Fred Rowson Grilled on his New Film

Colonel Blimp director Fred Rowson has recently completed a new short film called Pauline [above]. The five-and-a-half minute film features the titular character as she explains to the viewer about her haunted oven.

A story about both the supernatural and the feeling of lonliness, the short is a quirky but brilliant watch. Below, the 26-year-old Rowson takes time to explain the film, how it came together and why he's hoping to have a ghostly experience himself.

Can you tell us about the genesis of the film; where the idea came from and why you wanted to make it?

I love lonely people, and I love making viewers feel unsure about themselves and doubt their assumptions. Given the chance to tell a story, those are two places where my mind will always drift. So, the character of Pauline was always lingering somewhere.

These impulses coincided with watching a lot of documentaries about hauntings and alien abductions, and seeing people talk about impossible things with a completely straight face. All of this combined with an instinct that I wanted to sit viewers down with a character who they might dismiss out of hand, and see if I could make them feel sorry for her.

Is the supernatural something that interests you?

I’m obsessed. When I wrote Pauline, the case of the Enfield haunting wasn’t so widely spoken about. Now, though, there has been a BBC mini-series and a feature film about it, so people are becoming more aware, but I remember that case in particular stuck with me for years after I saw a documentary about it when I was younger that terrified me. Years later, it seems less scary and more bizarre, so with Pauline I wanted to poke fun at how seriously all these poltergeist hauntings have been presented.

Did you toy with any other haunted appliances before settling on an oven?

A fridge, a toaster, a waffle iron, a freezer, a plug in hob, a boiler, a blender, a frying pan, a kettle, a sink, a bin, and many, many more kitchen items. My EP, Paul Weston, and I kicked around a lot of different options, but for some reason it always came back to the oven. There’s something elementally odd about the thing which feeds you being haunted.

Have you shot short films before and, if so, what is it about the medium that attracts you?

Yes, I’ve shot a few. I think a short film is really hard to do because it forces you to truly focus on one idea. And I always want to cram in as much stuff as possible, so writing a short is a good test, I think. It forces me to be specific. In that way, I feel that a good short film is a bit like a poem: it doesn’t have to be a perfectly neat story, but emotionally it needs to pay off. Balancing a specific topic with the right mood and tone is a great challenge. 

For Pauline, how did you find the actress to play the main character, and how hard – and how important – was that search?

I thought it was going to be tough to find someone who could be this prickly, difficult woman who both loves and hates being alone. But we had an excellent casting director, Hannah Simons, who got Joanna Brookes for us in our first round of auditions. Joanna was amazing. She really managed to get across the subtlety that, beneath the surface, Pauline really wants to be believed. I ended up tweaking a lot of the dialogue to make it a perfect fit with Joanna’s delivery.

What was the most difficult, and most rewarding, parts of the process of creating the film?

These are one and the same: the writing. I really slaved over the script, and at times it was frustrating because there were so many little details that I wanted to add – other characters, backstories, a whole history of this haunted house.

In the end, it was a tough process to whittle everything down to what it needed to be. But once I had that central tone and I knew the character inside out, finishing the screenplay felt very rewarding. Once I had that done, every other aspect of making the film was a joy, because everyone was working towards the same goal.

Have you ever had any supernatural experiences of your own?

I live in hope! I am reluctantly very skeptical about these things, and nothing pleases me more than the inexplicable.

What are you working on next?

I’ve already written the sequel to Pauline. A new character, with a new suburban secret. I’m hoping to shoot it later this summer. Aside from that I’ve just pitched on a commercial and I’m waiting to hear back on a music video. Interesting times!