Come see 0507 TONIGHT in Long Island City!
0507 is the film which will kick off our Hope and Heartbreak series of shorts this Thursday. We spoke to the Blaine Brothers who created this 2 minutes of agonizingly awkward, hilariously funny piece of film making and also got to find out about a feature film called Hallo Panda which is currently in the pipeline.
Rooftop Films: Describe the film for someone who hasn’t seen it.
Blaine Brothers: A short silly film about relationships and technology that we shot in an afternoon.
RF: Where did the idea for the film come from?
BB: Cariad (who is in it) had just got an iPhone and gleefully was thinking of crap things that her boyfriend (that’s me, Ben, not Chris, my brother) might do. I want to make it clear though that the events in this film are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any real persons and events are entirely malicious. It took the four of us 7 or 8 takes before we worked out what the punchline was.
RF: The film is incredibly funny yet almost painfully awkward, was it your intention to create a film which would be able to convey this or was it simply borne out of the scenario itself?
The awkwardness is inherent in the idea but we all shared a glee in sticking on the one shot and stretching out Fraser’s agony for as long as possible. We always find when editing that it’s the pauses that make us laugh most so it was great to have a chance to make a film where this uncomfortableness runs and runs.
BB: The tagline of your film says how an iPhone can make your life harder. Did you mean your film to be a critique of how modern technology can get in the way of intimacy?
No we just thought that using the word “iPhone” in the description would get us more hits on youtube. Also we always thought of it as “the iPhone sketch” before we shot it and it’s a key prop, but to be fair it’s not really the phone that’s causing the problem in the relationship. It’s not a malicious iPhone. In fact we’d describe it as benign. Or inanimate. Except when it’s on vibrate.
RF: 0507 is being shown as part of our Hope and Heartbreak show. What do you hope your film could convey about the nature of modern relationships and love?
BB: Sorry can’t think of anything for this. When we shot the film we were really just being silly, any insight into modern love that there might be we’d have to describe as a happy accident. Though still legally our intellectual property ;)
RF: What’s your next project?
BB: We’re currently attaching cast to a feature film called Hallo Panda which is a romantic comedy about a zoologist who falls in love with a lepidopterist but ends up having to wank off a talking black and white bear.