A Love Letter To The World: Stuart Rideout On His Short "I Wish For You"
Director Stuart Rideout is a Welsh director who has written and directed multiple award-winning campaigns for The Climate Change Coalition, featuring actors and celebrities including Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry, Emilia Fox, Alison Steadman, and Miranda Richardson. Recently, his short film I Wish for You won the Best of Show Award at Best Shorts Film Festival in San Diego, as well as the Award of Excellence at the Global Short Film Awards in Los Angeles in 2019. It was also selected by The Asian Short Film Festival in Tokyo to tour Japan the same year.
A woman is moving house and as she is unpacking boxes she finds a long lost letter from her grandfather. When she reads it, his words evoke strong emotive memories as he shares his love and concern for the natural world around us.
This topical film has won prestigious awards including the Best Environmental Film Award and Best Cinematography Awards at the 2020 Venice Shorts Festival in LA. This film will be screening at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival in November. We had the pleasure of chatting with Stuart about the film, its origins, the importance of climate change, the visual poetics of Terrence Malick, and much much more!
The topic of climate change is such an important one, so thank you for telling this story. It's such a large issue that, as individual, it's easy to feel powerless and as though you can do nothing to shift the paradigm. What do you think are things that everyone could do in effort to preserve our planet's wellbeing?
You are right, it’s an incredibly large and important issue, and we wanted to make a film that distills the essence of the subject down so that it becomes more tangible and personal.
It’s up to us all to get involved, and I would start by joining in with the Climate Coalition, which is an organization that is dedicated to action on climate change. Sign up to their The Time is Now declaration.
Get involved, get your voice heard and really engage with the subject of climate change — contact your MP and tell them you want a cleaner, greener future as the cornerstone of plans to rebuild a strong green economy.
On a personal level, I believe people need to try and engage more with the natural world around them — go for walks in nature even if it’s just the park. Also stop buying single use plastics, think about having a more plant-based diet, pay attention to recycling, drive less and walk more.
In addition to climate change, the film has a lot to do with the memories of being young and spending time with grandparents. What's your fondest memory of spending time with grandparents?
I have fantastic memories of my grandmother, Mabel. She lived in a place called Blaengarw in the South Wales valleys and had a job as an usherette in a local cinema which was just up the hill from her house.
Every other weekend, I used to go and stay with her and was allowed to go with her to the cinema on Friday and Saturday evenings. I watched most of the early James Bond films there, various Planet of the Apes films and plenty of westerns starring Clint Eastwood.
On the Saturday and Sunday mornings, she would go and work as a cleaner at the same cinema, and again, I would go with her and look at all the film posters. Sometimes, if the projectionist was there, he would let me look at the big 35mm projector and the huge spools of film. I loved it.
How did you get connected with Michael Morpurgo to helm this project?
I had the initial thought of creating some kind of love letter to the world, possibly written from a child’s perspective, but I was unsure if I could write it.
I discussed my idea with Beth Tegg, who was the communication consultant for the Climate Coalition. She really liked the idea of a letter, and she came up with the idea of approaching Michael Morpurgo. I thought it was a genius idea and felt that Michael would be the perfect writer, as he is brilliant at writing stories that connect humans with the natural world.
Michael agreed to help us, and we had a really good meeting with him. A week or so later, he sent us the first draft of I Wish for You, which I thought was just brilliant.
The film has some serious screen talent attached, including none other than Jeremy Irons, who's an absolute legend. How did you get connected with your incredible cast?
Once we had Michael’s excellent script the film seemed to just pick up momentum. We sent it to Jeremy, who came back to us very quickly and said, “yes.”
Maxine Peake had played a part in the film Private Peaceful, which is a dramatization of one of Michael Morpurgo’s novels. We sent her the script, and she really liked it and also agreed to do it.
The toughest part to cast was actually the little girl who plays Mia as a child. I knew it would be tricky to get permits to take a little girl out of school to Wales for a week and then onto Oxford for another day. I was also worried about finding the right person who could work under pressure with a small film crew travelling around South Wales in early January.
So, I had what I thought was a bit of a crazy idea that I could use Emily — my daughter who was five at the time (she turned six the weekend before we shot with Jeremy). She was a little younger than we initially wanted but I thought she might be able to pull it off. I had a long chat with my wife and then with Emily, as I was a little worried that it could be too much pressure for her. But, she was very keen, so we took a bit of a chance.
I think it was one of the best decisions I made, as she was utterly brilliant. I’m incredibly proud of how she handled it and the work she did. We will always have the film we made together.
The film has some absolutely beautiful, awe-inducing images that crackle with that poetic Malick-esque vibrancy. How did you and cinematographer Dan Holland produce these spectacular visuals and arrive on the film's aesthetics?
Thank you! That’s really kind of you to say since Terrence Malick is one of my cinematic heroes. To my mind, it was vital that the film had a really strong visual sensibility and a beauty that really engaged the viewer on a visceral level.
I have known Dan for a long time, and we have worked together a lot, so there is a strong sense of trust and respect between us. He also has an innate visual sense. When we first started discussing this project, Dan said that he would love to shoot in a widescreen aspect ratio on old Cooke anamorphic lenses that give the images a really beautiful organic quality.
We also wanted the film to have a very natural beauty, so we shot it in available light. Then it was a case of choosing our locations very carefully and shooting them at the right time of day. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, especially given that we shot for a week in South Wales in early January.
I also wanted the film to have a series of elemental and abstract representations of environmental damage and pollution. So we spent a day in a studio shooting different sorts of inks and paint in a water tank and then various fire and ice effects. I think these shots really add to the poignancy of the film’s visual language.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
As a child, I had a really bad stammer that led to me having issues communicating, so I spent my early years lost in a bit of a dream world of comics and Hammer Horror films. I would draw my own versions of the comics.
This led to me going to art college to study a degree in graphic design, and I was pretty lucky, as the course I was on did animation and photography — both of which I loved.
On leaving college, I got a job in London with a company called ‘Lambie Nairn and Company,” a design based agency that specializes in Brand Identity for television channels. I attended lots of shoots and learned a lot about special effects, camerawork, and CGI.
After a few years, I joined a company called “Mighty” as a designer/director and worked on brand identities for various channels as well as directing a few commercials. Some of the idents I directed won some awards, and I began directing more and more commercials.
At this stage, I was introduced to a contemporary dancer, and we decided to collaborate on a couple of dance-based short films — Rooftops and Daydream. These went on to win a few awards that started to get me noticed by a number of production companies.
One production company in particular, “Coast Productions,” asked me to collaborate on a number of mini-documentaries for Johnnie Walker and Canon — again, these went on to win a number of awards. These projects were instrumental in my development as a director, in that they allowed me to experiment and loosen up my style of directing, which, up until then, was a lot more formal.
In 2006, I joined Ridley Scott Associates as a director and have been with the Ridley Scott Creative Group ever since. I now direct commercials through Darling Films in the UK and Fictitious in the USA.
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
I think the film that really inspired me was Jaws. It’s still one of my favorite films.
Last summer, I took my kids to the cinema to see it, as it had a new cinema release to mark its 40th birthday, and even though we have all seen it countless times, it still holds up really well, and we all still jumped at the same moments. So Spielberg holds a very special place in my heart.
I also love Ridley Scott’s films. He is such a brilliant storyteller and creates worlds that he transports the audience into. I just love Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator.
As I said earlier, I really like the poetic beauty of Terrence Malick’s films. I just love the way he uses natural light, and the way he edits is just wonderful.
I also really like the films of Nicolas Winding Refn. He has a sort of brutal beauty to his work, and his films are always interesting.
I think one of the best things I have seen recently is the Chernobyl miniseries directed by Johan Renck. I think it’s a masterpiece. I just love the detail, the storytelling, and the really powerful use of music. It’s just brilliant.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
One of the main aspects of the film is re-engaging with the natural world around us and appreciating it. I hope the film inspires people to simply look at the nature that is on their doorstep and engage with it.
I think it is important that we all start engaging with the challenges that climate change brings, so I hope this film inspires people to join in the conversation and sign the Climate Coalitions pledge.
Do you have any future projects in the works that you can share with us?
I’m actually working on a very different project at the moment. It’s a number of virtual reality experiences that are set to use nature as a way of altering one’s mood and help with anxiety. It is quite experimental, but I’m hoping that we find a market for it, especially helping people deal with the anxiety and stress of the past twelve months.
I have been working on it since the start of the year, and it is really coming together. I’m trying to bring my skills set as a director to a very different medium. I’m very excited about it, I love the fact I’m learning to use a very new technology and it’s a very steep learning curve.
I’m also working on three drama ideas with my creative writing partner, one of which is really coming together.
There are also a couple of commercial projects but the filming dates keep changing due to Covid-19.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!