Sexual assault is an incredibly dark topic that many tend to avoid as much as possible. Others, however, want to bring more awareness. Fairytale (Hershko, 2019) follows the story of Verity (played by Verity East), a young girl who finds herself being treated more as an object than an actual person. She suffers from countless acts of sexual assault and abuse, and the film depicts her journey to find a place where she is safe and at peace. Eli Hershko directed, produced, edited, and wrote the film Fairytale. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss the film with Hershko.
Miranda Sprouse: Tell us about your film, Fairytale.
Eli Hershko: Fairytale is a very dark, unscripted film that deals with sexual assault at its core. This film was shot with no budget ($15k) over the course of eight days in NYC and Long Island with a skeleton crew of twelve people… Now, when I say unscripted, I mean that, usually, traditional films will have a ninety-to-one-hundred-ten-page script that will have a storyline, characters, and all dialogue. The director and the production will follow the script in order to tell the story and, depending on the director, at times, he or she might deviate from the script but mostly the script is the blueprint to the movie. Fairytale did not have a script. I was seduced by the idea of shooting a totally improvised film as a way of telling a story because of the fact that I was hoping to capture a process I noticed taking place in my previous films… What do I mean by that?
I’ll try to explain: for my first feature film – Carl(a) — I wrote about a transgender love story and, in order to write this film, I researched the subject for a whole year before I sat down and wrote the ninety-five-page script. Now, in my opinion, in order for a movie to reach its audience, the viewer has to believe the characters; so, in order to achieve this layer of realism, when I completed the script, I then proceeded to sit down with each and every one of my cast and rewrite their dialogue with them in order to create a well-familiar “skin” for them, so they will be at ease and feel as natural as they can as far as dialogue goes.
Upon completing the re-writes, we spent about a month rehearsing and then went on to shoot the film. I noticed that because I was so rehearsed at times, when we got to set and the scene “DID NOT” work while shooting, which is a common thing really, I was at a loss. So I took that experience with me when I moved to my second feature film. For this one I wrote a one-hundred-ten-page script but did not rehearse at all and told the actors to prepare on their own. When we got to set, I encouraged the actors to get “off book” and try to say my lines in their own words. Now, because I allowed actors to get “off book,” a lot of “HAPPY ACCIDENTS” happened on set, where unexpected moments would develop that were not included in the script and I ended up using them in the final edit and that was the seed that was planted in my head; so when I started thinking of putting together Fairytale, I decided to shoot a feature film composed in its entirety of “HAPPY ACCIDENTS,” and the film will sort of UNFOLD in front of us.
I knew it was a very risky endeavor and that the movie can become very “artistic” in nature and “aloft” to the point it can be drifting off and not make sense; so in order to ground the story up and force it and the audience to a cohesive idea, I decided that the movie, at its core, needed to be a dark and violent movie; so I summon up the courage and decided to do a movie that deals with sexual assault, being that I am a survivor of one myself.
MS: Where did the story idea originate?
EH: You see, when I was a six-year-old, I was abducted and almost ended up dead but managed to escape… I sort of used the film as a vehicle to deal with that trauma in my personal life… So, what I did in regard to Fairytale, I wrote a short story of fifteen pages about this young woman as a character and used that as a starting point. I then took this short story and send it to Verity East in Australia, whom I met two years prior in NY where she made such an impression on me as an actor, I knew I wanted to work with her and was waiting for the right moment… And so I asked her if she would be interested in coming on this crazy ride of mine to try and shoot an improvised film about sexual assault. I asked her to commit to the film, knowing fully that she will be subjected to a very dark film. She read the short story and it made so much sense to her, she accepted the challenge! Now that I had her in place, I started approaching actors I worked with in the past, whom I respected, and asked if they would be interested in coming on board for this ride. Some of them, upon reading the short story, said it was way too dark for them and did not want to participate and others loved the idea of what we were trying to do and accepted it as a process, knowing it is a very risky endeavor indeed… one we didn’t know how would end.
MS: You said that you shot the film with a set of three anamorphic lenses that you built from scratch. What inspired you to want to make them yourself? What was the process like to build them?
EH: Before I became a filmmaker, I was a photographer. Ever since I was a kid of six years old, I always had a camera with me, I had a personal darkroom in my room. I went to art high school to study photography and became a teacher for photography in the army. When I finished with the army, I became a full-fledged photographer in NYC, shooting album covers and magazine work. At some point, taking pictures was not enough anymore since it was too flat and two-dimensional for me, so getting into the moving image made a lot of sense since I was able to paint not only with light but with souls as well…
Now, when I was developing the idea for Fairytale, I wanted to shoot with anamorphic lenses. For a photographer-turned-cinematographer filmmaker such as myself, anamorphic lenses are the HOLY GRAIL of film imagery… It is the utmost cinematic image quality that filmmakers who like that kind of a thing would strive for. The problem of shooting anamorphics is these lenses cost so much money! I mean tens of thousands of dollars to buy or thousands of dollars to rent.
Being a photographer at core, I always fussed around trying to create imagery with self-built cameras, put together lens combinations, and cross-processed types of films in chemical baths they were not supposed to be developed in (yes, I was shooting with real negatives at the time LOL). I was always looking for an original way to create an image… so having that in my bag of tools, I set to try and figure out if I can build my own set of homemade anamorphic lenses… I found this crazy group of people on the internet who were going around and purchasing old anamorphic projection lenses made in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, projection lenses that are not manufactured anymore, mind you, so you can imagine how hard of a find they were… It was with this group of people that I was figuring out ways to attach this old anamorphic projection lens to old Russian regular lenses and testing them as a hybrid assortment of old lenses and glass put together on digital cameras… I was hooked. I spent close to two years on the internet looking and hunting for the right projection lenses along with special adapters, finding all sorts of methods to attach those to different old lenses that were converted to fit my cameras, waiting for some glass diopters to be manufactured that will allow these lenses to focus like a traditional film lens etc… Finally, after almost three years of invested time, research, and money in building my own set of anamorphic lenses, I was ready and prepared to shoot Fairytale with a set of three DIY-built anamorphic lenses. Honestly, I can’t see myself going back to shoot spherical lenses after shooting anamorphics! I just love the organic and unique look that only anamorphic lenses possess.
MS: In the end credits, it says “this film was entirely improvised on set.” Can you describe what production was like without a script?
EH: In order to have a starting point for the film, I wrote a fifteen-page short story to serve as an anchor and a backbone to the movie. That was our starting point only. I made all of us aware of that… and indeed most of film just spun out of that. I did not have a script with dialogue. I did not meet with my actors to discuss backstory. We didn’t rehearse. In fact, I encouraged all of my actors to have meetings and conversations amongst themselves for months before we shot in order to develop their characters’ backstories and such without asking or involving me at any point. All I was interested in was to get to set and become a mere spectator next to the camera and to watch the film unfold in front of me, in front of all of us really.
In order to break the barrier between actor and character, I named all of the characters in the movie the same as the actors who portray them. I decided that we were going to shoot the film chronologically and I then asked all of my actors and crew in the beginning of the movie to “dive in” and not emerge out of character until the movie was over. Not without resistance, I might add. I truly wanted to push the envelope artistically and see where that kind of process would lead us, knowing fully that it might turn bust all along.
MS: The film was shot over a period of eight days. Were there any filmmaking techniques you chose to use (or not use) because of this short time frame?
EH: About four weeks before production started, I got in my car and took the “RIDE” that Verity as a character would take in the movie. I started in Brooklyn, NY, and just “drifted” eastward toward Long Island, not knowing where I would end up. When I saw a location I thought was interesting for us, I stopped the car, went in, say, if it was a gas station for instance, and convinced the manager of the place to allow us to shoot on their premises for free… That is how I secured all of the locations we shot at. It was a wonderfully crazy way of going and shooting a film. It was hard as hell, too. On that “ride” seeing all the locations we would end up with in the movie also informed me of the things like light, sound, etc. Also, all of the planning that goes with making a traditional film went out the door! Since we were shooting chronologically, we just got in the three production cars one morning and started our trip, arrived at our location shot for the entire day, ate, and went to sleep, got up and moved to the second location, etc. There was no crafty, no company moves, no moving on to the next scene, changing directions, etc… A completely different way of making films.
Shooting a movie without a script meant basically that each movement of character in any given scene, each action, each sentence a character would say, would not be the same in every take. Understanding that I wanted to see if we can create for each scene a soft of “one take” when shooting a scene. Meaning, on “action,” the DP would follow the character in a doc style and while the action is unfolding the DP would change POV by physically moving the handheld camera from a master shot, moving into close-up, into a two shot, into a single all within one take. It was a very unique way to shoot and a true nightmare to piece together in the edit room since we ended up with two to three whole takes on a given scene, it was so hard to match action and dialogue if you wanted to use, say, top of take one, bottom of take three, and middle of take two… I guess it was a small price to pay for trying to shoot a film in what seems like the furthest point from traditional filmmaking.
MS: You said that because there had been no rehearsal and no script, the movement of each character would not be the same each take, which made it difficult for the director of photography and editor. Is that the reason why there are so many “one takes” in the film? To ensure continuity?
EH: Exactly, I knew the style of shooting for this film would demand shooting in a 360-degree style, which means the DP would have to almost dance around the character, drifting in and out of two shot to single to master, etc. That forced us to shoot almost everything with available lighting and to rely on “one take” shots in order not to deal with continuity, since it posed a real challenge and sort of dictated to us how to go about shooting this film.
MS: This is an incredibly dark film, as it deals with a very serious issue: sexual assault. How did you prepare everyone for this particular content? How did this film impact yourself, the crew, and the cast?
EH: Since we shot the film in chronological order over eight days, and because I asked the actors to stay in character, we all, cast and crew, found ourselves “living inside the movie.” Mostly, we slept and ate together as a unit. We actually got sucked into the experience and I can truly say that the lines between the real world and our movie started to blur. We were all very much affected by the sexual assault that took place on set to the point it became a very surreal way of making a film. It took us months to recover from that experience.
MS: Did you consider using an “intimacy coordinator” for the sexual assault and intimate scenes?
EH: I did not use an intimacy coordinator for the scene. What we did was close the set completely down. The only people that were in that room the day we shot it were the two actors, the DP, and me. I had several long and hard conversations with Verity before she signed onto the project. I was brutally honest about what I was going to demand of her. I knew that I cannot hide or soften the fact that we will need to explore and “GO THERE.” I told her she would feel as if she is being sexually attacked and unless she is 100 percent in with that, I cannot make this film with her. She is one tough, talented, and brave actor and I could not have done this film without her.
I did, however, know that I have to go with a female DP on this film just so I can “even out” the man-to-woman ratio in the room that day. It was one of the toughest scenes I had to endure as a spectator and even now, when I watch the film on the big screen, I cringe and feel so much for the character. This scene is so harsh that it makes some people who are watching the film react in different ways, I witnessed some folks run out of the movie theater crying, they were so upset with this experience.
MS: For future filmmakers who might consider creating movies about these tough topics, what advice do you have for them? What have you learned that you want to share with others?
EH: For me, as a filmmaker, the desire to tell stories does not let up. I am almost always looking for the truth in things. All I want to do is get on set and to be convinced, to believe that what I am witnessing on set, on the screen, is that truth, the truth that this one person, one character is experiencing. Fairytale, for me, was one of those journeys. I wanted to get on set. I wanted to be surrounded with actors, I want to partake in this collaboration process and just to get lost in the process of creation. I could have gone and tried to raise funds for any of my other screenplays that are sitting on my desktop. Big, juicy rom-coms, horror, or thrillers. I have a few. Problem is, you sort of have to sell your soul to the devil in order to get the millions of dollars to make these… And that is ok too, I will try to go about convincing someone in Hollywood that I have a voice, I have a vision. There are times for those fights, too, but as for Fairytale, I just needed to get back on set, get back “home” (nod if you know what I am talking about), so I figured out what is the shortest route for me to get back on set, not having to deal with all of the bull#&^%$* that comes with making a movie. Fairytale did that for me. It got me on set working with people I like working with, creating art and expressing ourselves.
MS: What is the most important part of this film that you want audiences to remember?
EH: For me, life is a journey. Some of us are born lucky, silver spoon and all. For some, life is harsh. Some of us understand this game called life better and quicker than others. Some will waste a lifetime and will not get it but, no matter what, I believe that we all indeed are the sum of our experiences and even though some experiences are harsher and harder to endure… Life is a journey designed to better ourselves to understand our purpose and to learn from it in order to move forward… I do really believe that whatever happens to us happens for a reason and as long as we move forward and learn from that experience, we are fulfilling our reason for being. And in the end HOPE prevails.
MS: What’s next for you?
EH: As a kid, I loved horror films, couldn’t get enough of them. I lost that love and actually became terrified of watching horror film as an adult. I’ve decided I want to go back to this love of mine so I am developing a horror project as my next project.
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Additional Film Matters works involving Eli Hershko include:
- https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2014/04/01/interview-with-eli-hershko-director-of-carla-2011-by-junyang-zhao/
- https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2014/03/31/carla-2011-reviewed-by-junyang-zhao/
Author Biography
Miranda Sprouse is an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is majoring in film studies and earning a certificate in professional writing. Miranda enjoys watching movies, screenwriting, and film analysis. She hopes to have a future career that combines her passions for writing and film.
