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| Non-negotiable |
Mike Doxford is in an Edinburgh hotel when we connect. He’s visiting the city to work on a documentary about aphasia, but the reason for our talk is his most recent short film, Non-Negotiable, which won the Jury Prize at last year’s Woods Hole Film Festival on Cape Cod, and has had several more nominations. It’s the story of a nine-year-old girl, Deb, who responds to her parents’ announcement that they’re going to have a baby by moving to a friend’s house and drawing up a list of non-negotiable conditions which they must abide by if they want her to return. It’s such a specific scenario that I begin by asking Mike if there’s a personal story behind it.
“Not specifically,” he says after thinking about it for a moment. “Well, firstly, I have siblings but they’re older than me. But I'm the only child of my parents. So this exact scenario has never happened to me. But because my siblings were older, there was an element of having those sort of older conversations around me. So I think I did maybe grow up a bit faster. So I guess there's a link back to me, and it's the young girl. It’s not completely powerful in that respect, but I do think I share links with a few notions in the film.
“I'm interested in the power struggle between parents and children. Okay, we've seen that quite a lot in films, but I kind of wanted to do it in a slightly different way. I wanted to make sure that you had this young character that is precocious, is older than her years, but you still had that sprinkling of youthfulness. I think it had to have that. Often you see mini adults when you see these characters, and I think it was important to make sure, particularly as her one true fear, underneath, is this fear of not being loved anymore. I had to make sure that I had that youthfulness to it, to make sure that that rang true when it happens in the film.
“I think another interesting thing is that moment when you're quite young and you see your parents in a slightly different way. You might see them as fallible, they have their issues, they they're not these godly figures that can't do any wrong. And I think there's an element of that sprinkled in as well. Maybe Deb, finding out this news, has started to see them in a slightly different way. Those are the mixed textures that I find scattered throughout. And I just thought it would be funny to have a young person present a list to their parents. But how do you do that so that it sustains itself? How do you create a story where it doesn't just fall flat in 30 seconds? It needed to have some stakes behind it and I thought a new arrival would do it.”
There’s also a power struggle going on between the parents.
“Absolutely right. That was a huge part of it too. Essentially it’s a three hander with all the different dynamics going on in this threesome and how these characters are playing with each other, what their insecurities are. And you kind of kind of go around that triangle and you can see it from the different perspectives. That was really important to me. And I think, as well, in short films, it can be really difficult to get that characterisation across, so I spent a lot of time before I started writing, thinking about that.
“I love the role of the parents in this film. I think you as a viewer get a real sense of their their insecurities, and that dynamic, that fear. The fact that they’re having another baby and they’re not always getting it right. I think that's so key for when then the mother opens up about her insecurities about being a parent. You know, I think they're both feeling that.”
Going back to what he said about children being seen as mini adults, I suggest that something this film does well is look at the different priorities that parents and children have and the fact that children's priorities are just as important to them but often completely alien to adults.
“Yeah, again, you're so right. A few people have said that to me. And I think not necessarily the feelings, but how a young person might interpret the situation isn't always the first consideration. Having a baby is a really good example, right? Because you might have the parents decide they're going to have a baby, but at no point up to that point has anyone said, ‘Well, is it really what our child wants?’ Because they wouldn't necessarily have a say in that conversation. It's just interesting to think about things.”
When he wrote the film, he tells me, he already had Jill Winternitz (his wife) and Samuel Anderson in mind to play the parents.
“They’re both incredible actors, they have an incredible ability with comedy timing, that this film really needed. And I just knew I'd be in safe hands. I knew I could write what I wanted the father to be for Samuel, and I knew Jill could totally deliver what the mother needed: And then the dad being that sort of peacemaker, wanting to make sure that things never tip in one direction or the other, and the whole event caves in on itself.
“Izabella [Dziewanska, who plays Deb] is amazing. This isn't her first rodeo either. She was in an Oscar shortlisted short film called Ganef years ago. And how she came into my life was we did a casting, we had a great number of tapes come in, and really the quality of young people out there acting is just quite phenomenal. And then my sister in law knew we were looking for someone and she recommended Izabella, and she hit so many of the beats that we were looking for in this film, she had such an ease with the lines. She had gravitas but equally a youthfulness that the role needed, and the sweetness as well. There’s such a sweetness about Izabella, you just want to spend time with her. She's wise beyond her years and we had a lot of fun working on this film together.”
The film was put together very fast, he explains.
“We scrambled together a small budget and then we roped in a producer friend of mine. And I said, ‘Well, I want to shoot this in two weeks.’ We had just had a lockdown, it was a very changeable time and there were murmurings of perhaps another one coming up. So we said ‘Let's make this happen,’ and we rushed it all together. We got an amazing crew, an amazing DOP. It was very fortunate with what we managed to do.
“We shot in an amazing location, which is in East London. And we rehearsed the day before the shoot with the actors in a rehearsal space, so we could get the blocking down. We never wanted to overdo it because obviously we wanted it to feel fresh the next day. And then we filmed the whole thing in one day. It was was quite a feat! And we shot with two cameras to make that possible.”
I tell him that I wondered about the sound design because in my experience recording sound in places like that is horrible.
“Yeah, it was a challenge,” he says. “It was funny because I had some family playing some of the background artists, and for the first couple of takes I think they didn't realise that you're supposed to keep quiet.” He laughs. “And then when it comes to the actual sound design, I love diegetic music. I thought it really suited this, so I wanted to have a piece of music that would feel like the sort of thing you'd have in that environment.
“When we have a reaction shot, the parents looking at each other, that's when we pumped it up a little bit more, just to make those those moments a little bit more comedic. And then for the emotional moments, that background track just dissolves away a little bit and we bring in this this musical piece which is using the similar notes and tones, so that gently blends in and then fades back out. There's no epic scoring this or anything. I really wanted to try and keep it as raw as possible. That's important to me.”
He also does a good job of creating a sense of intimacy in a public space.
“It was very important to me to shoot on anamorphic lenses,” he says. “I wanted to put the camera in that space and I wanted to get it right in front of them. And by shooting on anamorphic lenses, we could get a wider perspective. We could get close ups but then we can see the wider environment, which I think is so key, because it's like inviting us into the conversation.”
It’s hard to make a living making shorts so most people do it out of passion. How does that work for him?
“I've made other shorts before and I wasn't really going to make another short,” he says. “I think the reason this one came about is because it was an idea that I had and it really only works as a short. We just did a screening at the Cleveland Film Festival, which is really nice – a packed cinema, amazing for short films. It was really cool, but one of the questions I got asked afterwards was ‘Do you want to turn this into a feature?’
“It's interesting, because it's often a question for short films. People always assume it's for something bigger. And sometimes it is that, but my answer to them was like this: this is a short film story. I haven't taken any time to think about what comes next, and I don't want to, because for me, this is the story I want people to see. I wrote it and showed a few people and they seemed to laugh, and a few people cried from what happens, and I was like, ‘Okay, maybe there's something here.’ And like I said, I wrote it with my wife, Jill, in mind, so that was really the main inspiration to make it.
“Features are a huge desire of mine. I have previously written and directed a feature, which did a small cinema run in the UK, called Pleasure Island, which is a great experience. But yeah, I'm ready to tackle the next one. I do jump around different mediums. I also make documentaries like I'm currently making, but yes, features and then hopefully some TV shows. I've got a few out in the industry and I’m hoping somebody's going to bite, so fingers crossed, maybe this film can help make that happen.”
