From acting to directing, Alexander Vlahos expands his repertoire with Lola Short Film

Foto: Alexander Vlahos
Alexander Vlahos

September 4, 2018 by Nicole Oebel @philomina_

Two actors who love creating. A story that needs to be told. A beautifully challenging vision. A successful crowdfunding campaign full of heart. As actor Alex Vlahos prepares for his directorial debut with Lola Short Film he took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss what this new endeavour entails, how much making a film is really a collaboration, how the film evolves through the creative process, and in what way the acting experience informs getting ready for the new challenge of taking on the role of a director.

Related: Our recent interviews with Alex on Versailles, the final season, and Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare's Rose theatre in York


With your first long-time TV job ending, the Versailles bubble popping, it was a time to make choices and you seemed to have taken a step back there?

When Versailles finished in October there was a unanimous feel that I was probably not going to be working on something until the new year. Since the middle of Versailles I've been sent this script by Lewis [Reeves], as a mate, and I was giving him notes because I've written things before, I've run a theatre company... We've never collaborated with each other but we talked about working together and he sent me this script and I gave him writing notes and developed it with him, he kept sending me drafts and that crept up until October, November. And then he said "By the way, you're directing this!" It's something that I always wanted to do. Something that I genuinely believe is my calling in life, more so than acting. I don't think I can sustain this level of ups and downs that the acting profession is giving me. People deal with the acting profession in different ways, for me it's a roller coaster and that's great for a certain period of time but I find that directing offers me something that I actually am avidly seeking.

"I like to be in control" - that's what you mentioned last time we spoke about your work.

I do like to be in control. The frustrations of a working set and the juggernaut that is Versailles and the fact that acting is something that happens but the bigger picture of Versailles is always bigger than just the acting - that always troubled me. I'm a technical actor as well as an emotional actor, especially on a TV set, I'll always accommodate the crew and I'm always much more technically minded, I always ask the DOP (director of photography) what lens they are using, I always choke up everything on set, I find the workings of an everyday crew interesting and I've always enjoyed seeing a good director be a diplomat and be the person in the middle of the web. A good director being able to talk to an actor in a certain type of way, talk to his first AD, talk to his camera man and use ways of talking to them in a really productive way. That's interesting to me - not the complete control, but the control of working out your best way and also handing over responsibility, that's something that I crave and something that I think I would be good at [listen to the sound clip in which Alex explains a bit more]. So when Lewis said I should direct Lola it felt like an opportunity too good to pass up and it felt quite right from where I'm at in my brain. I wasn't going to do a big feature and it wasn't my writing that I was directing and the story itself is an interesting one that needs to be told. I have a very interesting way of wanting to tell the story that I think would benefit it. That's exciting for me.

So making a short film - that's all blood, sweat and tears, some may even say it's madness - so why embark on this journey?

[pensive] It feels right, right now, to be and embrace the madness of it. I am not scared by it. We're shooting on film - that's crazy. It is madness and it is stressful, nothing ever goes according to plan but it is a means to an end, I feel like I have to do this. The next step is to continue that avenue. I'm not saying that the acting is done but the directing thing is an itch that needs to be scratched soon.

Being a proud pessimist, an impatient perfectionist and also a person who is very much in the moment - When you look at yourself from the outside, are you a good decision maker?

Yes. I am. When you're an actor it's about working out what's best for you, how best you can use your decisions to facilitate and enhance your work and can anyone else around you help that. And when it doesn't happen - sometimes on Versailles, sometimes on other jobs - that's when my impatience gets frustrating. As a director and as the person that you described I want to take all the best things that I've learnt from being a television actor for the last ten years and use them. Actually more so the bad things that you learnt - I'm not going to be that director. That's the way in. I think the person that I am, that you described, is the best for at this point in my life to be directing Lola.

Lewis and you, you went to drama school together. What's the story there? You've never worked together before?

I was in my third year at drama school when Lewis was in his first year so no, we haven't worked together. We butted heads a lot actually - drama school is a very weird place. I always felt that I was in competition with people, I was always fighting to be the best actor in the class... It doesn't work like that. In hindsight and with maturity comes knowing that but at the time in drama school me and Lewis didn't see eye to eye. It's been post drama school, talking to him, finding we have a deeper connection about work and wanting to create our own work and the frustrations with the industry. Lewis is a great writer, he's raw and he has loads of great ideas and it's about distilling the ideas and making sure they are concentrated. He's a cesspool of vibrancy and my job is to guide him. It's bizarre, I wouldn't have thought that my first directing job would be directing a Lewis Reeves short film. It's weird how things come about. We've built a mutual love and respect for each other separate to the creativeness of making Lola ...because you're right, it is mad, it is stressful as fuck.

The idea that we were going to do a crowd-funding, I was really against it, I thought we could find money elsewhere and I've already done two crowd-fundings in my life. I did one for "Button Eyes" and I also did one for my Edinburgh fringe show. I felt like I had done my bit in crowd-funding. There comes a responsibility with that, it becomes the people's film. Lewis really pushed me to do the crowd-funding thing and now I'm really glad we did.

Wasn't there another crowd-funding thing when you were 18 years old?

Oh! Yeah, there was a newspaper article to help me go to the National Youth Theatre Wales. Back in the day I got two cheques sent to me in the post [nostalgic smile].

Crowd-funding is an amazing concept if you understand why you're doing it and what you have to then deliver. It's no longer just a thing you do with your friend, for the greater good it becomes an all seeing, no smoking mirrors thing. There's something quite liberating about that as creatives but there's also something quite scary about handing over a script and adding other people to the mix. There are rules that having a crowd-funding provides and as long as you know they are not a hindrance and that they open up more doors for you and you embrace that, then I think it's a really good thing. Lola wouldn't have got made to the level it can now be made. My first directing is going to be much more than I've ever dreamt it would be because of the love and support of the people.

The message of the film is "Accept. Trust. And be honest, both with yourself and others." - That's what creating art is, isn't it?

Yeah, I guess so, that is what creating art is, 100 per cent actually, it is what art is. Acceptance is an amazing concept that gets thrown about quite willy-nilly nowadays. Have we got full acceptance? I don't think we have. Sometimes we do two steps forward, one step back. We're at a place in the world where we are very liberal but also very conservative. We are incredibly accepting but also not incredibly accepting - the word acceptance is really important. Lola, in some small way, is trying to show that. It's not going to answer it, it's not going to break down barriers, it's not going to change people's minds but it might open up ideas and that's all we can do really as artists and creatives, hold a mirror up to the world. That's what Lola is doing. I hope that in some way as a director I can try and demonstrate that without it being a hammer on the face. Hopefully the film will offer up more questions than problems.

A while back you posted a photo on social media mentioning you and Lewis were writing together...

I wasn't writing but Lewis came over and a lot of work needed to be done, it felt like writing. Draft 1 to draft 2, they are almost unrecognizable in terms of content. I felt like a butcher to Lewis's work, cut but don't get rid of it because all of it is gold, only so you have a clearer view of what the script should look like, give it a narrative, and put it back in once there is a structure in place. Since then I talk to him about directing things and he's drafting and editing himself. He's come on leaps and bounds as a writer and a creative since August last year.

Foto: Alexander Vlahos, Robyn Fox, Lewis Reeves
Alexander Vlahos, Robyn Fox, Lewis Reeves

When you shared all these quotes from F Scott Fitzgerald on social media I thought the name of Lola may be inspired by the short story "A Couple of Nuts", but you weren't actually the one who gave the film its name?

I wasn't part of any of that process and I quite liked that. Funny enough that whole process with getting Lola off the ground has been one that I'd become a producer on, a line producer until we found Robyn [Fox]. Me and Lewis were doing everything and it was really hard to get it off the ground. Lots of doors closed in our faces. I went to a friend, James Kermack, who's an exec producer on the film who helped open up loads of doors but it was up to me and Lewis to do the work. We were literally making this up while we were going along. It's been an excruciating process that's now going to pay dividends, it's actually going to be more rewarding because we went through the crap, the good wasn't just given to us.

The story of the film, is it personal to you?

It is personal. Lewis touches on it in the crowd-funding video about acceptance and both of us having been given full acceptance of our career choices, our love choices, who we are as people - people who don't have that we see that as well within the arts. We're not all free-minded, we still see restrictions. Lewis has written it from a point of a desire to embrace more about accepting everyone. I merely jumped on board but obviously with any project - with Philippe, Romeo, Hamlet, Dorian - you have to find a way in and then it'll ring true, always ring true to you. Finding your way in can prove tricky but with Lola, helping early on I found my way in. The reason why I want to tell the story might be different than Lewis's. It might be a different film that we end up seeing and that's what's great about directing, understanding that things will change. The reason that you set out to do the story might not be the film that you end up showing but that's ok because at the starting point you had a reason, it was your way in. And then let's see how it goes.

In our earlier talks you mentioned that in your acting work you are drawn to characters that challenge you to find out how deep down within yourself you can go and find something truthful. In a directing debut how important is to find the truth within yourself, when it's not your own writing?

That is the challenge I have yet to experience. This is my debut, I can't speak from on that film I brought that out of that actor or I found truth in this moment - I don't quite know. All I know from my own personal experience is what gets the truth out of me. The two best directors I ever worked with on camera are Declan O'Dwyer, who directed The Drawing of the Dark episode of Merlin with me, who then directed me in Barbarians Rising - that man can phone me up and say get on a plane and I will go that instant. It's that trust that I have with Declan. He allows me to create enough and he comes in at the right time and guides. I come in with the ideas and go "is it this"? And he goes "Yes, I didn't think it was, but it is now!" and he then guides me that way. It was the first time I really understood Mordred. And the second director that I fell in love with and would go through hell and high water to work with was Ed Bazalgette, who directed episodes 5, 6 and 7 of Versailles season 3. Ed put the camera where the action was and let us go. He took the reins off. Freedom, liberation. You come away buoyant by it and powerful, more excited about wanting to turn up the next day. Ed has allowed that but not only did he allow us as actors to be creative and free but his directing work then was also beautiful. So the marry of the two are quite hard to find and that's what I'm going to have to try and find.

The challenge that I'm eagerly waiting for is to figure out if I'll be able to not superimpose on an actress, if I can allow the actress who's playing Ruby - who is the film, we see everything through her eyes - to dictate the film but still keep all the principals that the film has to show. That's the job of the director to be able to allow the actors to find the truth without telling them what you believe the truth should be. Hopefully the actor or actress will show you something that you never thought was there and that dictates the film. That's my way of thinking, hand over the reins to them because you cast them for a reason. No point casting someone and then tell them that they're wrong. Take away an actor's instinct you take away their soul [listen to the sound clip in which Alex explains a bit more].

The long take - You are going to shoot each setup in one take. Is that like you're giving your actors the kind of freedom they would have on stage?

My plan is to put the camera and allow the actors to exist within a frame and deliver their best work without telling them "Now is your close-up. Now I have to do a wide". As an actor that's the most boring thing to know that you have to go through the whole scene just to show the surroundings. So my idea for that was I don't want to do that on a short film. I don't want to do wide, medium, close - it's just easy, boring work. I want to figure out a way with the blocking of what the actors will do naturally, try and find a frame to encapsulate all of that, tweak moments with the camera, keep everything that they're doing instinctively. It means I get a number of takes where I get to perfect every story beat so that I don't use up all my takes for the wide and the medium... It's incredibly liberating, I feel, to know that you are doing this one set up for the whole scene, like with a steady-cam through the Grand Salon on Versailles. We do it a lot of times adding layers and thoughts, it's like a shortened version of rehearsing a play. The plan is to do that for every single scene in the film and bizarrely the way that Lola is written the first scene is quite short, the second scene is a bit longer, they each extend a little bit of time and there's 16 scenes in Lola, so when we get to scene 15 it's a two and a half minute scene without any cuts. I'm building up the idea and the terminology and the convention for the audience that this is the way the flow is working, we're not going to have any cuts, so when it gets to that big one they're not surprised. I call scene 15 my Boogie Nights scene [explains and mimes the opening scene of Boogie Nights], it's a monumental feat of camera trickery if we can pull it off but I didn't want it to come out of nowhere and feel like a tricksy scene. It's the fabric, it's the language of the film. And the hope is that it doesn't hinder any of the actors. I don't think it will.

That's an exciting and interesting goal.

There are layers to this film, there's the message, the scenes, the truth, there's also my vision camera-wise - all need to marry to make Lola what I hope it will be. Obviously there's going to be complications, sometimes locations dictate your camera moves. You have to be thinking on the spot and open to change as a director. All of those different chapters work towards the same goal.

So you will be shooting on film which brings technical limitation and forces you to be efficient, doesn't it?

It offers challenges. When you work on film you break it down into how many minutes you can shoot in a day. What it means is that we rehearse on camera without pressing the record button until we get it right. Hopefully it will bring a sense of unity rather than fear. We all know the problems of film but I think for the purpose of the film it's going to offer something better than shooting on digital. Anyone can shoot on digital - this film is about being different and accepting difference, with that comes shooting on film. There's something quite aesthetically pleasing about film. We're shooting a letter box, we're shooting super wide frames. It all adds a cinematicness.

You will have to be even more prepared and you will have to earn the trust of the crew early on.

I'm storyboarding and I've gone through my shot list with my DOP already, we don't even have locations yet but I already know where I want to put the camera for every scene. I'm not turning up and winging it. Once the camera is set that job is done and I can concentrate on the acting. I have to think of it as a liberating choice rather than a hindrance. Yeah, I'm going to have to earn trust but I'm also going to have to earn the right to be a director. Why should these people listen to me? I've done nothing before. But you have to start somewhere, right?

Foto: Alexander Vlahos
Alexander Vlahos

It's very different to have your directing debut with a short film compared to directing an episode of a TV show you're on like Versailles - finding your own language, your own style...

It's probably for the best that Versailles season 4 didn't happen and that me and George [Blagden] got our wish. It would have been a headfuck, a really exciting headfuck, to try and direct an episode - that challenge was the only reason why I would have wanted to come back for season 4. If they would have allowed George and me to co-direct an episode, it would have made season 4 so much more exciting because we got to experience another thing to take away from the show. The reality of that is complicated. So doing this short film I get to find my own fabric, my own language, terminology and my own style before working in television as a director. Lola being the first step is the right step on my journey of being a director.

As your influences you mentioned David Fincher, Gus Van Sant and Paul Thomas Anderson - which is wild [he laughs out loud]. In what way are you influenced by these directors?

David Fincher has an amazing way of putting the camera where it needs to be. Fincher's ideology of filmmaking is something that I've taken from in terms of where he places things and that goes to where I put the camera to dictate the action. Gus Van Sant uses a lot of beautiful steadicam work specifically in the film Elephant. He uses a dolly beautifully, like in Last Days, the film that's based on Kurt Cobain's last days, he built the longest dolly track ever. He starts in the window inside the house where Kurt Cobain is playing a riff on the guitar and it comes back to the whole house in frame - it's an amazing shot of distance showing how isolated and alone a musician who's so creative and so troubled can be. So I want to use tracking and steadicam and show how proximity of closeness between the camera and the subject can tell a story. Paul Thomas Anderson uses one-shots to introduce characters, places and locations, tell stories very quickly because they exist in the same world [mimes a tracking shot]. They're all my influences in terms of camera work and visual stuff. Why do I keep coming back to those references, they must be the influences that I've absorbed in my psyche. So I thought that's what my style is going to be. For now.

Was Lewis always going to star in the film? And when do we get to meet the other actors?

Lewis is writing to facilitate his own work as creatives do. If things get quiet you make your own work and if you don't you're silly for not doing that because only you can dictate your career. You can wait for the agent to call and do your best when that call comes through but if it's quiet you have to write and make. We've had complications with the casting of Ruby. We have gone to people that we know and asked them to be in it, now we are treating this more like any professional job, doing things by the book rather than mates trying to make a film. We've got a casting director who sent through the most amazing list of people, people that are beyond our reach who there's no harm in asking, to more realistic, to some weird suggestions, which is what casting directors do brilliantly. They bring in people who you never thought could end up being the person that you cast. Ruby has a quality about her that I hope is a gift for a young actress to play.

More info on Lola Short Film and the crowdfunding on Indiegogo.



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