I am thrilled to be interviewing Dictynna Hood whose debut feature film Wreckers is about to hit selected cinemas. I caught the film at the London Film Festival this year.

In Wreckers newlyweds David (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dawn (Claire Foy) move back to David’s village to start a family when they are paid a surprise visit by his brother (Shaun Evans) and secrets, lies and hidden tensions unfold…

CC The film begins with a simple premise but manages be gripping and keep you guessing throughout whilst remaining subtle. I really liked the fact that it wasn’t a genre film but at times and in turn, was romantic, thrilling and at times slightly eerie -

Can you tell us about the story and how it came to be realised?

DH Yes, a lot of the development of the script was about mood. You know the writer's trick of using filing cards?  I used a lot of filing cards but they were to do with mood in a way as much as structure, although, of course, there were structural things as well. When I was writing the script my question was always "Who has Dawn married?" And I like that the audience has to answer that and she has to answer that too…

CC So, how much of the story was shaped by the script and the development of the script and how much was changed in the editing process?

DH There's a lot of knocking out of dross, not actor dross, but our dross.  You know, stuff that is not visually graphic or visually expressive.  I found that in my shorts as well, anything that is not visually expressive immediately has to go.  We made two structural changes, but I don’t want to give anything away by telling you what they were!

CC I absolutely loved the village atmosphere conjured in the film it’s so evocative and textured – I know you grew up in a village – do you feel you need to know a location well in order to portray it with such detail?

DH It’s interesting… you obviously can’t always be from the kind of place you portray… I did a lot of location research – over a couple of years, taking photographs wherever I went in the country. I would say perhaps its about researching your location and getting to know it well and meeting a lot of people from there. Also it depends on the film; some are more grounded in reality…  whether it’s a fairytale, an action film, they need different things…

CC Did you spend a lot of time in that particular village?

DH Yes, a lot of time, taking photos and just hanging out! People were very kind to me.  Gave me sandwiches! And looked after me a lot.

CC Wreckers is your first feature film after making shorts - how did find the transition?

The shoot was more challenging than my last two shorts for a very simple reason, that there was too much to shoot in the time that we had to shoot it. We realised on about day 3 of the shoot that we couldn’t shoot the storyboard that I had planned with the DOP. This was very hard relative to my shorts where basically (within the chaos!) you are shooting your storyboard. For Wreckers I had to do a lot of thinking on my feet on the shoot with my excellent DOP Annemarie Lean-Vercoe; and this is where preparation was incredibly important. I had storyboarded the film 3 times, and had many, many meetings with the designer and DOP before we even began official prep for the film, so that when things became challenging on the shoot because of our schedule, we had a 'vocabulary' to fall back on. This visual grammar was partly about Dawn watching the brothers, and about very intimate close-ups versus very wide shots of the landscape. So even when we had to shoot in masters we tried to keep the feeling of her separated from the brothers in the compositions. Shooting to a tight timescale can be very exciting in some cases; when you are shooting very fast fantastic things happen.  There is a scene in a cornfield at dusk and that was literally shot in fifteen minutes...

CC I really loved that scene!

DH Yes, well it was like: We can’t get to the real location, turn round, beautiful cornfield, beautiful sunset, oh, very nice farmer, extremely nice farmer, called Glen.  Will he let us in his cornfield?  Yes, GO!

… Having said all this I would now love to do a feature where I shoot my storyboard!

CC You got some fantastic actors on board; Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy and relative newcomer Shaun Evans how did you secure them for your debut feature?

DH We had a wonderful casting director called Chloe Emmerson who is very tough and very pugnacious and she championed Shaun for the part of Nick very early on, he was the first one that she got hold of for us and was extremely keen that we should work with him - and she was right. 

Benedict came to the project quite late and my impression of him at the time was that if something interests him and he's got time, he will do it, regardless of the budget level.  I think he is a hungry actor, who likes challenges, I think he likes to explore all sorts of different material and he basically said "Yes, fine!" 

CC That’s brilliant – he’s got such a high profile after doing films like Sherlock Holmes..

DH That's true and his profile was growing all the time we were editing…
With regards to Claire, we asked a number of actresses to look at the part of Dawn and Claire really stood out. I think she really likes a challenge, too. Simon Onwurah, my Producer championed her and of the actresses we auditioned she had this stillness, this film stillness that you can just see everything going on without her appearing to "do" much and she is very, very special in that way.  She understood that a lot of the role is about her watching and that we are watching through her eyes. She understood where she was placed in the film.

CC It’s a really challenging role – I thought she was fantastic

DH Yes she is really marvellous. She gives the film it's core.

CC I know you have co-edited a book The Space to Move about movement training for actors... Could you tell us about how you worked with the actors - did you do any workshopping?

DH Yes, we did have some time to workshop and I think perhaps the most successful part of that time was establishing a relationship between the characters of the brothers.  I'm very pleased with the way that they relate to each other because they are such different actors and have a whole different way of going about things and I really like how they interact on screen, I think you believe that they are brothers and I like the way that the class difference is established between them: David sort of escaped from his background and Nick has also escaped from his background.  In fact very successfully…

CC But in a very different way ..

DH Yes, in a very different way and I think that that is quite subtle and all that was work-shopped in quite an organic way, we work-shopped the relationship between three of them, which I would hope was helpful to the actors. What we didn't do was go through every single beat in the script which I would do in the future, but luckily they are such intelligent actors that they did understand [what was needed] anyway…

CC Some quick fire fun ones!

Who inspires you?

DH Oh, lots of people! There are so many, so many that inspire me.

CC Top three?

DH Fellini.  Tarkovsky.  In a very different way Steve McQueen inspires me right now not because I want to make films like him, but I love filmmakers who do what they do and pursue their vision; fearless filmmaking, which is difficult.

CC What's your fave film of 2011?

DH Oh my goodness!  This is really pathetic because I haven't seen much at all. 

Two Years at Sea which I saw at the London Film Festival.

CC Top tips for budding filmmakers?

I think it is important to get a script that is really interesting to you (and hopefully to an audience).  Unless you are such a remarkable filmmaker that you can make an uninteresting script interesting, that's another way round.  Seriously, if you are a brilliant filmmaker, then you can make a less interesting script really interesting.  Or if you are a genre filmmaker and a very, very good one, then you can make a standard genre script probably quite interesting…  Also do not to be afraid to approach actors if you can get to them with a strong script. 

The timing has to be right but grab your opportunities and try and find some money to do it with.  Having said that some brilliant films are made on a very low budget...

Sticking to your vision is so very important and finding a good support network as well as a great, supportive crew who understand and share your ideas and can make them happen.

CC Lastly, what are you up to at the moment - any projects in the pipeline?

We have a script that is ready to go which also features brothers - 5 of them! - (I am obsessed with brothers, I think it's something to do with duality); we also have a romcom and a romantic musical that we're developing... 

Sounds exciting! Keep us posted and good luck with the release!

Wreckers is out this Friday 16^th December in selected UK cinemas including the Curzon