THE director of a highly anticipated film set during the Highland Clearances has teased the premiere date, hoping his story based on Scottish folklore, along with hand-built animatronics, will wow audiences worldwide.
Ian Gordon’s fantasy adventure movie The Gudeman created waves at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last year when he flew out to France to promote his work.
The Fife-based director stunned people working in the film industry from around the world with the backdrop of his film, the dramatic scenery of the Highlands, along with his scratch-built animatronic “creatures”.
Gordon returned to the festival again this year after he wrapped up filming of The Gudeman in a bid to secure a lucrative deal with a distributor for the film.
The filmmaker's “Pan's Labyrinth meets The Revenant” styled film is set during the Highland Clearances and tells the tale of a troubled man who is sent to carry out evictions in a rural Scottish town.
However, he is caught up in a bitter feud between mythical creatures and is relentlessly stalked by a sinister force.
With filming wrapped up, Gordon said audiences can expect a trailer in July, and is aiming to premiere the film as soon as October at some festivals, but added that his team will need to “move pretty quickly”.
“We've finished the production part of it, and it's just in post-production now, which puts us in a place where we're hoping to talk to the sales agents and distributors about how we then roll the film out,” Gordon told the Sunday National.
“All the humans have wrapped and the dog, the dog is wrapped as well, but we've got some things to keep going back to the creatures because you kind of play with the stuff in post-production and then you think, ‘OK, I think we could do this better’, and they're really difficult to use and to work.
“Every so often, you get this magic when you see them kind of come to life.
“We keep kind of going back to reshoot little bits of that, and that's going really well.”
Inspired by watching films like Jason And The Argonauts while growing up, Gordon loved the idea of having hand-made monsters in a historic backdrop.
Although using practical effects over modern technology like CGI and AI does come with its drawbacks, with Gordon having to learn how to create and animate his own handmade creatures by himself, he is insistent that they are integral to not only how the film looks but also the telling of Scotland’s folklore and history.
The director said that his practical effects, combined with the backdrop of the likes of Orkney, Skye, Torridon and the Cairngorms, were a real showstopper when he spoke to some of the industry’s top distributors at Cannes.
“The fact that we're doing things with practical creatures as well, people are really responding well to that because there's a lot of conversations in Cannes at the moment about the use of generative AI in films,” Gordon said.
“It's polarising filmmakers, but the people I'm speaking to, it's a pretty simple conversation because they're saying if you're making a genre film like horror or a fantasy, our audience wants practical effects.
“They want you to do stuff on camera. They don't really want CGI or generative AI.
“So if you're making stuff practically, they say, well, that's what the audience wants, and my experience is that's what the filmmakers want to do as well.”
Gordon made his own monsters for the film using techniques like 3D printers and, in one case, using two people inside a “big suit”.
He explained some of the hardships he faced when creating his creatures, including building a goblin with no prior experience of animatronics or electronics, as it took several attempts to work.
“We want to get our hands dirty and kind of have fun on set rather than sitting and typing prompts into a computer,” Gordon added.
“That, combined with the Scottish angle, the sort of scenery and stuff like that, makes it a really interesting film for people.”
Recalling the overwhelming amount of support he has had from people for The Gudeman, Gordon said it has been a big motivator to wrap up the project and share it with audiences before next year.
He added that although he hopes a big international distributor will take on the film, which the Sunday National understands there are several in talks with him about as he prepares the trailer for the film, Gordon also wants to make sure The Gudeman is toured throughout cinemas in Scotland.
The filmmaker also believes that recent big Hollywood productions that have filmed in Scotland, like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and the remake of the cult-classic Highlander, will help create a bigger appetite for films based in Scotland.
“I think both of those films [The Odyssey and Highlander] are going to show quite a lot of Scottish scenery in them, and I'm kind of hoping they both have that sort of fantasy adventure, kind of angle.
“They're both kind of set in a period setting. I know Highlander has a modern setting as well, but I'm hoping that'll kind of raise an appetite for this sort of epic adventure in the highlands.
Gordon added: “Hopefully, if it creates an appetite for that sort of thing like, especially in the case of The Odyssey, because The Odyssey is one of those classic adventure templates, with a hero's journey in it, and The Gudeman kind of follows the same story structure of the hero's journey.
“It has practical creature effects, has a big monster in it, so I hope that, if there's an appetite coming off the back of that film, people will seek out other kinds of films that are going through the same things.”
