Large Film Project 'Nightwing'

A coming-of-age story, with batarangs!

This year I have made a film about abuse, both towards children and partner, violent or passive-agressive, and also about coming-of-age and leaving home which is something my peers and I will all have to do very soon when we leave for university. The twist is that I use the relationship between Batman and Robin as well as many DC comics characters to tell that story. This is to throw people off the scent when they start watching the film because they will assume it's a fun Batman romp but, while it's still loads of fun, it's got a very serious edge to it and is one of the more angst-ridden and darker films I've made. This is reflected in the camerawork of which the styles of directors Alfred Hitchcock and Paul Greengrass were particularly influential. During the 2nd act there is an extended sequence when the handheld camera style favoured in films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity' was borrowed from and as a style this contrasts nicely with the cleaner that surrounds this sequence, especially considering the jump from clean HD footage to standard mini-DV.
There is no getting away from the fact that this is a very collaborative project. Although I did write, produce, direct, edit and even feature in it, there is still a large cast that helped by acting or appearing in it. I have included a cast-list below which also tells the names of the character/s people play and in rough order of who appears most.

CAST

Era Beale as Robin
Stephen Boustred as Batman
Lou Kennard as Harley Quinn
Sam Reinders (myself) as The Joker & Victor Zsasz
Eve Wersocki Morris as Catwoman
Lou Budd as Lily Quinzel
Jay Righelato as The Riddler
Seshie Azorliadey as Lucius Fox & The Scarecrow
Henry Obalim as Green Lantern: John Stewart
Miguel Garcia as The Penguin
Will Howard as Alfred Pennyworth
Aubrey Allegretti as Mike Engel
Rishi Kalra as Solomun Grundy
Sarah Pughe as Poison Ivy
Adam Bloom as Southpaw
Laurie Magnus as Bane
Liv Thurley as Echo

Jack Hamilton as Curley
Amber Savva as Alaya Wein
Rikard Kahn as Cera
Kitty Bertenshaw as Query
Jacob Scipio as Superman
Joelle Chess as Emma Clarke (Intercom)
Jake Leader as Jack Drake
Maria Kouznetsova as Janet Drake
Lily Barca as Pam Woodrow
Lara Smithson as Susie Tompkins
Jean-Luc Daurat as Floyd Lawton
Aldo Curtis as Basil Karlo
Ollie Baxter Clarke as Roman Sidonis
Tom Lewin as “Smooth” Steve Logan
Benji Fricker-Muller as Kirk Langstrom
Jamie Onisto as Otis Flannegan

Set 1 - Shooting Nightwing

Opposite is a selection of shots chronicling the making of the film. I did not take most of these pictures but throughout the shoot I was adamant that a photographic record of the shooting was kept. In lots of the shots you can see me with the camera setting up how I want the shot or talking the actors through the scene. In one shot you can see my hand applying make-up to my actors face and that was another challenge with making this film; the fight make-up as well as the prosthetic effects for the extreme characters as as Penguin (nose), Joker (scars) and Zsasz (bald with scarification). I found shooting scenes with loads of extras to be the most fulfilling task because filling a location with character made each scene come alive, this is reflected in the photo of the group we had while shooting the asylum scene; each person had a boiler suit and an idea of a character in their minds which kept them interested even if that character doesn't end up in the final cut. This set also features a picture of Jay who plays Riddler holding the reflector for a shot  of Robin. Holding the camera myself most of the time I would always delegate someone to hold the reflector or additional lighting equipment in the right place so as to make each shot as dynamic as it should be.

Set 2 - Character Shots

Either on each day of filming or separatly on special photoshoots I would take people's photos of them as their character. This was so that I could have a photographs that recorded the mood and my aims for that character and the film as a whole. As it turned out these photos were useful forms of publicity when I wanted to advertise for Nightwing's screening. In the first picture, of Robin, you can see through the lighting and the expression the sense of moving on to bigger and better things that I wanted to fuse into the ending scenes of the film. We meet Robin as an angry young man but leave him having found some sort of peace and wisdom. This picture portrays that idea of a 'new dawn' for him which I think my year could definitly relate to.
The photographs of the Riddler and Penguin with their various entourages show the basis of their characters. The Penguin is a little man who thinks he has himself covered because of his much larger security guards and The Riddler, in my story, is the kind of arrogant, sleasy pimp figure real policemen hate having to deal with and as such he's seen being fawned upon by excentricly dressed ladies. Later in the set, allining with the way we see him at the end of the film, The Penguin is having something similar but being fawned upon by the comedy gimp-man Bane, making Penguin's presentation far more comical than the swaggering Riddler. The Joker and Catwoman, instantly recognisable because of their iconic looks, in my film used to be in a relationship so they've got this air of "comfortable with each other but still bitter and possessive", hence why Catwoman's legs are casually draped over Joker's. The Green Lantern has a scene where he's met with Robin to have a smoke and a bit of a heart-to-heart so in the picture of him I wanted to evoke the essence of easy-going underachievers like Harold & Kumar, Jay & Silent Bob ect, so we see him lying back on a sofa with his eyes droopy and his mouth open. The green glow about the picture contrasts with his casual loose fist and power ring worn on his little finger; indicative of his lasy attitude to the huge power the ring gives him. The photo of Harley Quinn is made to represent the middle section of the film, where her character takes center stage through the lens of her home video camera. She looks confused and alone in the frame as she's being blown by a strong breeze. The settling looks threatening, the tree behind her seeming to reach for her, a precursor to later scenes. The image of Batman is to show how damaged the character is. His mask looks like a skull worn on the outside and the face inside looks like it's shrunken inside of the mask, away from the world. The photographs of Lucius Fox with his assistant, Robin with The Riddler and Nightwing with Zsasz are classic publicity stills designed to evoke awe for the heroes of the story. The Nightwing ones particularly show his anger and his heroism.

Shooting: The Riddler's Hideout

To the right is a behind the scenes video made up from footage of the night shot by Liv Thurley, Rikard Kahn and Dilber Oncu (apologies for their bad language). Following is my account of the day/night we shot the key scene. It is a night scene so I had all day to get people and costumes together. First I spray painted the bowler hat green then sent Era and Dilber to Wood Green to buy posters for another scene while me Jay and Frances went into Muswell Hill to raid the charity shops for the Riddler's costume. I sent Era to get the posters because they were for a set which is meant to be his room. I knew he would get posters that appealed to him so in the scene, his personality would come through through the set decoration. Meanwhile in Muswell Hill I split my team up to cover more charity shop ground. I sent Frances to Oxfam, Jay to Cancer Research and I went to a less well known one. I found the coat that we used, a smart green woman's coat, as well as a lighter green shirt thing for underneath. Jay found some red sunglasses and he called me to come and buy them. Back at my house I decorated the jacket with question marks. I ran out of green enamel paint after spraying a little bit of the left side of the coat. So to solve this problem I used the green hair paint I had left over from The Joker costume to paint the coat. It isn't the same shade of green but it makes the coat look more unsymmetrical and quirky. That night was the night of The Riddler's big scene. There was one more prop that we had to get before it could begin. So Jay, Era, Dilber and I took the bus to Wood Green to meet Miguel who would lend us a walking stick. I had to get coffee for them because it is important on a shoot to make sure the cast aren't worn out and subtle bribery always helps to get people on side. We met Miguel outside the station and took the walking stick off his hands on the assurance that I'd give it back to him the next time I saw him. When we got back to my house, acting as HQ and greenroom throughout this experience, Jay and Era got into their costumes and I took some publicity shots of them (one of which is the current main image on the Nightwing facebook). Soon after, Liv Thurley arrived with an entourage of Adam Bloom and Rikard Kahn. These guys weren't written in the scene and indeed Adam had already appeared in Nightwing as one of The Penguin's henchmen (codenamed: Southpaw). But with their arrival came the idea of a new layout for the scene and I decided to use Adam and Rikard as The Riddler's bouncers. I fitted them with suits and gave Rikard the codename: Cera because he's the spitting image of comedy actor Micheal Cera. Liv had come in fabulously eccentric grab which I knew she would because I had given the actresses playing The Riddler's harlets the direction "Lady Gaga-esque". Because of this direction I had cast very artistic ladies in these two parts and this paid off handsomely. When the other actress, Kitty Bertenshaw came she was dressed in a black corset and colourful bangles. Again, perfect. I took some extra shots of Kitty/Liv/Jay and Kitty/Liv then it was time to go to the location. We met an extra assistant in Muswell Hill as well all walked there. Extra assistants are always useful for keeping moral up I learned. So there we are! Midnight in Muswell Hill, shooting an alternative Batman flick and getting very annoyed that the 102 decided to be a twenty-four hour bus. We'd set up and were rehearsing how Jay and his girls were to walk out of the corridor between a furniture shop and a lingerie shop. But when we rolled camera, the sound on every second shot was spoiled by the noise of the bus. Despite having to do shots over and over again to get them to my annoyingly high standard, spirits remained high with most of the crew. I had made to organizational decision to shoot the shots on The Riddler's side first since they were the hardest to organise again if we were moved on. Because of this Era (Robin) had to wait nearly an hour before he was required. And then only in a line-feeding capacity. This I think, coupled with the lateness of hour, temporarily disillusioned my star I think. What I took away from that was to always make sure everyone had something to do, didn't get bored and remained excited on set/location. In the scene I aloud Jay to give The Riddler a line when he sees Robin. Jay said "Robin! Where's The Bat!" which is a classic Riddler line which Jay, ever the comics nerd, thoroughly enjoyed giving. In this way I gave Jay extra motivation to come back when we needed him again. Motivation that I needed him to have because the other scene I needed him for put him in an uncomfortable position for a long time. We did all of the shots involving everyone accept Era then did the closeup shots of Era last. This was lucky because during these shots, community support pulled over and said there'd been some complaints from the people who lived above the shops we were filming next to about the noise we'd been making. Because we were then on the other side of the street, doing a closeup, no-longer making much noise, the community support must have assumed that the people had been over-reacting. I assured them that we were nearly finished and they went back into their vehicle. This did not stop the police checking us out as well about 10 minutes later. I suppose people really aren't allowed to loiter in middle class area's at 2 in the morning. At this point I really was minutes from finishing so I again assured them that we were nearly finished. They were a little more agressive than the community support, warning that they'd be back soon to check that we were gone. I told my troops to stick close to me and not say a word. When we finished Liv, Kitty and Rikard had gone home, Frances said goodbye and the rest came to pick their stuff up where they'd left it in my house. On the way home Jay got recognized as The Riddler by a drunken bloke outside a newsagents.

Shooting: The Iceberg Lounge

To the right is a behind the scenes video made up from footage of the first day of shooting the bar scene shot by Eve Wersocki Morris. Following is my account of both days. At the time I thought that this would be the busiest and most complicated of the scenes to film because of the large fight, the location and the makeup needed. The week before I had approached a local bar/restaurant owner and he was letting us use his location during the day time for a tidy £100. The scene involved Era Beale as Robin, Miguel Garcia as The Penguin, Rishi Kalra as Solomun Grundy and Liv Thurley, Adam Bloom and Jack Hamilton as our own henchmen creations (nicknamed: Echo, Southpaw and Curley respectively). Also present were producer Dilber Oncu, Liv’s friend Chloe Roman and Eve Wersocki Morris to shoot behind-the-scenes material. The shoot spanned over two days and to an extent the layout of the fight was governed by the availability of the players. I had to adapt my fight plan for example since Liv could only do the first day, and only an 90 minutes of that; her character had to be quickly knocked out of the fight. To her credit though, even though she didn’t make much of an impact on Robin, Echo does get knocked out in flying style as she gets launched into the air and comes crashing down on a sofa. Rishi got makeup put on on the first day but the entirety of his action got pushed to the second day. We managed to shoot all of the dialogue with The Penguin on the first day so Miguel didn’t have to come back for the second. Half way through filming Penguin’s dialogue with Robin, Miguel’s nose came very loose. While this is a visible problem in the finished scene I saw away it didn’t have to be for the whole dialogue sequence. In the original script Robin pushes Penguin on to the ground but instead I had Era punch the nose so that we could add fake blood to the nose, hiding the fact that it had partially come off.

Character Breakdown: Robin / Dick Grayson

Far from the good natured brat in the comics, our Dick Grayson is the short-tempered ansty young man you'd expect from someone with his past, although I have changed that a bit too.

Story: The youngest in a family of acrobats known as the "Flying Graysons," Dick Grayson watched The Joker murder his parents for refusing to sell him their share in the Haly Circus. Bruce Wayne, AKA the vigilante Batman, scooped him into the batmobile at the scene of the crime and took him back to the batcave, effectively causing the world to assume him dead. But Bruce didn’t leave Dick time to grieve, instead he put him on a vigorous training programme of self-defense and pain endurance. Eventually Bruce let Dick accompany him on his nocturnal crime-fighting but only after giving him a pathetic paper costume and naming him Robin "the Boy Wonder". For five years Robin was always given the most menial and humiliating jobs Batman could think of. The Dark Knight’s minimally thought-out  instructions often put him in needlessly dangerous positions. Somehow Robin survived and at the point ‘Nightwing’ begins Batman has been making Robin spend hours pointlessly tailing The Riddler for months while he consummates an affair with the seductive Catwoman.

Visual: The way Robin is shot often draws attention to his muscular definition which is to stress his character's inner strength and unused power. This is then contrasted when he puts on the pathetic crumpled red t-shirt which is the basis of his costume. However for most of the film I needed Robin to look cool so I decided he should wear a stylish leather jacket as in the beginning section of the film I wanted to envoke a character from a western, kicking down saloon doors looking for a fight. Because the Robin identity is one that Dick Grayson has grown out of, as the beginning section of the film goes on the paper bit of the t-shirt rips away, this is then fixed in the narrative's three months between the first and third parts so that Robin can dramatically rip the paper away during the final showdown.

Character Breakdown: Harley Quinn / Harleen Quinzel

The comic character which our Harley derives from is the one dimensional sidekick of The Joker. For 'Nightwing' I rewrote Harley as a young victim of domestic abuse suffering from psychotic depression.

Story: While on work experience at Arkham Asylum, the young Harleen Quinzel because obsessively fixated with The Joker, believing herself to be in love with him. She helped him escape confinement and he re-named her Harley Quinn. Quinn is a damaged and confused individual. Having spent years with The Joker her identity has been warped into a twisted mockery of this once bright girl; possibly The Joker's most tragic victim.

Visual: The first appearance of Harley is in a total red photography darkroom. This was to hint at her mental state, a lost little girl almost choking in the sea of red. Inspiration came from the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte in which a young Jane is trapped inside the ominous 'red room' where she believes the ghost of her dead uncle haunts her. Harley is trapped by her obsession with The Joker, a presence which still haunts her later in the film. Her costume in this scene is minimal, far from the jester hat and skintight clown costume of the comics, our Harley simply has on a red waistcoat and has painted on her left cheek a diamond insignia, almost as if she's been branded. Later in the film the middle section consists of Harley's video diary. She regularly talks to people with the camera in her hand and it often slips away from facing them as if being held by an absent minded person. This is supported when her sister has to tell her to stop recording and then when she leaves the camera on on the tabletop.

The Trailer

My aim was to make people interested in the film as a portrait of a lonely young man striking out on his own. Also to fool them into thinking that we kill Robin via a news report saying so. I used footage from all across the shoot minus the parts from Harley's video diary and anything that gives spoilers. I used a Raconteurs track "Blue Veins" because it has an uneasy, backwards quality that I wanted for the trailer. The first half shows the news report about finding Robin's body intercut with pondering shots of Robin, which gives the audience a sense that they're attending some sort of memorial and lets them know they're getting only part of a story, there's far more to find out. I then show a lot of footage of all the people Robin encounters in the story, revealing The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler and Catwoman among others. Lastly I gave the title and the merest flash of the Nightwing costume to intrigue people. I recommend you watch the trailer in HD as that is an option with this link.