A trauma lingers in her mind.
Buried.
It influences her actions, gnaws inside her skull, shaping how she perceives and interacts with the world.
Anxiety melds with reality. Who is she and what has happened to her?
Viewers are taken on an intimate journey into her life, a young girl named Lucy, in the independent feature film, Beyond Control, written and directed by Nanaimo’s Raymond Knight.
“She is just a simple girl who has anxiety and needs to deal with issues and we all go through that,” said Knight.
The psychological drama is centered around her point of view.
“My favourite films were ones where you really feel drawn into one point of view,” said Knight. “I think that is where the most fun is, too. I like the small things and doing them big. So stories that have been done, but bring things into them that haven’t been done before.”
Knight started the film three years ago and began by pitching his idea to other people in Nanaimo’s creative community. He had a small budget. Knight ran an Indiegogo campaign and got $6,000.
He decided the best way to create a film with a small budget was to create an intimate experience with the character.
“The film ended up being more about trauma and anxiety,” he said.
The cast and crew worked full-time at other jobs so he had to plan scenes around people’s schedules. Knight said they had to film it scene by scene.
“It was just chaos every shoot and a lot of the time it was just me behind the camera,” said Knight.
As a director, he thought a key to getting a good performance from the actors was giving them something to react to.
He would often say the lines of the other character so the actors had someone to interact with. In the film it appears seamless as if the actors were both at the location speaking to each other, but often they were only acting with Knight behind the camera.
“I tried to create a realistic environment for the actors ... to get the best reactions,” said Knight. “A lot of the time I would try to go over the top to elicit reactions from people.”
Editing was essential to create the ambience of the film.
“When you are editing it’s kind of like editing out all these unbelievable moments at the last second,” he said.
Knight filmed Beyond Control entirely on an SLR camera and the crew built the cranes for shots themselves.
“The vision for a scene is more important than the equipment,” said Knight. “It was a lot of fun to see what you could do with your friends, but it is a hell of a lot of work,” said Knight.
Knight has been submitting the film to various festivals.
For more information, please go to www.facebook.com/BeyondControlMovie.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com