grantmcphee.bsky.social
Film director: Big Gold Dream, Teenage Superstars, Far From the Apple Tree.
Book Writer - Postcards From Scotland and co-writer Hungry Beat
229 posts
1,815 followers
1,251 following
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Fab! Glad you're enjoying it thanks!
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Great. Thank you and hope you enjoy!
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Thanks Mike!
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Here's the man himself
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But for me, somehow thinking we'd done something unique it was an incredibly surreal (and realising you know far less than you thought) experience. If you want to look for yourself you can stream Apple Tree on BFI in UK and Amazon in US; and Archive81 is available on Netflix.
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..seemingly develop on their own, not that we're talking about anything remotely original however. These are both very much using 100 years of B-movie ideas and I'm happy with that. I'm sure this side by side could be done with any number of vampire, bank heist or zombie film.
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based on an audio podcast from 6 months before Apple Tree was even written so I certainly can't be shouting about ideas being half-inched. I genuinely don't think the makers were or are even now aware of our film, it's just fascinating that these ideas can...
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Apple Tree is a very small, contained film where plot is a little secondary to a woman mostly walking around in slow motion for 90 minutes, like some sort of post-clubbing horror movie. What was more remarkable to me was that while Apple Tree was shot 5 years earlier, Archive was
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Of course, while these productions have a very similar sounding premise, characters and even very similar visual images they are very different films. Archive is a tight paced (ish) 8 hour series that develops into something far bigger than Apple Tree...
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The posters are a thematically and literally similar. If you look very closely at Apple Tree you can see that Maddy, the woman from the video is also visible and split on the right side of Judith's head.
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They both use the very rare Fisher Price PXL2000 toy camera, with footage from it being used throughout and using also being filmed wandering corridors with the camera poking around in cupboards.
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They also love to wander around the corridors of the house. In Apple Tree, the lead LOVES to do this, and in slow motion. And sometimes with huge amounts of smoke and backlight. And both have nightmares regarding the house and archive.
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they both have friends on the outside who provide exposition regarding the mysterious employer. And because the phone signal is so poor they need to have these conversations in the nearby woods. This is pretty clunky and cliched in both films.
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There's also a very similar art gallery scene, an exhibition that seems to feature women with distorted or obscured faces which the protagonists are mysteriously drawn to.
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To their horror they both realise the employer had secretly been recording them
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And find a hidden room behind a secret door. In both secret rooms the mysterious employer is waiting for them there.
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And both eventually find a hidden damaged tape in a box which holds the key to a mystery.
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The protagonists spend many hours tinkering around with old video recorders while looking through their bosses video archive.
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In both films the mysterious boss accompanies the protagonists to the remote location in a jeep, through plentiful country roads and leads them into the house for a tour....
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The mysterious woman in the archive in Apple Tree is called Maddy and in Archive81 she is called Melody. Both appear to the present day viewers as glitchy timeslips. More on this later though...
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Far From the Apple Tree and Archive81. Both films concern a young protagonist being offered a job by a mysterious boss to sort through an archive of video footage, in a remote country location and both archives feature a mysterious woman. Apple Tree on left, Archive81 on right.
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...and with a big budget. I was reminded of it today and finally made the effort of seeing what the shots and story looked like side-by side...So here then is our $15K 90m film against it's superior and multi-million dollar 8 part blockbuster...
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Unlike concerted exploitation rip-offs, I'm sure there are hundreds of examples of similar films, with no knowledge coming out at the same time (e.g. Matrix/13th Floor) but it is a hugely strange experience watching something similar onscreen, especially when executed so well...
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...an entire hive-mind repository of genre cliches, all subconsciously there to tap into. Even after we wrapped I realised I'd unconsciously ripped off Rebecca but also very consciously, Blow-Out and especially Blow-Up. The visual ideas were likely all from 90s indie filmmakers.
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I naively thought at the time that our film was original, albeit one that liberally took pop culture references and tropes from what I read/listened to as a teenager and I'd assume this is exactly what the Netflix filmmakers did too. Much like the subject of the film there's...
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Thanks Paul!
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One thing I've found while nosing about these early gigs is how poorly advertised many were. I know a lot of folk avidly read the weekly press and travelled down to see Ramones, Iggy and Clash etc from July 76 but nobody travelled 90 min to see Sex Pistols in Dundee. As you say, poor advertising
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Brilliant
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I thought of you straight away when I saw it and assumed it didn't happen as I've never heard anyone mention it. Someone posted an advert mentioning it was officially cancelled.
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Thanks David, that's great
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If you manage to find out the reason I'd love to know please. Thanks!
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Thanks Caryn, that's very helpful
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Fantastic!
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J+t SA played their last gig on the 25th November and split up. Simple Minds (yes, THAT one) would play their first gig on the 17th January 1978 and perform Pablo Picasso. Meanwhile, J+t SA's singer, John Milarky would join the pre-existing Cuban Heels and perform this Pablo Picasso too.