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Hits Like a Girl: Interview with film makers Harry Sherriff and Marie Hazelwood
Film makers Harry Sheriff and Marie Hazelwood have recently completed shooting their debut short film feature Hits Like a Girl which won funding from the BFI and Creative England as part of their inaugural iShorts competition. Nerve met up with them for an interview.
With Liverpool an ever-present fixture on TV and cinema screens, with the Georgian Quarter especially substituting for other cities in earlier eras, there seems to have been a has been a dearth of city-set original screenplays in recent times, discounting shows that revolve around police procedurals.
The first venture between director Harry Sheriff and producer Marie Hazelwood, short film Hits Like a Girl aims to fully showcase the city’s lesser seen locales in a contemporary setting. Scripted by Harry the fifteen minute picture is the compact story of a young female boxer from a troubled background with severe anger issues and the tense relationship with her agoraphobic mother.
Filmed entirely on location around Toxteth, the project forms part of the inaugural run of the iShorts initiative, a fledgling project designed to help grassroots filmmakers based outside London. Funded by the British Film Institute (BFI) in partnership with Creative England, the same organisations that backed the likes of This Is England and The King’s Speech, the project successfully secured a place on the shortlist against extremely tough competition.
The criteria for submissions included a stipulation that entrants had experience creating self-funded or student films or had written an un-filmed screenplay. Although the initiative has only just launched, the project received a huge number of submissions with the shortlist of 20 whittled down from over five hundred and fifty entries.
Delving into the background of the film makers Harry, following his graduation from John Moores University with a degree in Film Studies signed up for the Everyman Theatre’s writing programme, a scheme that has nurtured scores of fledgling playwrights. Involvement with the course quickly bore fruit as Harry’s debut play Jackie and Eddie. Eddie and Jackie ran at the Unity Theatre for a week last August. Paying homage to the realism of Mike Leigh’s works, the Liverpool-set two hander was given a glowing review by Nerve.
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| The cast and crew of the film following completion of the boxing sequences |
Moving from theatre into film Hits Like a Girl marks the first collaboration between Harry and creative partner Marie, who makes her debut as a film producer. A near permanent fixture in the stage front photo pit at the city’s venues over the past four years, Marie has gained a reputation as one of the finest music photographers in Liverpool. The in-house snapper at the O2 Academy Liverpool, Marie’s features and live shots have featured heavily in Bido Lito! Getintothis and Pennyblack Music.
Inspiration for Hits Like a Girl arrived in one of the locations that features prominently in the film. ‘I was training in No Limits gym on Mount Pleasant’ Harry recalls, sat in the Soul Café on Bold St. ‘I was taken aback by the guys there who are basically just ninjas, ‘cos it’s a mixed martial arts gym and then one day there were a couple of girls in who were just shaming everyone, most of the guys in there. Lifting weights above their heads and hitting the punchbag ridiculously hard and I just thought, ‘Right, that’s a really interesting character.’
‘I’m crap with titles’ Harry says self-deprecatingly of the film’s memorable moniker. ‘I was reading a book that basically said any good title, you get it instantly, so with Hits Like a Girl you know it’s something to do with fighting, and it’ll have a female lead. Anything that has fighting and girls, you know it’s going to be a gender theme. Some people like to think of a title before they start’.
Tapping into a similar vein of gritty realism favoured by Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), Lynne Ramsey (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Shane Meadows (This Is England) many of the directors Harry cites as inspiration create films that evoke a strong sense of place.
Particularly inspired by female directors, Harry hopes that the gender themes addressed in the picture go beyond the characters on the screen to the actual film industry itself. ‘In the newspapers, there seems to be every week there seems to be a really low percentage of female actors and filmmakers’ Harry laments. ‘I don’t think at Cannes last year there was one female filmmaker, the year before there might have been two’.
Shot around Park Road, Toxteth, the location was the setting for the film from the outset. ‘It was always going to be there’ Harry nods. ‘I thought that I’ve never seen a film with Toxteth in and with the scheme it’s about getting away from London and going to different regions. I can’t imagine it being set in Southport, it’s really middle class. I think the city works better, you feel more alone in a city’.
With Liverpool an intrinsic part of the story the creative partners were at pains to avoid familiar tropes associated with screen portrayals of the city. ‘I was saying to the cameraman ‘You always get shots of the Liverbirds, the Radio City Tower the ferries, it’d be nice to just film it, not show any of that and people would still know it was Liverpool. With Liverpool known as a story telling city, it’s weird that we haven’t had more filmmakers’ Harry muses. ‘We’ve got TV makers like Phil Redmond and good writers like Jimmy McGovern but no film directors. Terrence Davies, he’s made big films in Liverpool but besides him and Alex Cox, that’s it’.
While the story and the script were completed with relative ease, the meetings held in Sheffield to determine who would receive funding proved to be more nerve-racking. As the youngest participants present, the couple unsurprisingly found the process daunting at the outset. ‘It was weird, it was like reality TV’ Harry recalls of the process. ‘You had to deliver a pitch in front of the other four filmmakers, so not only did you have the pressure of Creative England representative in front of you, it’s the other people thinking ‘How’s good is this fella gonna be?’ That was difficult. It was intimidating, looking round thinking ‘these people must have more experience’’. Once they were confirmed as being part of the finalists jubilation understandably set in. ‘We got selected and did a dance round the flat’ Harry grins.
With a crew of 15 personnel, in view of the budget and the deadline for submitting the project it was essential that the film be completed swiftly. ‘Creative England’s guidelines said that no-one should be shooting five days’ Harry explains. ‘It’s impossible to afford, five days with the budget we’ve been given, there’s just not enough money. Even though five grand sounds like plenty of money, it isn’t’.
With Marie in the producer’s role of controlling the finances, the lion’s share of the budget was taken up by the camera department, estimated by Marie to cost £3000. ‘You need five people in a camera department minimum. Everything’s got to be cheap and do-able in a film’ Marie explains. ‘If you’ve got that amazing scene that carries on forever and you think, ‘Well that’s gonna take eight hours to make and there’s no time’, you’ll have to scrap half of it’.
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Other imponderables that had to be factored in included the cost of hiring a police officer to be on hand to reassure the public during the shooting of violent scenes that take place outdoors. ‘It pains me that we can’t be more guerrilla’ Harry says of the paperwork necessary to get the film made on location. ‘On the day, you might say, ‘Well let’s not try this street, use the next street’, but we haven’t got the permits for the next street.’
Featuring a company of twelve actors, including three principal female leads, the star of the piece is Liverpool native Cath Brown as Kay McKenna. ‘The Everyman has got a massive database with local actors on, ‘cos it’s important to use local actors as well’ Harry emphasises. ‘Even to get a Manchester based actress and say to her ‘Can you sound Scouse?’ it feels false’.
Assembling a highly impressive crew for the shoot, the team behind the camera includes several industry stalwarts. ‘The cinematographer Phil Wood has shot loads of stuff’ Harry says. ‘He shot the short film that won a BAFTA and was nominated for an Oscar this year, The Voorman Problem with Tom Hollander and Martin Freeman. Ryan our sound designer has worked on (Jack Whitehall sitcom) Fresh Meat on Channel 4’.
The film also features the talents of two of the city’s best stunt people, Ray Nicholas whose CV includes Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator. Eunice Huthart, Angelina Jolie’s stunt double and stunt performer in several James Bond films meanwhile signed on to work on the project after Harry contacted her via Twitter.
A huge coup for the filmmakers and a profile boosting presence amongst the credits is soundtrack composer Bill Ryder-Jones. Formerly of The Coral now an acclaimed solo artist, film scores have formed a significant strand of Bill’s output. The fifth commission Bill has received for a film soundtrack, the multi-instrumentalist’s playing also features on Submarine, the acclaimed OST created Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner.
‘If you’re going for realism, you can’t have a jukebox soundtrack’ Harry emphasises of the original music in the film. Aside from his obvious talent, a massive bonus in view of the film’s tight budget was Bill’s insistence that his work on the film was undertaken for free. ‘Bill told us ‘If you even try and pay me I won’t do it’ Harry says. ‘He said that if we’ve got too much money to put it into buying a camera, if he hadn’t said that we wouldn’t have been able to afford a really good cinematographer’. Approached directly by the filmmakers the musician agreed to the project immediately ‘He hadn’t read my writing, he hadn’t seen the script’ Harry explains. ‘He’s been the factor that pulls everything together’.
Once the shoot was underway the project had to be completed as swiftly as possible. ‘Our deadlines were so tight, we shot between the 9th and 12th of May, then the film had to have a first cut by the 6th June, so it was less than a month later we had to get the film done’ Harry says. With the shoot completed in three days, the picture was dispatched to London for post-production, including ‘grading’ which defines the film’s colour palate before the completed film and the accompanying score was submitted to Creative England at the end of June.
Working off an eleven page script to clock in at fifteen minutes, as per the project guidelines, the quarter of an hour running time is to ensure the picture is eligible for short film festivals. Encounters Film Festival in Bristol which holds BAFTA qualifying status is one of several festivals Hits Like a Girl will be submitted to as part of the scheme ran by Creative England, while Harry and Marie also have the option to submit the work to events themselves.
‘For me this will bridge the gap from being an amateur with no filming permits to near professional level’ Harry says when asked what the pair will take away from the experience. ‘It’s a big lesson, it’s like graduating University for free’ Marie adds. ‘They’re teaching you all the stuff that you really, really need to know rather than you spending years and years in university spending shitloads of money, walking out and still not knowing how to do it!’
‘Marie’s a prime example’ Harry nods. ‘After this she’ll know the ins and outs of filmmaking having learnt it on the job. You can do years at film school and not get your hands dirty, but then once you have a meeting with the Liverpool Film Office and get the locations arranged you’ve already started’.
Hits Like a Girl will be released later this summer
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