Snake Oil
A wily street vendor flees London in search of the American dream promised by his late father, but he can’t find it anywhere. A whimsical no-dialogue adventure spanning 2 continents, greatly inspired by the films of Buster Keaton.
“A non-stop delight that feels somehow both deeply nostalgic and incredibly fresh”
In Depth with the Director - Remy Archer
Hi Remy, tell us a little about yourself and your background in filmmaking
I’m an independent filmmaker based in the U.K. I work mostly in the arts and charity sectors as a one man band, although I would like to start working more as part of a team. I first started making films when I was about 13 or 14, using an old VHS camcorder that had belonged to my grandfather to film my friends doing BMX jumps, something I still do occasionally now. For most of that time I was an enthusiastic amateur, I suppose I am sort of still that today. I started to work professionally about 7 years ago after leaving my career as a circus performer to exclusively make films and direct live performances.
How did Snake Oil first come together as a project?
Whilst training at the National Circus in London I met my good friend and frequent collaborator Tom Gaskin, who plays the lead role in Snake Oil. Tom was training as a juggler and clown I was training as an acrobat and aerialist. We had made several non narrative films together and had wanted to get stuck into a bigger narrative project for some time. When a friend of mine from the U.S. offered us the chance to go to Burning Man festival in Nevada for cheap, Tom and I decided that if we were going to justify spending money on a holiday like that we should be productive and make a film along the way. In hindsight I did everything precisely wrong in the way I approached this film haha! We pretty much just set off and started to film things on a road trip around the West Coast region that ended up at the festival. We didn’t really do any planning beyond a rough story outline, didn’t have a script, had no funding or support and only Tom, myself and my Sony a7s camera with 3 lenses. We did however have his character in our minds and the help of many friends and some strangers along the way. It has been a real learning process for me. Never again will I approach a film without preparing for it properly first, the flexibility we were afforded in not having a structure to work to did not outweigh the inefficiency of improvising everything on location with limited time and no crew.
The film pays respects to the silent film tradition, and in particular you've referenced Buster Keaton as an inspiration. How did those films influence Snake Oil?
We share a love of the silent film era, particularly the films of Keaton. Buster is somewhat of a muse for Tom as an artist, he was the one that got me really into Buster’s films. We knew we wanted to approach our film with the same humour, naivety and wide-eyed wonder that Buster was so brilliant at, but shot in the way we wanted that suited the limited gear at our disposal. It was never going to be black and white with a ragtime soundtrack. We would frequently ask ourselves: what would Buster do? The elements of Buster films that we particularly loved and wanted to try and channel into our film were:
Visually driven storytelling that could be understood and enjoyed by anyone, regardless of language spoken
A main character with a quality of optimistic melancholy
A man at odds with the physical world
Having no dialogue in a modern film is quite restrictive. How did you work around these restrictions?
With difficulty. Much of what we shot didn’t work and there’s lots that I would change about what we ended up with! I would guess that about 50% of the scenes and 75% of the footage we shot didn’t make it into the film because it didn’t work. I think I have exported about 100 different versions of the film in the 4 years since we started shooting, it’s obscene. Much of the process was experimenting with the character in different situations and finding out what worked and then begrudgingly cutting it and adapting the film when it didn’t. We found that, narratively, the sequences where he is alone and the main conflict comes from the environment and physical world worked best. Exposition and conflicts between the main character and other characters were more difficult, after all, why wouldn’t they interact verbally? I suppose it goes without saying that it drastically limits the breath of situations you can place your character if you need the scene to move the story forward dramatically without any dialogue.
We think a lot of audience members will be amazed by the integration of circus performance in the film. Does circus get enough credit as an artform these days?
I am a big believer in circus as an art form, it’s been a big part of my life and will always influence my work. One of the big issues surrounding contemporary circus is how it’s perceived. Most people think top hats and tigers or even Cirque Du Soleil when circus is mentioned, but it is so much broader than that. It’s an exciting time for contemporary circus, particularly in Australia. I believe circus makes up a huge percentage of Australia’s cultural exports, with companies like Circa, Gravity & Other Myths and La Soiree finding great success touring globally. Go and watch their fantastic shows!
A big set piece of the film occurs at a festival. How did shooting and directing the film work around the festival?
This was an example of the benefit of a really stripped down approach. The entirety of the kit we used could fit in one backpack and it was just the two of us, Tom in front of the camera and myself behind it. We emailed the festival in advance and asked permission, we were told that as long as we had acquired the permission of those we were shooting before filming them it was fine. We couldn’t have taken a proper crew into the festival, it wouldn’t have worked and would have been inappropriate anyway. We were lucky to be a part of a really great camp called Swing City, who were awesome and up for getting involved so we filmed the only scene that focusses on the festival with them in the Swing City camp with those that wanted to be in the film. We didn’t feel it was appropriate to point the camera at people we didn’t know in the wider festival, they are there to have fun and be uninhibited, not be filmed! The rest of the footage from Burning Man was shot in a bodged “Snorricam” set up, where the camera is rigged to the body of the performer but faces back at their face, in a sort of reverse P.O.V. We ratchet-strapped a friends tripod to Tom in a very crude and uncomfortable way and pretty much just set him loose in the festival with the camera rolling on his face and the bizarre and technicolour background of the festival and it’s inhabitants.
What were the major challenges in putting this film together?
The single biggest challenge was not having the story locked before filming and editing. I spent countless hours doing re-edits, we even dreamt up and shot whole additional sub plots and alternate endings that were then edited in and later completely discarded in an attempt to make the story cohesive. The next project will have a script, with room for flexibility, where the story is locked before shooting.
What projects are coming up for you in the future?
I have just finished the first draft of a feature script and Tom is currently writing a feature too. We are also working collaboratively on an idea for another short in the same neo-silent film style as Snake Oil.
Do you have any message for our Melbourne audience?
Just to say thanks to the great team behind Pigdon Street festival and we hope you enjoy our film and all the other great films screening. Please keep supporting the arts and artists of all kinds in this difficult time.