Elissa Down, Rising Australian Filmmaker

Since the invention of moving pictures early in the last century, the magic of cinema has always captivated people. It’s amazing to be able to watch life unfolding within a frame. Ideas are more easily appreciated and keenly understood when conveyed through a movie.

The general public experiences a film by watching it. Only very few view a film differently, as a potent tool for communication and for self-expression. But from this minority come the people who mainly decide how a movie is supposed to affect its viewers, entire communities or nations. They hold the magic wand, the filmmakers.      

I recently had the chance to interview award-winning Australian filmmaker Elissa Down. This was in connection with the Australian Film Festival that was held here in Cebu City from November 9—14. The young Ms. Down is the director of “The Black Balloon”, which previously won top honors in the Berlin International Film Festival and the Australian Film Institute Awards. The film was one of five choice Australian films featured in the weeklong public screenings.

It was perhaps due to the overwhelming success of “The Black Balloon” that Ms. Down was invited to attend the Philippine exhibition of her country’s fresh harvest of great movies. She graced the opening of the Manila leg of the Festival the week before, but could no not make it to Cebu due to prior commitments she had in the U.S. We spoke on the phone:

Archie: Ms. Elissa Down, how do you do?

Elissa: Hi, Archie. I’m very well. Thank you. And you?

Archie: I’m fine, too. — Now, I understand you’ve been around in the film industry for quite a while now. Would you say that your award-winning film “The Black Balloon” is your greatest film yet, or have you had other equally good films but only less celebrated?

Elisa: Well, this is my first feature film. So it is hopefully the start of many great things. But I have made a number of short films and some commercials. I’ve been around for quite a while, yes, but this is sort of the start of big things for me.

Archie: Okay. But you must have had other good works in the past. Is that right?

Elisa: Yes, I’ve had short films that were fortunate enough to have been screened at film festivals across the world.

Archie: Going back to the start, how soon in your life did you notice a personal liking for filmmaking or what was the very thing that you think attracted you to this art?

Elisa: I was one of those annoying kids bossing their moms around at story time, to do voices of “Jack and the Beanstalk”. I always liked putting up plays. And I think the thing I always liked, which I discovered when I did films in high school and at the university, is being able to tell a story through the medium of film. Because with film you get to do music, use costumes and have designs, and go to actual locations. You get to do so much more than just reading a story from a book or enacting it on stage.

Archie: Concerning the performance of actors in a film – or for that matter, theater – how much of that, you think, comes from the actors themselves and how much comes from the director?

Elisa: Well, it is said that 90% of the value of a film is casting. Filmmakers call it their casting right. You choose the very actors who can do the kind of performance you’re after. When you have the right actors, the director is only the support net, the shepherd to help guard them for the film.

Archie: Some actors would say that, at a certain point, rehearsal becomes anti-performance. In preparing for a film project, how important, would you say, is rehearsal or rehearsing your actors? And how much rehearsal is necessary?

Elisa: I do quite a lot of rehearsals, but I go for a different kind of rehearsal. I don’t really rehearse the scenes, but I rehearse the actors in character by letting them hang out together. So I might send them out into the street in character, just so they may learn how their characters interact with one another in the real world.

Archie: Did you do that with your cast in “The Black Balloon”?

Elisa: Yes! One of the things I did was to send out the two actors playing siblings – the normal kid and his autistic brother – into the shopping mall, go to the movies and go bowling. They were in character the entire time, so the people there reacted to them like they were real; nobody knew they were actors. And so the actors had a first-hand experience of how it really feels to be their characters in the film.

Archie: In the span of your film career so far, has there ever been an instance when you became sort of intimidated by the presence of some “big star” in your film?

Elisa: Ah… no, I’ve hadn’t been really intimated. But sometimes I got very nervous because we had a pretty amazing actor in our film. I brought two shirts to work, just in case I dropped my lunch on one. Of course, I wanted to make a good impression. But, well, as soon as I met the star, she was very friendly and very down-to-earth. We both understood that we would have to create a very good work of art. We got along pretty well. That’s what it’s like when you’ve got confidence in what you do — you couldn’t really be intimidated.

Archie: In your personal experience, what’s the average germination period for an idea or concept for a film before it finally goes into production?

Elisa: With “The Black Balloon”, I think took about six years, from when the script was first started until it became a movie. Some films can take shorter or longer than that. In my case, since this is my first feature, I had so much to learn. Writing a script is like learning a new language; you have to learn words and terminologies and ways of writing visually. But as soon as you have a full grasp of the language, everything just flows; you don’t even have to think about it.

Archie: As artist, do you also consider box-office potential during the conception of a film project? How would you maintain balance between commercial prospects and the artistic integrity of a film?

Elisa: Of course, you want a lot of people to see your film. So you always want to make the best film you can make. But, for me, I was never trying to think or guess, like I’d put this scene because people like sexy scenes. There were films that in theory would never make any money, but did. And yet there are a lot of films that defy what people think would make money. And so all you can do is just make the best possible film, because you’ll never know. It also matters what other films come out at the time when you come out, how much promotions money you have, if your star had been involved in a scandal. There are a lot of things that are just out of your control. You can only do a really good film.

What type of person would make a good film director? What’s the scope of the director’s responsibilities in the entire stretch of film production? Ms. Elissa Down answers these questions and more, next week in this column.

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