LBB Film Club: Around the Bend

“This film is a reflection - a very personal interpretation of where I found myself at a given moment in time. Simultaneously, my father was near death, and my daughter had seemingly gone to sleep as a baby and woken up as a child. The finite nature of life became really apparent, as did the duality of being both a parent and a child.”

This was the spark for the creation of ‘Around the Bend’, a short film written and directed by Riverside Entertainment’s Ross Haines. Pulling at the thread of unconditional love that runs through generations, he examines his place in the ongoing circle of life with a series of evocative snapshots - short bursts of the human experience, interspersed with scenes from nature, and elevated by Nicolas Barry’s ethereal soundtrack.

“I can feel it in my chest as a sort of sweet pain. The Portuguese term 'saudade' does a better job… you could say it’s melancholy or longing, but that’s a bit overly simple,” Ross explains to LBB’s Ben Conway. “It's a complex blend of emotions. It was that feeling that haunted me and prompted me to explore it.”

Read their full conversation below.

LBB> You’ve said that Robert Munsch’s book ‘Love You Forever’ inspired some of the ideas and visuals of the film - tell us a bit about that!

Ross> It’s a very unusual children’s book, but I think it planted the seed years ago when my parents read it to me. It sort of sat dormant in my psyche for years and then sprouted years later when I was old enough to see it from a new point of view. It’s not necessarily the whole book, but the part at the end where the child essentially ends up taking care of his parent, and you know it’s the end without the author explicitly explaining it. 

We are left in the final scene with that adult holding their own baby. There’s birth and death, but it’s also like a re-birth or a transfer of energy. So perhaps that haunted me a bit. I know, somewhere down the road, that was inevitable. When I found that book on my daughter's bookshelf years later and read it to her, that same feeling sort of awoke, but at the same time it had always been there.

LBB> These are big themes to distil into a short film - how did you narrow down what aspects of life you wanted to show? And do you have any favourites?

Ross> At one point, my wall was covered in index cards with different ideas. It was just like an explosion of things I wanted to shoot. In the end, what we chose to shoot  had a balance of highs and lows from each stage of life; both relatable and unique. Some were interpretations of my own life experiences, while others were inspired by conversations with friends. A lot of scenes were cut, and it was a bit of a 'kill your darlings' approach. 

It’s really hard to pick out my favourites. The kid in the bathroom mirror, perhaps; he just had this visceral tension. That teenage angst combined with not knowing exactly where he was taking us. Also, the dad sitting on the floor with his baby comes to mind - his burliness in balance with the tiny little sweet girl.

LBB> You wrote an intimate voiceover that opens and closes the film - why did you decide to use the voiceover and dialogue so sparingly?

Ross> For me, this film was all about broad strokes. Visual storytelling is like a weird poetry; you have to fill in some of the gaps and make your own interpretations, but then it becomes a little more personalised. I wanted something that pulled you in, but I also wanted to open it up and let it flow, getting out of the way of the visual storytelling and the score. I just felt that there wasn’t anything that could be said that wouldn’t get in the way or feel cliché. I didn’t want it to feel too prescriptive or formulaic. That way, each person could pull what they wanted from it, and I think that shows in the comments I've gotten; no two people have said identical things.

LBB> When shooting for “broad strokes” imagery, how do you bring it all together into one cohesive piece? 

Ross> I guess the storyboard was more inspired than exacting. We are chasing an emotion or mood that fits the moment. I did and didn’t know exactly how it would all fit together. There was a framework, but I always approached it as if we should be locked into a formula. I always approached it with an editor's mindset, but I also knew I’d want to play with it a bit in post. 

In 'The Creative Act' (Rick Rubens's lovely book), it states that there are two kinds of creatives: executors and experimenters. I feel like when I’m working on commercials, we need to be executors, as the risk-averse clients want to know exactly what they are getting. Here, I wanted some room to experiment. 

To do great work, you have to be open-minded; there has to be a healthy amount of fear or uncertainty involved. It’s not always an easy jump from commercial to narrative to experimental to doc, so it was almost like retraining the brain at times to trust the process and to stay honest with my version of the story. It certainly didn’t make editing easy. We just had so much amazing footage that perhaps the hardest part was throwing away some amazing shots. 

Richard Linklater said something very cool…basically, if you do something that’s important to you, the power of cinema will translate.

LBB> There are over 50 actors involved in this film! How was the casting process?

Ross> I know! It’s a lot, and it was ambitious in that regard. I had an incredible casting director, Maria O’Driscoll. She understood the project and was phenomenal in finding the right talent. In the majority of cases, there was no time for callbacks. I just had to put a lot of faith in our team's gut instincts. Also, Los Angeles is a gold mine of talented people. We encountered a wide range, from seasoned to first-time actors. I spoke with another director who had also worked with a large amount of talent, which helped build my confidence. There were a couple of moments where the producer and I were feeling a lot of pressure to pull it off.

LBB> What tools, technology or techniques were key to bringing the film to life?

Ross> We were after naturalistic-feeling locations and naturally motivated lighting that created captivating frames out of seemingly ordinary or everyday spaces. I wanted the energy in each scene to come from the actors, not the background, but their worlds had to feel common enough and timeless enough to be relatable.

I wanted to give the actors a world they could live in and move in; to feel relaxed and ultimately empowered to embody the moment we were after. I love walking into a home or hiking down a stream, seeing what the light is doing, or wants to do, and finding the frame, the little pocket of energy.

The camera used was an Alexa LF with Panavision anamorphic lenses, cropped to fit, knowing that the primary audience would be digital. We aimed to capture the character and falloff that these lenses provide. We maintained a fairly naturalistic feel with patient frames - not a lot of camera movement. It was not a highly technical shoot compared to what is happening today with camera movement, VFX, etc., but each little vignette was very carefully considered.

LBB> The shots of nature - the sea, hilltops and sky - offer moments of tranquillity between the glimpses of human lives. What was the creative thought behind this?

Ross> I think these shots offer a perspective. It's easy for us to forget that we are inextricably linked to something much bigger, something we can’t ever fully understand or explain. There is still a lot of mystery out there. If you look at the endless horizon of the ocean, it feels like it never ends. Everything is cyclical; nothing is static, also mostly out of control. We are all standing on a little blue marble in space, yet our own worlds and problems seem massive and all-consuming at times. So yeah, it’s just a matter of perspective. Our lives, our pains, our joys - they are everything, but also nothing.

LBB> The music is also a big component - what’s the story behind that?

Ross> I worked with a wonderful composer named Nicolas Barry to create something original. It needed to be nuanced because it would be flowing through so many disparate scenes, but still have a cohesive and united motif. Look, he’s really a translator; I’m conveying what the scenes mean to me or how I want them to feel, and he’s working his magic, turning my clunky words into tangible emotive notes. I think he nailed it. To me, it feels beautiful, but it’s stained with a little bit of discomfort or anxiety. It’s bittersweet.

LBB> What do you hope people will come away from this film with?

Ross> That’s a tough one. I sort of made it for myself - something that I would like. So for me, it was both a reminder and an exploration. Life is short. It’s finite. When the film was completed, I think it was my daughter who, at eight years old, was one of the first to see it. Her eyes watered, and she gave me a big hug, saying, “I don't want to lose you guys.” The fact that we realised, just for a moment, how grateful we were for each other - that felt great.