Colourblindness, LSD and Seeing Red: Luke Jeffery interview

At the end of last year I was fortunate enough to have seen Luke Jeffery‘s film Seeing Red, show as part of the Two Short Nights Film Festival (Exeter Digital/ColourBurn). The short film was superbly made and and a great standout performance from Charlie Coldfield. Deservedly so the film won the audience award at the festival, amongst some tuff high standard competition.

I caught up with Luke recently to find about the making of the film and his inspiration in putting the film together.

What’s the most important element in getting a script right for you?
I start a new notebook for each project and I don’t start writing the script until it’s full. The most important part is figuring out the ending. Once I know where a story is going then everything else falls into place.

How did you get involved in making films?
I was given a camcorder when I was 11 and I’ve been making films ever since. I studied film at Falmouth University and after graduating I spent a year or so working on other people’s projects before finally starting work on Seeing Red.

What inspired you to make Seeing Red?
I’d recently found out that I was colour blind and thought that it would be an interesting subject for a film. A wedding photographer making the transition from black and white to colour film seemed like the right choice of character, and the 1960s seemed like the perfect era to tell that story. As for the LSD, I did some research into possible cures for colour blindness and there are some people who claim that it works, although I’ve never tried it myself!

Tell us about the shoot for the film.
A lot of the cast and crew had worked together before, so it was quite a relaxed shoot. There’s a myth that film sets are supposed to be stressful environments, but I think that’s just an excuse for poor planning. We put a lot of time and effort into pre-production -sourcing props and costumes, finding locations, dressing sets -so when it came time to shoot the film we were able to have fun with it and experiment a bit. Things ran surprisingly smoothly.

Tell us about your creative collaboration with actor Charlie Coldfield and why you cast him in the lead role of the film?
Charlie was cast in a play I wrote for the Hall for Cornwall back in 2011, and we’ve been in touch ever since. He was involved with the film from the very beginning, even before I’d written the script, so I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the part.

We’re working on another project together at the moment called Granny Eyeball -a family show that we’re putting on at Exeter’s Bike Shed Theatre in August -and we’ve also got another film in the pipeline as well.

What was it like winning the Audience Award at the Two Short Nights film festival?
Winning the Audience Award came as a huge surprise and it’s great to know that people enjoyed the film. It was a strange evening for me because it was the first time the cast and crew had seen the film and I had no idea how people were going to react.

What’s next for the film?
The film has recently been nominated for the Best of the South West category at the Plymouth Film Festival and we’ve just found out that Roger Deakins is going to be on the judging panel, which is really exciting! I went to the same school as him, so he’s always been a big inspiration. Once the festival run is over I’m planning to release the film online.

Where can we check out your work and future projects?
You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and our website wanderingtiger.com. I’m still developing the idea for the next film at the moment but it’s probably going to be a feature.