Frank van den Eeden on Small Things Like These
Based on Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong who uncovers a disturbing secret at the local convent in the Irish town of New Ross. The film marks Frank van den Eeden’s third feature collaboration with director Tim Mielants. “I shot his graduation film, a few commercials, four episodes of The Terror and of course Patrick”, begins van den Eeden.
Mielants always comes very prepared and had been looking at the script for some timebefore he called van den Eeden. “Tim thought this was something for me. At the time I was shooting in The Philippines, but I came back to him early on as I very much liked the script,” he explains. “We sat together and Tim explained his ideas about how to approach this visually. The story is all about Bill Furlong. You could say he’s the quiet, strong kind of protagonist who is on a quest and needs to make an important decision.He is about to stand up, in this case against the Catholic church. Every visual element we introduced needed to embody the essence of this main character. If I had to choose one word to describe him, it would be humble.”
Mielants stressed the importance of emphasizing this idea of a humble life. The story takes place over a handful of days. “For Bill it’s waking up, going to work, taking your responsibilities, spend time with your family, go to sleep and repeat this the next day. Adaily routine that brings security to him and his family. Tim proposed to have a repetitive way of looking at his life. It’s almost like this Groundhog Day feel that he wanted to push forward. He suggested reprising the same set ups and angles over and over again butwith subtle changes which would reflect how Bill is slowly losing grip. We were not so much interested in covering scenes with a lot of angles, but wanted to keep setups to a minimum and to bring this story in a humble way.”
A good example of how the team captured this repetitiveness were the driving sequences throughout the film. “We had a camera mounted on the back of Bill’s truck which would show us where we were, it allowed us to explore his universe without having to shoot establishing shots,” explains van den Eeden. “When we are with Billinside the truck, it’s always the same profile shot. Even as the story progresses with Bill’s emotions going strong, we would stay with this very same setup without furtherdramatising these scenes visually.”
When it came to looking at creative references, Mielants and van den Eeden both discussed the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. “This was about the concept of simplicity, a down-tempo approach with not too many shots. Mielants also brought other references to construct this universe, which included photographs and paintings that would reflect the winter light and atmospheric elements like snow, rain and moist that we wanted to translate to the screen. He had one or two Van Gogh paintings and he showed me the Rembrandt self-portrait. We also looked at works of photographer Harry Gruyaert, who has the ability to look at people in a wider context but manages to focus on one person in a chaotic environment and that’s something Tim was interested in, to show Bill’s moral struggle and how this isolates him in his community”.
Van den Eeden had previously shot another film in Ireland at the beginning of this year and was asked about Irish weather, as it’s not unusual to experience four seasons in one day in the country. “There is a lot of rain in Small Things Like These and sometimes we found ourselves shooting in actual rain or snow, which was exactly what we wanted,” says van den Eeden. “For some of the scenes we added rain ourselves, which is not so much fun to do. The film takes place close to Christmas and we were looking for this dark, damp and cold atmosphere. We had SFX on set pretty much every day, also when shooting interiors as they would moist up the windows to bring the winter ambiance inside.”
Small Things Like These is set in New Ross in the 1980s, with flashbacks to the 1950s.“We had production designer Paki Smith bringing these era’s back to life. Paki understood that New Ross in the 1980s was a mix of the 1970s and maybe even the 60s. Depending on how poor the area is, people didn’t have the latest stuff in their homes. So, we were looking at a mix of 60s, 70s and 80s. The story of course also jumps back to the 1950s, so we had a few interiors which were not connected to the 80s and he also did a great job there by finding this balance of putting up what needed to be there and keep a natural feel to it.”
Van den Eeden captured the film with the Alexa35 and after several tests settled on the Panavision P Vintage set lenses. “I really like the Alexa35 as it has the higher ISO,” notes van den Eeden. “I wouldn’t say we pushed Small things to be dark, but it is a winter film and a lot of it takes place at night, so the higher ISO was really welcomed. The Panavision P Vintage set helped us to stay away from a super clean image. It would refer to maybe 80s or 70s, without screaming that it’s a vintage lens. During testing we shot some 35mm kodak side by side with the Alexa35. We were interested in an analoguelook, so I suggested shooting some negative film to see what we like about it and thentranslate that back to our digital negative. With our grader Olivier Oigneux we testedadding grain but not making it too distracting or obvious. When viewing these tests, key crew, as well as Cillian Murphy were present to look at the graded results. We would discuss the colours and grain but also wardrobe and make-up choices. I also did some of tests in the village of New Ross, it was interesting to see what we could do with existing streetlight and we found that some parts of New Ross actually still have a nice 80s look to it. Other parts were way too modern and we had to change the existing streetlightsback to the Sodium bulbs and housings of the 80’s.”
For van den Eeden, an important element was not making this film feel beautiful or cinematic. “Lighting needed to be motivated, you can’t just simply put up a light source because it will look good,” he details. “Things looking good was not in our interest, butwe didn’t want this to feel like a documentary either. I wanted the look to be consistent, but lighting-wise we wanted it to be honest and realistic, so it connects back to our humble protagonist. We ended up with a light package which was mostly smaller light units which we could hide in small locations and would give us a more practical based look. A big part of the film was shot in actual interiors in New Ross, these locations were very small but served us well to capture the atmosphere of the 80’s.”
The schedule was tight and the film was shot across a period of 25 days. “The interesting thing about this story is that a lot of it is without dialogue which makes it visually interesting because you are translating an idea which is not so much in your face,” says van den Eeden. “But we did have a few dialogue-heavy scenes, some with children, we would cross-shoot these with two cameras to keep a sense of realism and get the most out of the performances and also to make sure we had the right amount of time to get these done.”
When asked what he liked most about working on this film van den Eeden highlights the generosity of the actors and crew: “In a way the story of Small Things Like Theseresonated with everybody involved in bringing it to the screen. Hopefully the themes of injustice and moral choice will engage the audience as it did with our team”.
Camera Crew
Rob Atkinson … Electrician
Bart Bleuze … first assistant camera
Enda Bowe … still photographer
Cian Byrne-Little … Grip Trainee
Phillip Gaffney Gaffers … Grip
Eimear Ennis Graham … lighting technician
Sean Green … clapper loader
Bailey Hayden … Camera Trainee: dailies
Howard Jones … second assistant camera: B Camera
Oisín Kelly … key grip
Daniel Kinney … camera assistant: trainee
Donal Lafferty … Best boy
Sean Leonard … Digital imaging technician
Simon Magee … gaffer
Zach McParland … data manager
Shane O’Connor … daily still photographer
Mick O’Rourke … steadicam operator b camera operator
Leah O’Toole … Camera Assistant Trainee
Carol Tormey … first assistant camera: B camera dailies
by Oliver Webb
Images by Enda Bowe and Shane O Connor.