GHOUL GUIDE
Gareth Tunley shot The Ghoul in ten days. Here’s his six-step plan to creating a no-budget miracle
1. FAKE IT
“When you’re skint, you have to innovate. Take the night-drive scene at the end of the film. That was Tom [Meeten, who plays undercover cop Chris] in a parked car in Twickenham, with our producer using two torches gaffer-taped to a box. Stand behind the car, sway from side to side and you recreate the effect of passing headlights.”
2. CAST YOUR FRIENDS
“Anyone can make a film using the resources you have. The Ghoul cost a fag and a fiver. I’ve known Tom and Alice Lowe [who plays Chris’ former colleague and ex, Kathleen] since the early 2000s when we were doing the Ealing Live sketch show, so it’s helped being part of this emerging British indie scene. Tom’s famous for his grotesque comedy characters, and wasn’t an obvious choice to play a muted cop, but holy shit, I was lucky. He’s a brilliant actor.”
3. INVENT YOUR OWN SHOTS
“The high-angles of Tom walking the streets were a poor man’s crane shot — or, more accurately, me dangling out of the window of my flat with a camera. We were constantly inventing stuff on the hoof. I had an elaborate montage planned for a party scene but we ran out of time. So I took the shot-list, filmed it as one scene and created a new technique: I call it the mono-tage.”
4. GET BEN WHEATLEY ON SPEED DIAL
“Being cast in Down Terrace was a galvanising moment for me: Ben Wheatley proved you
can make great cinema for next to nothing. As executive producer, Ben helped get The
Ghoul a distributor but he has this ruthless editor’s eye. He hacked away stuff I was clinging onto that should never have been in the film.”
5. GO GUERILLA
“We stole shots all over London, constantly moving, lest somebody stop us filming. The forest scene was a tiny copse in Wandsworth Common. It’s the magic of cinema: we just made the same trees look like a forest by shooting them at different angles.”
6. AND USE YOUR LOCAL
“The occult stuff is all historically accurate. I even had a magic consultant — well, a bloke I met in the pub who was into the occult. The dialogue about a magic spell to keep Hitler from invading Britain is all true but originally I got the names wrong. My bloke-in-the pub corrected it. My magic consultant basically cost a pint.”
THE GHOUL IS OUT ON 4 SEPTEMBER ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD