You Instead official artwork featuring Natalia Tena and Luke Treadaway
AUSTIN, Texas, April 18, 2011 – On a very chilly Monday morning last month, Natalia Tena (Harry Potter), Luke Treadaway (Clash of the Titans), and director David Mackenzie (Perfect Sense), huddled in a tent near The Moonshine Bar & Grill in Austin, Texas to talk about their latest film, You Instead.
The film had its US premiere at the South by South West (SXSW) film and music festival, March 11 - 20, 2011.
You Instead heroine, Morello (Natalia Tena), is a rowdy, artistic, post-punk-diva, as well as the lead singer of The Dirty Pinks indie rock band.
Morello is dating a handsome, well-to-do businessman and eagerly anticipating the biggest concert opportunity her band has ever landed.
Adam (Luke Treadaway), is the hunky lead singer of an electro pop group dubbed The Make, who is dating a spoiled supermodel. Adam hails from California and looks the part with tan, chiseled features. He is Morello's biggest rival.
Morello and Adam find themselves tethered together after a raucous fight on the fairground. The "security guard" with the key disappears, creating a good bit of sexual tension for the audience to enjoy, but also putting Morello in the position of having to appear on stage with Adam attached to her wrist.
Through many bizarre and humorous antics (including a comical stage performance and an awkward bathroom scene), Adam and Morello eventually realize that their rivalry has lost momentum and a quirky romance is blossoming.
All it took was a pair of handcuffs, a music festival, and 24 hours trapped together!
You Instead was shot in an amazing four and a half days during the renowned T in the Park music festival in Scotland. Director David Mackenzie wanted to convey the genuine frenzy of an actual music festival and thought the best way to do that would be to shoot You Instead documentary-style amid the real thing.
“We wanted to create something that tangibly feels like the crazy music festival environment,” Mackenzie explained. “We decided the only way to do that was to shoot the whole film entirely in this one festival so that we had a complete immersion experience. We’d have needed 85,000 extras in order to fake it!”
During those four and a half days of shooting, Treadaway and Tena barely removed the handcuffs their characters were bound by, even when the cameras weren’t on them.
“After three weeks of rehearsals,” recollected Treadaway, “we’d grown quite adept at keeping our hands together and doing everything [handcuffed] – picking up cups of tea or whatever.”
“Often times,” laughed Tena, “if one of us was rolling a cigarette or someone had to go to the loo, we’d take them off, but other than that, we’d spend most the time with [the handcuffs] on … In fact, the scene where we finally take them off and I run away – that was a really weird scene to do.”
To cope with the unpredictable nature of the environment they were working in, many of the scenes – and even some of the actor’s lines – were improvised.
“We started off following the letter of the script,” explained Mackenzie. “Then as the festival diverted and our process developed, we started rolling with the tide and improvising around it, thereby making the festival become kind of a character in the movie.”
Like their characters, Treadaway and Tena are no strangers to the music industry. Both have been in bands, and composed and performed music in various films. In fact, Tena currently leads the band Molotov Jukebox which is releasing a debut EP on May 16.
“Most filmmaking is about pre-visualization,” You Instead director Mackenzie explained. “Pre-visualized location directing, storyboarding, and all that. The festival is only up for three or four days; after that, everything is dismantled and out of the way. To be in this environment you just have to go in there braced, deal with it, and come out the other side. It was quite unlike any filmmaking I’ve ever done before. It was very liberating, and I think we did a good job.”
Watch Jennifer Grassman’s SXSW interview of Luke Treadaway and Natalia Tena:
Watch Jennifer Grassman’s SXSW interview of David Mackenzie:
You Instead Links:
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About the Author:
Singer, songwriter and pianist, Jennifer Grassman is an award-winning recording artist based in Houston, Texas. Subscribe by RSS feed and read more from Jennifer at www.JenniferGrassman.com. You can follow Jennifer on Twitter or Facebook. Read more The Business of Being Diva at The Washington Times Communities.
-cl- 4/19/11
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