RODENTIA Director/Co-Writer Phoebe Jaspé: I’ve been 24 countries, 4 continents and
I love Scandinavian culture.
Something about me as a filmmaker, I grew up in Abu Dhabi and I took my A-levels there
and I went to England for University.
With RODENTIA this film I’ve directed it’s about a CEO turning into a rat.
So the idea came from mainly Franz Kafka’s METAMORPHOSIS.
My background stems from fine art so I used to use a lot of oils and canvas and then this
developed into photography.
Film is moving image, so every frame should actually be like a painting.
It’s very difficult to maintain this because this takes a lot of time in creating shot
lists.
We designed every single shot in the film so it’s more to do with aesthetics and it’s
not a feminist film.
The main character was actually based on myself and of course I’m not that horrible but
it was a part of me that I wanted to destroy.
The best way to express your negative traits is though an art form and that’s the only
way to have a release and of course to get rid of depression or anxiety or manic psychosis
which is what my feature film is about, is based on a 10-day manic psychosis episode,
more on that later.
So we wanted to explore in an authentic way how does it feel becoming a rat.
And losing your beauty is a huge theme in the film and so is disfigurement.
So if you combine disfigurement with traditional beauty it creates a sort of duality in the
picture and I think that’s quite important to explore.
Actor Fabian Bolin: “I’m getting some hair attached to my back by a special fx make-up
artist.”
Prop Maker and Special Makeup Effects Artist, Jayne Hyman: “I’m just applying some hair,
this is crepe hair, it’s like a theatrical hair that for special fx make-up.”
Actor Fabian Bolin: “I focus on more about the character than the animal.
I’m playing a rat, you know.
And it takes quite a lot to get that realistically with the movement and everything to focus
on and it helps not to bother and worry about the mask or something falling off and stuff
like that.”
Adam Pearson has worked with Scarlett Johansson in the film UNDER THE SKIN and UNDER THE SKIN
is directed by Jonathan Glazer.
And Jonathan Glazer directed that famous Guinness horse advertising campaign.
I wanted to find an actor that’s quite beautiful and I wanted them to be together on set during
the office scene because it creates some sort of duality when opposites interact with each
other you kind of feel a sense of completion because a disfigured man with a beautiful
model you kind of feel like they belong to each other and that’s what we tried to create
in that specific office scene.
Also Fabian Bolin is a method actor, so he practiced how to actually behave like an animal.
On set we actually called him by his character’s name rather than his real name.
I think method acting is definitely important when you actually want to embody a character
in a film.
Another interesting thing is we picked Fabian Bolin as the main actor.
He is Swedish and Brazilian and we picked him out of 200 applicants.
Swedish people tend to have that sort of villain type of look.
And we can see it Bill Skarsgård and we can see it in that CTO, the guy in MR.
ROBOT.
But Swedish people really the villains that I like.
Well, if you want to check the film out it’s in the link in the description.
I’m still connected to companies especially 3-D animation and I’m also really into creating
music videos.
If you are a musician or artist in Scandinavia or anywhere in Europe I would love to work
with you.
And I’ve filmed 5 music videos in Iceland and I really enjoy it.
“What the f?
What the f?”