‘The Inland Road’ director Jackie van Beek on “The Joy of Collaboration”

Jackie van Beek has been writing, directing and acting in New Zealand for many years now. The 2017 New Zealand International Film Festival is blessed to have her feature debut, The Inland Road, playing in the programme.

The film explores the aftermath of a destructive car accident, centred on a hitchhiking Māori teen taken in by a couple who participated in the crash.

We talked to van Beek about her experience making The Inland Road, her approach to filmmaking, and what she’d like to see more of in New Zealand film.


FLICKS: How long have you wanted to tell this story?

VAN BEEK: I started writing the first drafts way back in 2008 when I was living in London. I was pregnant, I had a little toddler, I wanted to do some writing, and I wanted to try something long-form. I’d made one short film at that point, and so I thought, “Well, I’ll give myself five or six years of trying to learn how to write a feature film, how to write a screenplay for a feature film.”

It took me that long. I now have three children and I’ve made seven short films, but it was a decade of learning and making.

I’ve always believed the fastest way to learn something is just to start doing it. I tried to make one short film every year, and every year I would learn something more about filmmaking.

That process works well for me, rather than doing all the learning and then putting all of your knowledge into this one very precious project. I think the weight of that, the expectation on that project would be too great. It’s nice just to be always making and learning as you go.

You have another film coming up, ‘The Breaker Upperers’, that you’re doing with Madeleine Sami but ‘The Inland Road’ is your feature debut. Did you intend to make your feature debut with a drama, or is that just how the chips fell?

All my short films have been drama. So yes, it felt very natural that my first feature is a drama.

It’s more surprising to me that I’m making a comedy, actually, even though a lot of my theatre background has been in comedy and a lot of the TV I do is comedy. But when it comes to cinema, I’ve always been drawn to drama.

Did you stick strictly to the script or did it often change while you were filming?

It’s a very strange process, I find, writing a screenplay. I spent seven years drafting the story and refining the dialogue and then I asked if I could have a two-week rehearsal process prior to production. We flew all the actors down to Arrowtown and we did a lot of improvisation. I rewrote every night and during the day to make sure my words were sounding natural in their mouths.

It was a slow, methodical process and then quite a flurry of spontaneous creativity just before we went into the production.

During the shoot, we pretty much stuck to the script that we had reworked during rehearsals.

Given you’re a veteran actor yourself, do you feel that you direct actors differently as opposed to a standard director who isn’t an actor?

In my opinion, it’s very useful to be an actor as well. I had my personal experience. If a director says something to me, I know how that makes me feel. I know what makes me feel good and confident. I know what makes me feel bad and unsure of myself.

All actors are different, of course, but I think most actors, including myself, just want the director to love them. They just want to please the director. They want to do the best job that they can and it’s helped me a lot as an actor, actually.

Now that I’m a director, I really see my job as an actor as just giving my director as many options as I can so when they get into post-production, they’ve got a variety of performance they can choose from.

A little girl in the film has to deal with some heavy stuff. How do you direct a child that well?

Again, the rehearsal process was crucial. I would tell Georgia [Spillane] (who plays Lily) about one of the scenes and we would talk about the emotions in the scene. Then I would ask her to draw a picture – whatever she wanted – to symbolise how she felt about that scene.

During production, we’d open up the picture book, she’d look at her drawing, and she’d remember the emotions that we’d talked about.

Because we weren’t shooting on film, I could just keep rolling and talk her through the scenes. I could ask her to repeat things or try something new. I was always hovering just by the camera, so she knew I was there. I’d even sometimes just feed her lines and she would say them.

We did long, long takes, much to the boom operator’s horror. Sometimes we would roll for 18 minutes at a time.

How do you communicate with your cinematographer when you’re establishing shots? Was he a big part of the rehearsal process?

Now Giovanni Lorusso, my cinematographer, and I worked a lot before we shot the film. He would read drafts of the script, we would talk about it, we would look at reference material, we would look at arts, and we would look at films to hone our vision. By the time we got into pre-production, we were very much on the same page.

He wasn’t involved so much in rehearsal. Although what was useful is that he would come in, photograph the actors and, through the camera, look at them at different angles and see what works best. He discovered their rhythm.

Our film was handheld, so it was good for him to see how characters were walking because he was often with the camera walking behind them. It was very important to us that he be in the same rhythm as the actors so the audience wouldn’t feel the camera work in the film so much.

Another thing I really love is working with composers to create the score. We spent a week at my friend’s bach and the two composers wrote and recorded the score up there, just above North Piha. That was pretty magical.

There are so many different components of filmmaking that is just such a delight to be a part of. As a director, you have the opportunity to surround yourself with very creative, intelligent practitioners. It’s such a pleasure to work alongside them and learn from them – it’s the joy of collaboration.

And everyone needs a leader.

Yeah. I really enjoy that role. I think it’s so important, as a director, to acknowledge that you’re leading the team, but you don’t have to be good at everything. All of these people are so clever that you don’t have to worry about it. You just have to lead them in the right way.

What do you want to see more from New Zealand films?

I’d like to see more female directors coming forward. I do a little bit of mentoring for emerging writers and directors, which I love, and there are a lot of women who I think would be fantastic directors out there, but they just don’t quite have the confidence.

One of the things that I hope The Breaker Upperers does for New Zealand women is show them that there is an opportunity to co-direct something. I think a lot of women might put their hand up to direct if they know they can do it with someone else. That’s my own theory that I’m developing; I think women like to do things together.

That’s certainly true of ‘Waru’ which is playing at the film festival as well.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m really excited about seeing that. Got my ticket for that.


‘The Inland Road’ plays in Auckland Tuesday night, 25 July & Thursday 3 August as part of NZIFF

Also coming to NZIFF in Wellington, Christchurch & Dunedin