Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_34 Curse Of The Were-Rabbit_ok

A DIFFERENT CANVAS
Painter-turned-writer/director Daniel Mulloy on
his short but not necessarily sweet path to screen success
F ilmmaking awards seem to run in the Mulloy family.
Before Daniel Mulloy began trawling in a succession of BAFTAs for his live-action shorts, his parents – top animators Phil Mulloy and
Vera Neubauer - were regulars on festi- val podiums around the world for their cutting-edge animation. And let’s not forget Daniel’s younger sister Lucy, currently at NYU, who was nomi- nated last year for a student Oscar for her documentary, This Morning!.
This year, writer-director Mulloy, now 28, together with his producers Howard Stogdon and Amber Templemore-Finlayson, was recipient of an Orange British Academy Film award for Antonio’s Breakfast, follow- ing prizes in previous years at BAFTA Cymru for his debut short Dance Floor then Sister. In addition, Dance Floor also won the prestigious DM Davies Award, at £25,000 (plus stock) the
most valuable of all short trophies. Painting was, however, Mulloy’s first love. “I was dyslexic so I always found it easier to communicate in visual ways, drawing and painting instead of writing.” When he was 14, the family moved from Brixton to the wilds of rural Wales and he progressed with his painting in between representing Wales in junior athletics.
“As my parents were animators I suppose I had almost an allergy to film- making probably because everybody expected me to do it,” he recalled before noting that at school in Carmarthen he did actually succumb and make “a little film. It was called Coming Of Age, I shot it on the beach with my best friend and, in fact, my parents thought I should send it to festivals.”
After a foundation course in Carmarthen, Mulloy headed for a four- year course in Fine Arts at the Slade School. “I was doing mainly figurative painting concentrating on people but
eventually I felt that somehow it was not doing enough for me in terms of convey- ing character and people’s narratives.
“Modern painters seem to be more interested in being self-reflexive and the actually process of painting. Although it’s a medium I was extreme- ly interested in, it wasn’t really fulfill- ing my own desires. After graduating I sold my show to a collector and made enough to survive on for a while and also to make my first little film.
“I’d been probably been painting 15 to 16 hours a day before moving into film. Although I’ve had no formal training, I probably lifted a lot from painting especially painting people from life. I’d often used friends or peo- ple that looked interesting to model for me, and that certainly influenced the way I directed.
“Sister presented the challenge of shooting on the upper deck of a real moving bus, in the very changeable
weather of Wales. My major concern was that we really didn’t have the resources to be ND’ing the windows, or controlling the exteriors at all.
“I was amazed at how well the Super F-250 daylight held the high- lights outside and still kept a full dynamic range inside the bus. This was definitely a situation where HD would have really struggled with the contrast range of the image, while film contained it beautifully.” – Jake Polonsky
“Of course, they are very different disciplines but because I seemed to have a very strong connection with the people I painted -I always used to talk while painting them – working with actors seemed to be a bit similar.”
That “first [official] little film” was the eight-minute Dance Floor, pho- tographed by Balazs Bolygo and fol- lowed one night in the life of a young Nigerian woman who processes bene-
24 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture