Case Study: Real Estate

Laurence Rosier Staines is an award-winning Sydney-based filmmaker, writer, producer and director. Since 2010 he has helmed or co-helmed seven independent theatre shows that have combined genres and crossed mediums, and since 2013 he has directed four short films as well as a series of sketches, radio plays and music videos. In 2017 Laurence was a resident artist at PACT and developed the interactive work You Can Have It All for Underbelly Arts Festival. He is an honours graduate in philosophy and is currently writing a feature film.

We asked Laurence about his short film Real Estate, which is part of the Official Competition of the SHIFT Film Festival.

“The biggest challenge was turning my house into a terrorist hideout, and staging a balaclava-clad kidnapping without legal complications.”

When did you first come up with the idea for Real Estate?

"I first got the idea for Real Estate when a friend linked me an article which detailed how a serial killer’s house was selling for far less than the median house price in its neighbourhood. I was also in London shortly after the looting of the cereal cafe in Shoreditch, which made it clear that gentrification could easily become a catalyst for violence. Soaring house prices in Sydney, New York and London were dominating the daily life of many people of my generation. I was also inspired by the 1968 film If…, the climax of which involves surreal intergenerational warfare."

How was the script formed?

"The premise of Real Estate felt (and still feels) very contemporary so I wanted to shoot it as soon as possible. I wrote the script fairly hastily, in consultation with a property economist who appears in the film, but kept some ideas fairly loose as I wanted to improvise with the actors during the shoot. The script was darker and a little more complex than the finished film, fleshing out some ideas that are only hinted at in the short; as it was an entirely independent zero-budget production, I wasn’t able to complete some of the more shocking sequences to my satisfaction so I left them out."

Since this was a zero-budget film, how did you approach the production?

"The film was shot on my iPhone 6s, with perhaps half of it done by my Director of Photography Thomas Hellier and with me shooting the other half. The bulk of the footage was completed over three days with the main actors (Jane, Darcy and Zoe), with some of the more peripheral sequences filmed a month or so later. The biggest challenge was turning my house into a terrorist hideout, and staging a balaclava-clad kidnapping without legal complications."

What was the post-production process like?

"The production was enormously fun, but the most difficult period was probably the edit – as film inevitably becomes a series of solitary people working in rooms during post-production. I had planned Real Estate as a ten-minute short film, but as some of the sequences weren’t quite landing and I couldn’t yet get the tone right, balancing between provocative realism and satire. I think in retrospect I was overwhelmed by the ease of shooting something on a smartphone, so I was less discerning than I would’ve been on more upmarket cameras and as a result the edit was harder than it needed to be. As a palette cleanser, I instead reworked the film into five or six short trailer-esque episodes, which helped me to focus the flavour of the film and look at the structure objectively: which parts were vital, what order to deliver information in, and which moments could be shortened or dispensed with. It took me about a month to get right, but going through this step was very important."

How did you tackle sound & music?

"My composer and sound recordist, Alex Wilson, was present during the film (and he appears in some edits), and he composed one piece of music for it (I asked him for something in a ‘Sleigh Bells’ vibe but with a couple of twists, and he did exactly that). However I also bought the licensing rights to a song that I intended to include in the film, but after I had done so I decided against using it. So this would be my only advice for other directors or producers: don’t let yourself be too impulsive—but neither should you be attached to something just because either time or money went into it. The work will probably be better if you can detach yourself from the circumstances in which it was made."