29th. We talked to the director and his wife-co-creator about the creation process.

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Dívany: How was the performance that served as the basis of the film created? Can you tell me a little about the process?

Szabolcs Hajdu: - I wrote the play more than a year ago, in record time, from the birth of the idea to the finished script, no more than three weeks passed. There were the actors: my childhood friends, with whom we did quite a few films and theater performances together, my wife, who has been in my films for 20 years, and two other actresses who were new. It's like when you go into a kitchen and see what you can cook with. The piece emerged from conversations: we covered various topics that interested all of us, such as raising children, conflicts in relationships, issues of leaving or staying here, existential struggles. We threw up situations, discussed them, I wrote a dialogue in the evening, the next day we tested, tried out the scenes, if it worked, we moved on. We tried to always move on from one situation to the next as organically as possible.

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Dívany: Why did you want to take it to the movies?

Szabolcs Hajdu: - The film is more effective. The theater could accommodate a maximum of fifty people in the auditorium at the same time. We played thirty times in one year, fifteen hundred people. At the Karlovy Vary film festival, there were so many people in the festival palace at a single screening. The foreign festival tour has already started, it is now coming to Hungary, international sales are ongoing, it will be on DVD, at some point obviously also on TV, it will be downloaded, etc. This way you can reach a lot of people who would never be able to make it to the theater performance. That was one consideration, and the other was to keep it in high quality. I was never satisfied with the recordings of theater performances, I don't even understand that genre. Theater is theater and film is film.

Dívány: - How much did you change the text?

Szabolcs Hajdu: - Minimally, one scene was removed, but essentially the same polished text remained after the workshop. The acting of the actors was refined and refined to the tone I favored or idealized, which remained even in the theater performances after the filming. But that required a lot of work.

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Dívány: How long did you shoot?

Orsolya Török-Illyés: A year ago there was a shoot at this time… once we shot for twelve days, and then another three. We were here in the apartment the whole time.

Dívány: What was it like to get used to it? How suddenly your apartment becomes a filming location and a stage?

Orsolya Török-Illyés: Actually, this is often our workplace. Of course, there was a mess, but since the apartment was playing, it had to be kept in order all the time, so it wasn't all chaos at the same time, but it was certainly in one part. And as a private person, I had to be involved in several roles, because I was simultaneously a mother, wife, actress, housewife, but also a bartender, hairdresser, and make-up artist, which I had to help with. But not only me, every member of the staff performed several functions. The total number was around fifteen including actors, on a normal shoot this number is usually around a hundred. We did everything. This was often true even for children, they had to pay close attention, more than an average actor

Dívány: Your children are in the film. Did they also act in the play?

Orsolya Török-Illyés: No, adult actors play the children's roles there. This is, for example, a big difference between the stage and the screen, the film would not have been able to handle the stylization of this. When we thought about who should play the two children's roles, we quickly came to our two children, because they are the same age as in the story, although the role was not written for them. In the film, not both of them are our children. It wasn't even clear from the beginning that the apartment would play. It ended up being forced.

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Szabolcs Hajdu: We looked at the apartments. We would not have been able to pay what would have been suitable, and what they would have given here was not good. We might have found the ideal apartment after a while, but we didn't want to waste time. My experience is that as soon as we set the first day of a shoot, everything and everyone gravitates towards it. Many people wanted to talk about the project saying that it cannot be done with zero money, it will not be good without lighting, it is worth waiting another year until there is a suitable camera and money, etc. But I had a feeling it would loosen up if we waited. The internal energy was there, the actors were in tune, the tempo was clearly visible, I sensed exactly when to start filming. We set the date, the first of September, and decided that whatever we could get together by then would be it.

Orsolya Török-Illyés: My argument in favor of my own apartment was precisely the children. It's easier for them to pretend they're at home when they're really at home, than if they're in a constructed set.

Couch: How did you feel?

Orsolya Török-Illyés: They really enjoyed it, they even said that from now on they would appear in every movie. It was tiring, of course, but a great party. In addition, there were times when they could miss school because of this.

Szabolcs Hajdu: The fact that the average age of the crew was around 22 years old, they were very young, because the 13 cameramen were among my students, added to the good atmosphere. Not everyone was always here, but usually four or five were. And returning to the fact that several tasks had to be performed: usually on a shoot, the majority of the crew is passive, waiting for their turn, grumpy, bored. Here, everyone had to be active 12 hours a day, and this activity gave the kind of atmosphere and momentum that people always long for, in order to live everyday at such a peak. You get tired differently afterwards, you can rest better.

Orsolya Török-Illyés: Besides, I didn't have to go to work in the morning, because the work came to my house.

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Dívány: And if I understand correctly, you did it with zero money.

Orsolya Török-Illyés: Focus Fox Studio was involved in post-production, and all other costs were one and a half million forints. This is so little that an hour of an average Hungarian shoot costs this much.

Szabolcs Hajdu: We didn't apply, there was no time for it, it all happened so quickly. In the first place, I don't like the gentleman's passion aspect of filmmaking, even our big films were relatively cheap. Visual quality, like everything in general, is primarily a matter of creativity and not money.

Orsolya Török-Illyés: And there is a demand for personality. We also thought in the same way in distribution, which is how we came up with the idea of these apartment projections.

Szabolcs Hajdu: Our experience is that there is a huge demand for this type of initiative, in a day and a half, three times as many people applied for the apartment screenings as we planned altogether. The press screening will take place here, where the film was shot, ten days before the premiere. At the same time, the apartment screenings will start in different apartments in Budapest, in family houses in the outskirts, in living rooms in the city center, and then the film will be shown in cinemas from the 29th. We would also like to start the foreign presentations with similar apartment screenings. Our first presentation will be in Prague, it will be shown in Czech and Slovak cinemas at the same time, and we would like to implement a similar model there as well. We also want someone from the creators to always be there at these screenings.

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Dívány: It occurred to me while they were telling the story here, that the whole process, how the drama developed, then the filming, production, and even the presentation of the film, is novel, and at the same time completely approachable and organic.

Szabolcs Hajdu: Yes, and let's not forget that it's good to do. I honestly admit that I have heartily hated all phases of filmmaking in recent years, or at least after a while I somehow always reach that phase of saturation that borders on hatred. After a while, I wish screenwriting to hell, the filming is always terribly difficult, the editing is a torture chamber, and what I hate the most is the presentation, the whole mess, which neither the film nor I have anything to do with. I find myself in a completely foreign environment at a premiere, and I'm just waiting for it to end as soon as possible. And now I'm just waiting for it to start, so I can go to the apartment screenings and talk to people. All phases of work here were enjoyable.

Orsolya Török-Illyés: But this was also conscious, we specifically tried to enjoy the process of our own work. We didn't want to work in an environment that was foreign, that wasn't ours.

Szabolcs Hajdu: That's why it was a good thing to shoot with less money, because less money means less compromise and less commitment.

Dívány: What is the life of the film after Karlovy Vary?

Szabolcs Hajdu: Already in Karlovy Vary, there was a moment when we felt that we were not enough to deal with this situation: when they started asking for materials, posters, previews, we had nothing and no money for nothing. Then suddenly it was necessary to start involving more and more people in the organization. After the grand prize of the Karlovy Vary festival, Kristályglóbusz, this situation seems to have increased 50 times, we were invited to many festivals, where it does not hurt if someone represents the film, while we continue to play the show, in rural locations, in Debrecen, Szeged, but also in Budapest, the there will be apartment screenings and film club screenings, audience meetings - but we have already started rehearsing for the next performance and have prepared a new film plan. There are very few of us for this much work, actually just Orsolya, me and a few of our friends. Of course, we fight for our independence and our dignity on a daily basis, just like everyone else, but I don't say this out of complaint, because it's very good that way now. Although it would always be like this.

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