![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-one-sheet.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Making his feature directorial debut with SURVIVING CONFESSION is MATTHEW TIBBENHAM.\u00a0 \u00a0A veteran director of numerous shorts, not to mention garnering experience with the camera working on films like “Deliver Us From Evil” and Scott Derrickson’s “Sinister”, Matthew knows his way around and through a story and how to visually bring that to life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Not knowing what to expect on screening SURVIVING CONFESSION, it was more than pleasantly surprising to find it filled with sharply written and acted humor that is laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish, but with some truly sobering and thoughtful moments of reflection.\u00a0 Written by Nathan Shane Miller and starring Clayton Nemrow as “Father Morris” and Jessica Lynn Parsons as non-parishioner but confessional crashing “Amber”, the film is essentially a two-hander that, in addition to the performances and chemistry between Nemrow and Parsons, benefits by the talents of cinematographer Mark Farney who keeps the visuals interesting while steeping them in metaphor as a layer of storytelling.\u00a0 So solidly constructed is the dialogue that Tibbenham could easily translate this into a stage play.<\/p>\n
Set in the confines of a parish confessional, SURVIVING CONFESSION focuses on the stories of Amber and Father Nemrow with added wit and situational comedy courtesy of “drop-in” confessing congregants played by, among others,\u00a0 Jayne Marin, Kevin Ging, Sarah Schreiber, Ken Gamble, and Jerry Bornstein.\u00a0 Each is a stand-out thanks to their exchanges with Nemrow’s Father Morris, a man-of-the-cloth becoming more and more agitated and unsure of himself as the night goes on, all driven home thanks to the rapid-fire sarcasm fueled exchanges with Parsons’ Amber.\u00a0 The entire film is a delicious tete-e-tete as thed disgruntled and conflicted Father Morris has his world turned upside down by Amber.<\/p>\n
Leaving no stone unturned, Tibbenham is sure-footed in his direction and in the film’s construction, capitalizing on the challenges presented by a one-set format with attention to detailed and exacting production design and set dress, not to mention Farney’s cinematography.<\/p>\n
Speaking at length with MATTHEW TIBBENHAM, he is candid and pragmatic, the latter a good quality to have in the world of independent filmmaking.\u00a0 He also presents with a good sense of humor.\u00a0 But most striking is how very self-assured and confident he is in his decision-making and directing abilities, something that is proven with just one look at SURVIVING CONFESSION. . .<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Laughing non-stop through 90% of this film, Matthew, kudos not only to your casting but to your cinematography and particularly DP Mark Farney’s lighting.\u00a0 But let’s start with Clayton Nemrow and his character of Father Morris.\u00a0 Doing exposition work for you when it comes to Father Morris is Farney’s lighting.\u00a0 There’s generally a shadow on one half of his face, which I find very interesting because of the whole idea of dark and light, good and evil and he’s at a crossroads emotionally as to where his future lies.\u00a0 But in watching Clayton, have to say that I kept thinking “Greg Kinnear, Greg Kinnear, Greg Kinnear.”\u00a0 He comes across as a Greg Kinnear.\u00a0 He should bill himself now with, “‘You’ve got a low budget film? You can’t afford Greg Kinnear? Hire me.”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n That’s interesting. [laughing]\u00a0 We were going for, well, a Hugh Laurie vibe.\u00a0 But, he would love that, I think!<\/p>\n How did this film find its way to you? This is your first feature directorial as well, isn’t it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah. It’s been a long road, honestly. I’ve been making movies for almost a decade now; just short films, web series, TV pilots.\u00a0 And the long story of it is that Shane’s script… Well, he sent a script actually to my former boss, Scott Derrickson. I did “Sinister” with him, “Deliver Us From Evil”, and then he went on to do small movies like “Marvel’s Doctor Strange”.<\/p>\n Yeah, just little things, little things. [laughing]<\/strong><\/p>\n Little things. It’s sad where his career’s gone, but hopefully, he’ll get back on top.\u00a0 [laughing]\u00a0\u00a0 I would read all these scripts that Scott would get, because people always said, “Hey Scott, you want to make my movie? Do you want to direct this? Do you want direct this?”, and a producer friend of Scott sent Shane’s script.\u00a0 Shane also knew Scott because they both went to Biola University in southern California.\u00a0 So, he sent Scott this horror script. It was this Guillermo del Toro, World War II Japanese prisoner of war camp movie, and I loved it.\u00a0 I was like, “This is amazing.\u00a0 I want to direct this.”\u00a0 And Scott, at the time, he was doing other things.\u00a0 \u00a0 So I went to Scott and said, “Hey Scott, do you mind if I go to this writer, or this producer, and just say, ‘Hey, I love this movie, would you consider me to direct?'”\u00a0 And that’s how I met Shane.\u00a0 I just said, “Hey, do you have anything else? Because that script, honestly, we probably need 10 to $20 million for it.”\u00a0 At the time, and even now, it’s like, “Who are you? Why do you want $20 million for this script?”\u00a0 So, I said, “Shane, do you have anything else?”\u00a0 We tried to get another movie made that I thought, “Oh yeah, this is more respectable.”\u00a0 It was a romantic comedy and we could do it for one to 5 million.\u00a0 Just brilliant script.\u00a0 We created a sizzle reel for it.\u00a0 And yet again, Hollywood said, “Hey, who are you two? Like, “Why would we give you even a million?”\u00a0 So finally, Shane and I just got frustrated and he wrote the script and said, “What do you think of this?”.\u00a0 And I said, “Shane, how is every script you write brilliant?\u00a0 We have to make it.” So then that was the start of a long, long journey.<\/p>\n Wow! Wow! Now when you get this script and you’re looking at it, it’s like, “I want to direct this.” How was your approach with this feature? Was it different than how you approach a short? Did you immediately start thinking of casting? Or did you think of your visuals and how you were going to keep this fresh? Because everything takes place in the confessional, but for one scene. Everything is in that confessional.\u00a0 So, you’ve got to keep it visually interesting in addition to the excitement and the chemistry of your performances.<\/strong><\/p>\n Very true. I think with any script I get, I ask is it something I haven’t seen before? And that’s really hard to do nowadays when they’re making hundreds and hundreds of movies a year. And is it something that emotionally impacts me, or makes me think in a way I really hadn’t thought before?\u00a0 \u00a0With Shane’s script SURVIVING CONFESSION, even though it was sent in one location, I just couldn’t stop turning the page.\u00a0 I was just like, “What’s gonna happen next?”\u00a0 And at first you don’t really know what’s going on in the movie.\u00a0 This teenage girl comes into this priest’s confession, she starts to poke fun at him and start to make him question what he’s really doing in life.\u00a0 But you’re still like, “Well, what’s…?”\u00a0 \u00a0 When I started reading, I just had to know what happened and I couldn’t put it down.\u00a0 And I think for me, for scripts, that’s one thing.\u00a0 And also visuals.\u00a0 Even though it was set in one location, I just liked the idea of what can you do in one location and that kind of challenge. And with movies like “Rope” and Hitchcock, Stuart Hazeldine’s “Exam”, I probably watched every single one location movie just to see what they did.\u00a0 So, I probably watched 50 plus movies.\u00a0 I was just thinking at first the visuals and everything wasn’t in the forefront of my mind.\u00a0 But I was thinking, “Who could play these characters?” And at first we wanted to have it be a more reasonable budget so that it would get some named stars in it, just because that’s so important.\u00a0 I think the one question everybody asked me when it was done is, “Who’s in it?”\u00a0 I’m like, “Some really great actors.\u00a0 You’ll be blown away by it.” But they’re like, “Yeah, but I’ve never seen them in anything.”\u00a0 \u00a0And I get it from the business model because if you’re just a viewer clicking through iTunes, whatever, you’re going to go watch the movie with Greg Kinnear instead of Clayton Nemrow.\u00a0\u00a0 So, it’s just business, but it’s sad that we do that because somebody like Clay would’ve never been in this movie if it had millions of dollars of budget. So yeah, lots of stuff brings me to the script. And the same thing happened with Shane’s horror script, it hit me emotionally. I thought, “Wow, this is nothing I’ve ever seen before.” But then at least for that one, it has these amazing visuals, but that’s why it costs 20 million to make.\u00a0 So, in this case it was definitely just the story and the heart of it.<\/p>\n Initially, here we meet Amber and I get it.\u00a0 The way she walks in there, just plops herself down, and just goes off, “I killed a man. Yeah, no, I really did, I did.”\u00a0 Amber is so convinced and you get Morris’ whole thing of, “No, you didn’t; no, you didn’t.” But then, the way she keeps hammering it, you start to wonder. And this is due to Jessica’s performance and her vocal tonal quality. You can hear this conviction in her voice. The more she goes on about, “No, I did, I did,” and she starts describing things, and you hear this conviction that either she’s convinced herself, she’s a master liar and she’s convinced herself of this, or else she really just wants to just drive this guy nuts just for the heck of it.\u00a0 \u00a0You start getting some great emotional texture and spin as to the thought processes of what Amber is thinking and doing, and how Father Morris is reacting and what he’s thinking.\u00a0 It’s a really fun cat-and-mouse back and forth that you have.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, she did. Like you said, she did a great job and was just intense while Father Morris is more sarcastic and poking holes in her arguments. And we didn’t have any music there at all just to create that silence, that tension.\u00a0 It’s interesting you say that because, for me, I’m trying to think when I watched that.\u00a0 I never believe her when she says that.\u00a0 But it’s interesting that you did start to because even now, thinking about it, I think I’m more skeptical like Father Morris. Like, “Yeah, come on, yeah sure.”<\/p>\n But by the same token, she makes you wonder, “Okay, did she do it?” Or is she a pathological liar and she believes that she did it?”\u00a0 This is where it gets interesting because of Jessica’s vocal inflection.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, and then you start to wonder throughout the movie, “What did she do?”\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s something that, without spoiling it to viewers, it does come back up.<\/p>\n Repeatedly comes back!\u00a0 Father Morris finally drops his inquisition, but to watch this relationship between the two of them develop, it’s quite interesting because it’s not a case of a character coming in and out thing.\u00a0 You see a relationship created between the two of them and that’s very unexpected. I did not expect to see that in this film.<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m glad you enjoyed that and glad we pulled it off because, I think, for both Father Morris and Amber’s role we saw hundreds of people. And then even once we narrowed it down to probably five to 10 for each role, we then had each person match up with different people. And Jessica was actually probably the last person we auditioned because she’s actually our cinematographer’s friend.\u00a0 And as Jessica keeps reminding me and I keep forgetting, we apparently had met a year before she auditioned for me at this just event in LA.\u00a0 I’d even given her my business card.\u00a0 At first, I didn’t believe her.\u00a0 I was like, “No, we never met.”\u00a0 But she goes, “No, we have, I have your phone number, it’s in my phone.”\u00a0 And the funny part was, I had no idea, I just totally forgot.\u00a0 But then she auditioned for us from the recommendation of Mark Farney, our cinematographer, and she blew us away. And then when we put her with Clay, those two, like you said, they just had this chemistry, this back and forth of antagonizing each other, but then occasionally being open and vulnerable.<\/p>\n I love what you and Mark did with your lensing, the back and forth and back and forth.\u00a0 But you’re not whipsawing our heads like in a tennis match.\u00a0 And you expand, you widen your shots. When she’s being very suspect as to what she’s saying you’ve got a wider shot. But as the film progresses and then you strike on something that actually feels and sounds like the truth, you’ve got the camera going in closer on both of them.\u00a0 Then you’ll widen out just enough, and you’re holding shots, which I like so that we don’t get that whipsaw effect.\u00a0 Then with the other congregants who come in for confession, especially with Mary, that’s a really nice close mid-shot set up with both the pastor and Mary in the same frame together. You vary things up like that, from a story standpoint, so the visual supports the story and the characters emotional beats and I like how the two of you work that out.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you.\u00a0 Because I knew this is a one-location movie, I wanted every scene to be slightly different. Whether it was just static shots for some of Amber and Father Morris, or with Rupert at the beginning.\u00a0 We kept the camera always moving and always slightly concealed because he’s a shady character. He’s always hiding behind things, he’s not always telling the truth.\u00a0 Or, like I said, with Mary and Father Morris, keeping them in the two-shot a lot of times, or over the shoulder to show that they’re connected, and there’s something there, there’s a relationship.\u00a0 \u00a0Mark did a great job with the lighting and I’m really happy with what he did and always with his suggestions on set because I always have a thing where I do the whole shot list of the movie, but sometimes you’ve got to be organic, you’ve got to go with the flow.<\/p>\n Production design.\u00a0 I’ve got to talk to you about pulling in Aaron Kelly. The confessional design is beautiful. It’s stark, it’s sparse, it has clean lines, it gives the subconscious impression of everything being black and white, cut and dried, which is what so much of religion boils down to anyway.\u00a0 It’s like it’s good or bad, there’s no in-between, and you see that with the lines of the concrete walls and the precision with which the Bible is laying there, the candles on either side. Everything is very symmetrical, very, very aligned and it’s so visually appealing, Matthew.<\/strong><\/p>\n A lot of it’s Aaron Kelly.\u00a0 It’s amazing what he did for such a little budget.\u00a0 I wish we could have given him so much more money, but he did this.\u00a0 He designed the whole thing.\u00a0 We talked about the colors and the style.\u00a0 \u00a0He and Matt Thomason, our set constructor, put it all together themselves.\u00a0 I helped a little bit.\u00a0 Honestly, I’m useless at those kinds of things, but Aaron didn’t let me touch too much of it, just the stuff that I couldn’t break.\u00a0 I’m still just amazed at what he put together for so little money.\u00a0 That’s a completely just built set.\u00a0 \u00a0For the final scene in the sanctuary we even had to transport one or two of the wall flats to another location just to give the illusion that they were actually next to each other, even though one we shot, the sanctuary in North Hollywood, in a Presbyterian church.\u00a0 The main location was in South LA.\u00a0 Like you said, clean lines. I grew up going to England when I was a kid and I’m living here now in London and I just wanted it to almost feel like an old parish church in England, those stone type quality.\u00a0 \u00a0He did an amazing job.<\/p>\n That immediately struck me; the production design of that confessional.\u00a0 It says so much so that you don’t need to waste any words on exposition. You don’t have to waste dialogue. No wasted establishing shots. It says so much just looking at it.\u00a0 And then, the way Clayton sits there in the chair, almost afraid to move. It’s like he has to sit there, he’s on display almost.\u00a0 It all just works beautifully.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you.\u00a0 And he has all his books there.\u00a0 The night that we have our confession, it seems like a busy night, but I’m guessing other nights you just sit there for an hour, nothing to do. That’s why we had the little library there. And Clay was actually the one that suggested the tea set because he was like, “You know, if I was here for three hours I need something.”\u00a0 And it was his idea to do that.<\/p>\n And the china tea set look with the teapot, the cup and saucer, it’s all perfectly placed, perfectly apportioned.\u00a0 And yes, you would expect to see that over a bottle of water.\u00a0 It has more grace and elegance, more propriety to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n I think we made our set designer run out just an hour before we shot.\u00a0 It was like, “Okay, we need a tea set. Can you go and find us one?\u00a0 And you have to back in 30 minutes when we do our first shot.” It was just like, “Agh!”<\/p>\n It’s those little touches that matter so much in a film like this, Matthew, because it is essentially a two-hander, and with one set.\u00a0 You mentioned watching “Rope.”\u00a0 You think about “Rope” and even though there are a lot more people involved, it’s just one set. But you think about everything in that set, everything in that room that defines who Jimmy Stewart is, who his character is, and that’s what we have here.\u00a0 The devil is in the details in this one.<\/strong><\/p>\n We thought about it just because in other movies every scene is all a new location.\u00a0 But this one, we have one location, so why don’t we think about everything?\u00a0 Why don’t we think about all the symbols, symbolism. And just why don’t we think about what we can because that’s the only thing we can control, what’s in front of the camera.<\/p>\n You did a beautiful job with that.\u00a0 So, I’m curious, Matthew, what was the learning curve like for you jumping into a feature film?<\/strong><\/p>\n Honestly, I talk to a lot of filmmakers and they’re always worried, “Oh, I just don’t know if I can do a feature.” And honestly, it’s just not that different from a short film, at least in my mind.\u00a0 \u00a0It’s interesting because I worked on a few bigger budget movies like “Sinister” and “Deliver Us From Evil”, and I would watch Scott, I would ask him questions, just try to soak it all up.\u00a0 But at the end of the day, it’s just not that different. The budgets are much, much bigger and if you need to need to get something, “Yeah, no problem. Let’s get that, you know, we have a couple million.”\u00a0 But with this one, you have to plan things out a lot more and roll with the punches if something doesn’t go right.\u00a0 But at the end of the day [on any film], you have your shot list, you set up the shot, you have your script and you go just shot by shot, scene by scene.\u00a0 I think that was the same for this. I probably directed a couple of hours of footage by the time I had done the feature, but it was still just taking day by day and said, “This is the day, this is what we have to do.” We split it up into scenes and then shots and the start marking off a list. And just like with, I think, most directors you can see the movie in your head beforehand.\u00a0 And you just hope it comes out slightly how you envision it.<\/p>\n I like your take on it because there are still so many directors who I speak with where it’s their first feature, they’ve done a lot of shorts, and they’re still going, “Oh my God, it was horrible, I didn’t think I’d make it through.” So, I like your very pragmatic and sensible take on this and that it’s not that much different. You put one foot in front of the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that’s at the end of the day, as a person watching Scott [Derrickson], one person can only do so much.\u00a0 So on those bigger budget things, you hire more people because one person can’t do everything.\u00a0 And you delegate.\u00a0 It’s all about delegation and the same with this.\u00a0 The reason I say it wasn’t that different, not to sound pompous, not to sound like, “Oh, it was easy”, because it wasn’t easy, no shoot I’ve ever done has been easy.\u00a0 It’s just that I think people need to give themselves more credit and if you directed a short, there’s not much stopping you from a feature.\u00a0 I think the harder things to keep in mind are pacing throughout the whole movie, just the flow of everything. But at the end of the day, if you can direct a three to five minute scene, then you can direct a feature.\u00a0 You just have to do that three-minute scene 40, 50 times.\u00a0 I know that sounds like, “Oh, just 40, 50 times,” but it really is.\u00a0 You’re just dividing it up.\u00a0 Maybe that’s why I like to do it because to me it does come natural.\u00a0 You could say it’s what I was meant to do.<\/p>\n So, what is next on your plate? Will you be directing another feature?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ah, well, hopefully.\u00a0 We’ll see how SURVIVING CONFESSION does. But yeah, I always have a ton of stuff planned. One of the producers for this, Jo Rauen, he and I are developing another feature together written by Mike Meade, it’s called “Nightfall”. This one would be more of a dramatic horror movie.\u00a0 In addition to that, I’m doing another movie with a producer here in London that’s more dramatic, fantastical, a dramatic movie more in the vein of SURVIVING CONFESSION.\u00a0 \u00a0And I still would love to do that first movie that I met Shane with that still hasn’t gotten made.\u00a0 Maybe if enough people like SURVIVING CONFESSION we can finally make this amazing Japanese World War II prison horror movie.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n by debbie elias, exclusive interview 07\/31\/2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-bts-3-1024x683.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-8-1024x541.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-2-1024x539.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-7-1024x538.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-9-1024x539.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-5-1024x537.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-1-1024x420.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-6-1024x539.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-4-1024x522.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surviving-confession-bts-1-1024x683.jpg\")