Shooting in the Water, Keeping Her Crew Warm, and Being a Woman in the Director's Chair on On a Clear Day

After racking up an impressive track record as a maker of festival-favorite shorts, British director Gaby Dellal took to the seas, shooting On a Clear Day in 35mm with Arri cameras on Fuji film with her longtime collaborator, D.P. David Johnson. On a Clear Day is the tale of a laid-off Glasgow shipbuilder (Peter Mullan) who fills his days ironing out his contentious relationship with his adult son (Jamie Sives) and training for a swim across the English Channel. The film is rife with a particularly black and bitter Scottish humor – not unexpected, given that Dellal's feature debut put her through some considerable creative ordeals.
Q: Much of the film takes place on or near water. What particular challenges did you face shooting in those conditions?
A: Shooting on water is a complete nightmare. We had to battle tides — if you got the tide wrong, you couldn’t get the camera boat out to sea, or the tide would go out and then you couldn’t get the camera boat back in to harbor. Then there were the sea’s ever-changing color, the sea’s ever-changing winds — one day the sea is rough and the next it’s calm. The coldness of the water was extraordinary. I got Peter in the water five times for three minutes each time, and that was it. Luckily I had a swimming double, which saved mine and Peter’s ass.
Q: It sounds like the pool scenes were comparatively easy.
A: It’s difficult because there’s a limit to how many different shots you can do of a man swimming. When I was initially pitching the film, people said, “Oh, it sounds so dull. What can you do with swimming?” I had two or three swimming doubles in the pool, and they all had different bodies, so that was something to contend with. When we shot underwater, all the protection for the equipment was really time-consuming, and it took away from the actors’ time to actually act. One has to be very, very patient.
Q: What look did you want for the water onscreen?
A: I was very adamant that I did not want to make a blue film. I think water is most beautiful when it’s green and black, so that’s what I went for.
Q: What one aspect of the film drove you insane?
A: It was probably getting Peter swimming in the right direction the whole way through the film, because of course you just bung the double in the water any time you’ve got five minutes, and just shoot him swimming away from you and towards you. So keeping track of that was very, very difficult. And I think my worst day was when Peter did his biggest scene in the water and the boat drifted around and he was looking to the wrong side of camera. That was my biggest nightmare, because then I had to convince him to redo the scene.
Q: What about less technical issues like keeping the crew warm and dry and happy while you were shooting? Was that difficult?
A: Yes. We had to spend a fortune on Winnebago boats. And skin divers. Whenever we were anywhere near the sea, even when we were putting Peter Mullan and Sean McGinley [as Mullan’s pal] walking along the side of a canal having a chat, there were like eight skindivers in the canal in case one of them tripped up and fell in. So when we were shooting in locks and in the sea there had to be so many escort boats. Which means you have to feed them all as well.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your cinematographer, David Johnson?
A: We work incredibly well together — we now live together. Because we’re in a relationship together anyway, we spend more than the normal amount of time talking about the visual look of a film and actually preparing. We prepare enormously — we storyboard for ourselves. They’re the kind of storyboards that no one should really see — they’re not really well drawn.
Q: This is the first script that you’ve shot that you did not write. What drew you to Alex Rose’s script?
A: It was the central nub of the film, which is about a father and son’s relationship and the estrangement between the two, which I think is really quite a familiar one. That’s what intrigued me most.
Q: This is a film about men, and the film industry is so dominated by men. Were there issues that you dealt with either regarding the subject matter of the story or just working as a woman in this industry?
A: You get tested the whole way down the line, whether it’s the crew that thinks you mightn’t have stamina or won’t be able to go to sea for 12 hours, or whether it’s the actors who think, “What does a woman know about a male sentiment or a male’s emotional makeup?” There was a day when the actors struck and refused to come out of their Winnebagos, and I was stuck on a desolate beach with no actors. If I was a male director, they wouldn’t fuckin’ do that.