When you hear the words “Scottish cinema,” you’re not typically going to think about action movies: more likely urban dramas, perhaps with a little heroin use. Not that there’s anything wrong with Trainspotting – ok, a lot of heroin use – but I generally prefer witty banter, fist fights and things exploding. Which brings us to Nathan Shepka, who has cranked out a trio of features, operating out of Motherwell, all of which put entertaining the audience front and center, and remarkably, contain no heroin use at all (cocaine, on the other hand…).
With the third feature, Lock & Load, now out on DVD and VOD, we talked to Nathan about where he came from, where he’s going, and how to make your films look as good as possible, on Fast X‘s budget for paper plates.
How did you get interested in making movies?
My love for movies goes quite far back, right back to watching Disney when I was only 3 or 4 years old. By the time I hit double digits I’d moved onto watching the James Bond movies that my grandparents had recorded off the TV and onto VHS. I couldn’t tell you the specific moment when I realised that I wanted to make movies, but I was always creative from a young age. After making the 7 shorts that I did, I thought I may as well progress to features, otherwise the journey would likely naturally come to an end.
The short films were a way to cut my teeth, learn about production and about being a producer. I think it was worthwhile doing those rather than make those early, difficult to rectify mistakes on a feature film. Inspiration for those really just came from Hollywood movies in general. The idea with the short films was to take a commercial concept and squeeze it into a short, which again I thought was good practice for features.
What prompted the decision to jump to your first feature, Holiday Monday?
Happy accident actually. It started out as a short – but by that point the shorts had actually become around 40 minutes long. It became clear that Holiday Monday would turn out the length of a feature and it was also obvious where the gaps were that had to be filled, and what scenes they had to be filled with. And after that, there was no looking back. I knew we could make features so it was full steam ahead.
What were the biggest challenges you had during the process?
I think with any low budget production the biggest challenge is always money; how to stretch it, how to put as much as possible of it on screen. Other than that, it’s all the challenges that come with low budget – trying to find suitable locations that are aesthetically what you want, but also realistic cost-wise, peoples’ schedules etc. For what we had, I think we pulled off something that looked like it cost 10 times what it did. For a first feature it could certainly have been worse. There are moments of glory and then there’s some not-so-hot bits.
You wear many hats in production. How much of that is necessity, and how much is out of choice. And which of all your jobs do you enjoy most – or least?
I think necessity and choice. If I do everything, I don’t charge myself much! It also does help with creative control and my own learning experience. A lot of successful directors cut their teeth on editing and writing and whatever else. So I think it pays to know so many different sides of production. That being said, I’d never get behind a camera or a sound kit other than to look or listen! I know where to stop and let someone else do the job. But I think there’s value in seeing something through from start to finish. That way, I think you get a clear vision, if you take it from script, to shoot, to edit. And lastly I suppose it meant I could make the kind of films that I wanted to make but still ensuring they are commercial. The ultimate creative freedom does make up for the challenges brought by the budget.
When Darkness Falls was inspired by And Soon the Darkness. What elements did you take from that? What did you change and why?
That’s right! Essentially the concept of the 1970’s version had 2 British girls on a cycling holiday in rural France and we just flipped it to 2 American girls on a hiking holiday in rural Scotland. Other than that basic concept, and one of the girls going missing after an argument (in the original, the argument was over activities, in ours it was over dubious men), we sort of took it in another direction. The original is very tame and slow burn for today’s audiences I felt and whilst ours is slow burn we wanted it to build more, have a better payoff and a load of twists at the end.
I was startled to read the budget there was only 10,000 pounds, because it looks much more expensive. What are the keys to making a film look good on the cheap?
I think in the case of When Darkness Falls, the scenery essentially sold the film. We were fortunate enough to have some great locations, for free (the great outdoors) and some really good weather for that time of year. I think the drone shots and the nice wides of the landscape helped to elevate the film. The other locations were cottages we were actually staying in so they doubled up as the sets – killing two birds with one stone. I think making a film on the cheap, especially in the UK, you want to avoid the cliches like very bare looking student flats, drab woodland and such like. The grey sky here makes everything look quite flat. A little bit like the shorts, we try to go for more industrial locations and light them well, again the sort of thing you’d see in bigger budget films. I think you just want to put as much of the money up there on screen as possible.
Did shooting that in the country, rather than an urban setting, create any problems? How were the dreaded midges?!?
“There’s a running joke that one or two scenes in each film manage to top the last film in terms of how unpleasant and uncomfortable they were.”
We’re used to doing urban settings more often and working indoors, although there’s a running joke that one or two scenes in each film manage to top the last film in terms of how unpleasant and uncomfortable they were to shoot. I think in the country, you have a few issues to get through: lack of electricity, lack of access (dragging the kit through fields because you’ve had to park miles away), the cold and wet and yeah… the creatures. From memory, the midges weren’t too bad on When Darkness Falls, but it had been quite a dry period. That being said, the gifts that the country brings in terms of how it makes the film look, definitely pay off. And there’s no better lighting than a sunset in Scotland (when we get them).
For Lock & Load, you went back to the characters from Holiday Monday. What triggered that?
I think there was always an intention there to make a sequel, and I already had a plot for that in my head by the time we got to the end of Holiday Monday. The concept itself is one of those that you can extend to another installment. ‘Action film takes place on a bank holiday Monday’. The idea kind of came from Die Hard With a Vengeance. You have these characters running around, and the majority of the film takes place over the course of a day and they progressively get bloodier and the action gets bigger as they go. We retitled it for commercial reasons but the concept remains the same! That, and they were fun characters to bring back: I thought another outing would solidify that buddy relationship between the leads.
There seems to be a lot of improvement between Holiday Monday and Lock & Load. Do you feel the same way? What have been the biggest lessons you learned and could build on? On the other hand, how do you want to improve?
For Lock & Load we certainly spent a bit more money than the first two features. That, and we had focus on a particular style and lighting. We wanted to go for that classic action movie teal and orange look, lots of bright colours, lots of beams of light and industrial locations. We also wanted to crank up the action, the body count, the scale, the number of fights and the intensity of those. I think overall, it’s a big improvement on Holiday Monday and a step in the right direction.
For me, the lesson is always being prepared as much as possible, yet being ready to deal with any unforeseen problems on set (because there are always some), getting enough rehearsal in for the choreography and making sure you have enough time to shoot something good. I hate rushing things. Time is money and on films that’s the constant push/pull struggle we face. Each extra day costs more to shoot but I try now not to shoot a feature in any less than 20 days. You find you don’t do the script or the film or the actors justice otherwise.
“Time is money, and on films that’s the constant push/pull struggle we face.”
I think improvement wise, we need to be even slicker. Get better at crafting scenes, improve the action even further and ideally have the luxury of even more time. I’d like to see our films get bigger in scale and for the production values to increase, to the point where people are continually surprised about the jump in quality.
You’ve worked with prolific low-budget film-maker Tom Jolliffe on some of your movies. How did that partnership come about, and what have you learned from him?
Prolific in more ways than one, “notorious”, actually I would say! Tom and I actually met on an action movie forum, probably more than ten years ago. He’s got the same sense of humour as me (warped), and the same taste in films; we just bounce off each other really well. When he writes the script, it is different from mine, so I have to approach it different creatively. He has a different style, and goes in directions that I wouldn’t. So it’s always a good challenge to try to bring one of his scripts to life and it often allows me to play characters that I wouldn’t have written otherwise. The working process is very easy too and we always seem to agree on things. I think Tom has a great commercial outlook and a keen eye for a creative concept that appeals to audiences.
What next?
We’re working on two projects at the moment – both a bit of a departure for me. Although I’d like to do mostly action or thriller orientated films, I’d rather not be known just for that or become a one trick pony. Next year (hopefully) we’ve got a really dark crime thriller about sex trafficking, which still has some action beats in it, but with a grittier story, very urban and current. The other thing is The Baby in the Basket, a 1940’s set gothic horror set on a remote Scottish island in a convent during the second World War. Both are a huge contrast to each other, style and genre wise – but also a contrast to what we’ve produced so far I think. I’m hoping next year is going to be our most prolific yet, and people start to join us on the journey, and look forward to what we do next. I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
Holiday Monday (2021)
Rating: D+
Dir: Nathan Shepka
Star: Nathan Shepka, Colin MacDougall, John Michael-Love, Matt Symonds
Perhaps subtitle this, “A Learning Experience.” As first features go, it isn’t terrible, but the harsh reality is, first features are rarely good. Even for directors who go on to greatness, most tend to be closer to Piranha 2: The Spawning than Citizen Kane. This has a reasonable enough, fairly simple, idea. The problems are more in the execution, which stutters from acceptable to… not. The heroes are Nick (Shepka) and Derek (MacDougall), whom we meet again in Lock & Load, a pair of private security consultants. They’re engaged to provide protection for someone running from a drug lord. But he turns up dead at the meeting, albeit leaving a case of money behind. The case’s “rightful” owner, Barnes (Michael-Love) wants it back.
That’s your basic plot. However, one of the issues is a fondness to over-embroider this with unnecessary ornamentation, when its strength is in its simplicity. For example, the first scene has Nick and Derek showing up to act as bodyguards to a businessman and his wife. We get a lengthy explanation of the situation, but guess what? None of it matters in the slightest. We do not care who they are, or why they are being targeted, and it’s irrelevant to the bigger picture. Similarly, the film feels like it ends, with the villains defeated. But, wait! Turns out someone else was involved! So we get a twenty-minute epilogue, which feels tacked on, apparently existing mostly so they can blow up an outbuilding on a farm.
I mean, I get that it’s a nice explosion, not least for being practical rather than the typical refuge of low-budget movies, bad CGI. But do we really need to see it from – and I rewound to count this – twelve different angles? When concentrating on the core story, the film is generally more engaging. Although some supporting characters can barely act, others are interesting, such as Barnes’s enforcers, Gina (Jemima Spence) and the appropriately-named Grande (Symonds). The latter is 6’7″, a pro wrestler, and appears to be channelling the spirit of Wade Barrett. Which makes it surprising there are times when the hand-to-hand stuff seems like it’s carried out at ‘first rehearsal’ speed. This is the area where Shepka’s subsequent Lock & Load most obviously improved.
There’s a lot of gun-play here too, an equally mixed bag. For instance, we have two supposedly professional security operatives, taking shelter behind what must be the least effective shield in movie history (top). Would it have hurt them to flip the table on its side, at least. Oh, and the Santa hats? Those apparently include a tracker, allowing their sniper accomplice to identify them. Except the scanner she uses also shows the enemy, who are not festively attired. So, the point was…? But again: first feature, and that one is always going to be the hardest to get right, or anything in the vicinity of right. Subsequent events prove Shepka learned a lot from this, and that’s probably the most important thing.
When Darkness Falls (2022)
Rating: C+
Dir: Nathan Shepka
Star: Michaela Longden, Emma O’Hara, Nathan Shepka, Ben Brinicombe
The early stages of this have a definite (and acknowledged by Shepka) similarity to And Soon The Darkness – and definitely take the original over the remake. In particular, the set-up is almost identical. Two young women of contrasting character, are traveling in a foreign country when one of them suddenly vanishes. The other has to figure out what happened, while avoiding a similar fate, and dealing both with unhelpful locals and an obliging former cop. Rather than France or Argentina, the location here is the Scottish Highlands, although their part was played by the Scottish Borders – more convenient for the makers. But as in the remake, the tourists are American: outgoing Andrea (O’Hara) and more cautious Jess (Longden).
The subsequent differences are what make for the interest. The threat is defined in the first scene, where we meet Nate (Shepka) and buddy Tommy, burglars on tour with a large side order of sexual assault. Andrea vanishes after Jess leaves her in the dangerous company of the pair, and the only local willing to help is ex-policeman Beck (Brinicombe). This is where the story goes a different road from its predecessors. Jess ends up having to team up – albeit very reluctantly – with Nate, in order to find her friend and his loot respectively. Things are not as they seem. A lot of things, on both sides, as we discover alongside the new, uncertain allies (as Nate says, “It’s truce, not trust”), on our way to an equally uncertain ending.
There is a fair bit to take in, and the script, by British low-budget cinema veteran Tom Jolliffe, does struggle to get it all across in a plausible manner. For instance, after establishing Jess’s uber-cautious nature, a few minutes later, we have to accept her just walking off and abandoning her friend to the company of two men, from whom Jess has explicitly said she gets bad vibes. Also, having set Nate up as somebody who enjoys drugging and raping young women, it’s a tough climb back for the character; I never was able to see him as anything other than a reprehensible scumbag. It feels there may be rather too many scenes of Jess creeping slowly around a farmhouse, and as with Holiday Monday, a quicker hand in the editing bay might have been helpful.
However, the performances are solid, especially from Longden, who has to do a lot of the dramatic lifting. She keeps the audience engaged, even during the times when the plotting stumbles. On the technical side, the film looks far better than the reported £10,000 budget, with crisp camerawork, not hurt by the gorgeous local scenery. The limited resources are apparent in some areas: for instance, the entire resident population of the village is one (1): the local barman. Yet that may work for the atmosphere, enhancing the sense of isolation for Jess – filming during COVID helps too. Overall, this is a noticeable improvement in almost every way over Shepka’s first film, and a respectable, small-scale thriller.
Lock & Load (2023)
Rating: B-
Dir: Nathan Shepka
Star: Nathan Shepka, Colin MacDougall, Graeme MacPherson, Tony Macdonald
As I get older, I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that I prefer my cinema a little rough around the edges. It feels like the bigger the budget, the more likely it is that all trace of character will be ground off by the Hollywood sausage machine. What’s left will typically be highly polished, to within an inch of its cinematic life, and as forgettably bland as a “hot” supermarket curry. Then there’s something like this, which Shepka wrote, directed, starred in, edited and, I imagine, made the sandwiches. It’s the auteur theory of film, writ large and applied to a movie largely concerned with shooting people. Or occasionally, for variety, punching them in the face.
This is a follow up to Shepka’s debut feature, Holiday Monday, though I only saw that afterward. Probably doesn’t matter much, except it might explain how independent security consultants Nick (Shepka) and Derek (MacDougall) are cheerfully allowed access to sensitive information, and allowed to help out on matters of national security. In this case, it’s a sting operation against arms dealer Miles Steiger (Macdonald), and his 3D-printed weapons. This has gone wrong, resulting in the capture of undercover agent, Andy Stokes (MacPherson), a pal of Nick and Derek’s. They won’t stand for that, so go after Miles, only to find out quickly, things are not as simple as they seem. There’s a mole in the department, and Steiger is largely a front for the mysterious “Chess Master”.
Those rough edges include bad CGI blood (better off not bothering at all), gun battles where no glass is harmed, and background players who sometimes neither look nor act convincing. This is potentially a result of the talent pool for those smaller roles being the maker’s friends and family. I’ve been involved in making low-budget cinema, and know that struggle is real, folks. So these kind of things had me nodding in sympathy, rather than snorting derisively, and to some extent, they enhance the positive aspects. For instance, the martial arts here are often well-staged and shot, such as the fight between Derek and the Chess Master. I preferred them to the gun-play. I mean, it’s Britain: you have a perfect excuse for the convenient absence of firearms.
This probably does run a bit long, as films often seem to when the director and editor are the same person. In particular, it goes on for another 10-15 minutes that seemed almost superfluous, after I felt it could have ended. I may have wandered towards the kitchen, and listened to the dialogue from there. That washing-up wasn’t going to do itself. For the first hour and a half though, I was amused, to a degree which genuinely impressed me. Once more, it’s clear that Shepka has improved significantly, leaving me very interested in seeing what’s to come. Certainly, on an “entertainment per budget dollar” level, and providing you don’t need that dazzling cinematic polish, this blows away many far bigger movies.
The film is out in the US on DVD and VOD now.