Interview: Mistaken director Anthony Roberts

The Boar Film got a chance to talk to Anthony Roberts, a young filmmaker, who has just completed his first independent feature film entitled Mistaken. Roberts directed, co-wrote and starred in the action-thriller made on a shoestring budget.  

The Boar Film: Tell me about yourself professionally and personally? Where are you based?

Anthony:  I live in the Surrey area. My background is actually in web development, design, marketing and things like that; it’s what I’ve been doing as a trade. But filmmaking has always been a hobby on the side, which has developed over the years and now we’ve pulled together, written a script and made a feature length film, Mistaken.

The Boar Film: What’s the basic premise of the film?

Anthony: There are these identical twin brothers; one was kidnapped at a young age and brought up as a hit man for the Italian Mafia. In his early twenties, he gets in trouble with the Mafia and they want him dead. Luckily he escapes and as they’re looking for him they find the wrong twin who has no idea his other twin even exists. So this hapless guy has people trying to kill him, he has no idea why and manages to escape with skin of his teeth but in the process his fiancé is murdered. He has a friend, a detective, who is able to delve a little deeper into what’s going on. It’s a full-on action thriller through and through.

The Boar Film: Was your budget quite limited?

Anthony: Yes, I funded the entire thing myself with my basic wages. Though we don’t want to get to in to the specifics because we’re still looking for a distributor, in hopes to get it out on DVD. But we definitely had to pull a lot of strings to get scenes into place by drawing favours from friends and family. We couldn’t pay everyone; some people were very keen and other lost interest meaning that after few takes we ended up killing off their characters. The guy who was originally on set for a two-minute scene eventually ended up being a main character because of his great attitude, natural talent, and look. So the story kept changing and changing to accommodate for whoever was available; it essentially became a real-time script. It’s not something you see often but it probably ended up being better than the original draft.

The Boar Film: How important was it to maintain realism in the film?

Anthony: It was critical. The reason it has taken a long time to get the film finished [over a year] is because we taught ourselves CGI and special FX. We didn’t finish a scene until we were completely happy with it. This meant sometimes we went back and refilmed over and over again until it was perfect. We ended up with about 50 different versions of the film. The first was over two and half hours long but we ultimately chopped it down to and an hour and forty. Anything that seemed slightly boring or dragged on, if you eyes drifted away from the screen even for a second, we changed it.

The Boar Film: What kind of equipment did you have available for you to shoot the film?

Anthony: I had a camera, which I had bought with the purpose of making wedding videos and got myself a decent microphone but ultimately we made use of minimal resources. The whole film was shot with the one camera. We shot scenes from a number of different angles and pieced them together in post.

The Boar Film: Were there any major hiccups or problems with the production?

Anthony: We had so many problems. We had continuity problems meaning that we had to go back and film scenes all over again. As I mentioned before we had people drop out, meaning replacing characters. One guy, a bodybuilder, would not come back to finish his scene so I had to bribe him Nandos (a whole chicken, not half!). We had the police called on us because someone thought our camera was a bazooka.

The Boar Film: (laughs) Oh wow, how did you sort that one out?

Anthony: The police arrived very anxiously and we had to explain that we making a film and it was simply a camera. Luckily they weren’t there when one of the actors accidentally stabbed himself in the chin in a scene with a knife. It was a close incident but luckily he’s OK. It was quite a dangerous shoot, no stunt men, we had to jump off from roofs so what you see is what we did because we were limited in the effects department; we had to be as practical as possible. It started as an amateur film but arguably ended up as something beyond that. It’s even been called the best amateur action film ever made by a couple of fairly big producers who have seen it.

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The Boar Film: How did you go about marketing the film?

Anthony: We took the film to Cannes last year to show some early scenes to some distributors and the response was fantastic. They seem impressed, and we are talking to some people to hopefully to get the film ready for release on DVD.

The Boar Film: Were there any inspirations for the film, anything you were trying to mirror?

Anthony: Definitely the TV Show 24 (laughs). I met Kiefer Sutherland [who plays lead character Jack Bauer] in New York. I tried to get him to star in Mistaken but I think he was busy.

The Boar Film: What’s been the most important thing you’ve learnt from the whole process?

Anthony: Preparation. This is by far the most important. People skills are also crucial. Other things: knowing what you’re working with so essentially you’re working hard to get the best possible results from your cast and crew. I had absolutely no past experience in film making so by the end I’d learnt a lot and now I know what I’m doing.

The Boar Film: What’s next after this?

Anthony: I’ve got a few projects I’ve been working on, someone of them film related some aren’t. I’ll be leading up everything, like directing, writing and editing in those projects like I did in this film. I have a youtube channel: www.youtube.com/antsantics, look out for some stuff on there next year.

The Boar Film: One last thing, if you could sum up the film in one word what would it be?

Anthony: Enlightening. You learn a lot about yourself, how far you can push yourself and how far others can push back.

The Boar Film: Thanks for the chat and good luck with the future projects!

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For more info go to the Official Film Website