5 Questions with David Drake
1. Can you talk briefly about your background? Do you feel it informs your work, why or why not?
I was born in New York City in 1986 and grew up in a few places just North of the city. My parents divorced when I was 7 and my mother remarried when I was 8. On the surface we had a pretty normal looking suburban life but behind closed doors there was major dysfunction with my stepfather: alcoholism, heroin addiction, and abuse. When I reached my early teens my stepfather joined a religious group and proceeded to brainwash me, and this ended up being a really difficult thing to escape. I finished high school at 18 and moved away as far as I could get from home -- which ended up being Dublin, Ireland. I lived there by myself in my late teens and supported myself by working as a window cleaner. I met a British girl over there, and we ended up moving back to New York together.
We got married when I was 21 and I made ends meet for a number of years by working in a sheet metal factory, in retail, and I even used to hawk jewelry on the street. All sorts of jobs. I always did photography as a hobby, but my portfolio started to get me some freelance work around 2008. I was 23 when my daughter was born. We decided to move to the UK less than a year later, mainly so we could get healthcare through the NHS. My photography really picked up once we moved, and after a few projects I started shooting portraits and album covers for artists like The 1975, Django Django, Glass Animals, and Kele Okereke. I began directing music videos around 2015, and In 2017 the album cover I shot for The 1975 was nominated for an artwork Grammy.
After that I wrote and directed Party Wall, then a short documentary in 2018 called A Foot of Turf which ended up premiering on NOWNESS. Later in 2018 I wrote and directed a short film called Early Worm, and then in 2019 I directed another short documentary called Post 398. All these films are about isolation, emotional turmoil, and transience in some way or another — and all of those subjects are drawn pretty deeply from my personal experiences.
2. What's the backstory here - what was the initial idea & how did it evolve from there?
When I first got married my wife and I lived in some pretty rough places in upstate New York. We lived in one place which was basically a three story house unofficially turned into 3 apartments and way too many people were crammed in there (probably close to 10). We lived in what had probably been the attic space at some point, so the floors and walls were wafer thin. When the neighbours downstairs were having sex the whole house would echo and rattle. We didn't even know their last names, but we knew every intimate detail of what they got up to. It was ridiculous. Anyway, that place was in the back of my mind when I started writing Party Wall a few years later in 2017.
Around that time I was watching a lot of youtube channels, some early game streamers, podcasts, and I was trying to understand how they were making a living from ad revenue while essentially just making stuff in their living rooms. I remembered reading about stylites at some point (AKA pillar monks), these were medieval monks who lived in total isolation on top of pillars in the middle of cities, and they would never come down. They would stand up there and shout proclamations at the people below, and those people would bring them food and water (I guess if they liked what they heard). Sounded a lot like Youtubers and their subscribers.
Those were the kernels that started me thinking of Party Wall. Also the lack of budget forced me to think about a film with only one actor and one location.
3. What was the biggest challenge in making this film?
Because I'm self taught and never went to university, I never was able to form networks of friends working in the same field as me. So probably the biggest challenge was figuring out who could help me make this film. I was asking everybody and anybody if they knew any cinematographers and actors. I met with a ton of people who didn't seem a good fit, but then I ended up meeting Jenny Swindells and Joe Carver. Jenny had acted in a number of short films, and Joe had made a few of his own films that were really good. We hit it off and I shared my script for Party Wall, which they both liked.
I had a budget of next to nothing (£300) so that was the next challenge. Thankfully everybody I asked was into the script and willing to work on it for free. We rehearsed a few times, made some minor tweaks, and then scheduled the shoot for a weekend when everybody was off of work. We shot it two days and an evening, but post production was an absolute nightmare because again… I'm self taught and never shot (or edited) a film before. There was no naming convention for the footage, there was no audio syncing, and because we only shot with location sound for one day we had to do a metric ton of foley and ADR. All lessons learned!
4. What's a film that you saw recently, new or old, that you really loved, and why?
I have two (hopefully that's ok). The more recent film is The Rider by Chloé Zhao. This one really hit me hard. I was totally drawn in by the remote and isolated South Dakota locations and the struggles of the lead character as he deals with a head injury caused by riding in the rodeo. Then you start to realise his home life is fucked, and he tries to escape from it through a horse he buys. You are watching this film, and you're moved by the characters long before you see him jump on a seemingly wild horse and tame it -- all on camera. Then you say to yourself, what the fuck is this guy an actual horse whisperer? Then you see the credits, and everybody is who they play. Blew my mind.
Then I also watched an older film called Bad Timing by Nicholas Roeg starring Art Garfunkle and Theresa Russell. I think it came out in 1980 or thereabouts. The film is about a couple's fucked up relationship, told across a handful of narrative strands from different moments across a year or so. These strands are woven together through the edit, so you experience all the moments simultaneously without knowing the horrible thing that happened -- until you finally find out and it all falls into place like a puzzle. It is super transgressive but also really beautiful. I really liked the atmosphere of transience that came out of the non-linear storytelling.
5. What's next for you?
My feature film Modern Washout was picked up by the BFI Network for early development support in 2019 so that has been something I've been working on with them for close to a year now. More recently I partnered with producers Helene Sifre and Sam Bank on another feature film that I'm writing called Dead Letters, which I'm incredibly excited about as well. I have a few other things in the pipeline, one of which is another short film that I wrote called Left Over (this time with a bit of budget). Lastly my short documentary Post 398 is currently doing the festival circuit.
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http://www.daviddrake.co.uk
Instagram + Twitter: @davidndrake
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/kamiokande