Charlie Robb and Douglas Tawn explore the effects of the supernatural on a young man, as he relies on a medium to make amends with his parents from a recent tragedy in their short film SEANCE.
Film And TV Now spoke with the film-making team about the short.
You met at Cambridge University. When did you sense that the two of you could make a solid creative team?
DOUG: I first became aware of Charlie when I saw him performing in a mutual friend’s comedy show at uni.
It was genuine comic (and romantic) love at first sight. Literally every word he said, every face he pulled and every gesture he made had me in stitches. The play was an ensemble piece, but I spent the whole thing just watching Charlie, thinking “how can one man be so talented and so funny?”
Then when we did our first two-man show together, we had a scene where Charlie gave me a lap dance, put his foot in my mouth and poured orange juice down his leg for me to drink a la Salma Hayek in ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’. Once you’ve been through that with a guy, you know you’re in for the long haul.
CHARLIE: I had a similar epiphany of wanting to work with Doug when I saw him in an incredibly dull Greek comedy play – which he transformed into an arse-achingly hilarious production through a masterful bit of improv that had the whole crowd in tears.
We had often seen each other in queues for auditions and I remember thinking “Oh f*ck, there’s that obscenely funny guy. He will get the part”. We then worked on a four-person sketch show, and after that the other two went off to do other things and we stuck together to do a two-man play, and then sketch shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.
I think we knew we had a very silly, cinematic (and often messy) approach to comedy.
You have performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. To the uninitiated, what is the overall experience when you are starting out and what have you learned from going to this prestigious festival?
DOUG: It’s very, very, very, very expensive.
CHARLIE: It’s insane. For a whole month, you’re not sleeping, living on a diet of Tenants and kebabs, frantically flyering to get your seat count from zero to above-zero every day, then doing your bloody show, briefly being relieved that it’s over and enjoying a couple of other shows, before realizing you had to do it all again tomorrow.
We were very fortunate to work with the Pleasance Theatre who were always very lovely and helpful. But yes, we got so poor. Still financially recovering from those Courtyard pints.
You launched your production company RobbTawn in January 2023. What are your immediate and long-term plans for the venture?
CHARLIE: We are currently preparing to make our debut feature film as writer/director/actors later this year.
It’s a darkly comic mockumentary called Why Are You Here?, which follows an undertaker who discovers one of his deceased clients has woken up. We will be shooting around North London, and have already got a great core production team on the job.
We are always looking for more funding, so reader if you have a pile of cash you just simply have got to get rid of, then come our way. Other than that, we’ve just completed a horror comedy radio pilot we are currently pitching, and we have a big bag of TV pilot scripts we are developing.
DOUG: We’ve always loved just making our own stuff on our own terms, and we’ve been gradually building an amazing team of friends and collaborators to work with.
When it comes to RobbTawn’s long-term future, the idea is just to keep expanding our team so we can keep making our own films and other projects in our own way. We’ve got a few ideas for our second and third feature films lined up already…
SEANCE QUESTIONS:
What was the start-off point for the short?
CHARLIE: We have always made little goofy sketches that we put online (all available to watch on the RobbTawn Youtube Channel!), and recently we made a more contained web series of séance sketches, where Douglas played a medium and I played different clients.
It was a super simple set-up of two characters talking with one foot in horror, and one firmly in silliness. We took one of our favorite sketches involving the spirit of a boring Dad lecturing his son, and developed it into a short script with more of a plot and a few twists and turns.
How long did it take to shoot?
CHARLIE: Two days.
DOUG: 48 hours.
CHARLIE: A Tuesday and a Wednesday.
DOUG: 20% of a week.
CHARLIE: But really, who’s counting?
You are co-writers, co-directors and co-stars in this film. How did you delegate and dovetail your talents as a triumvirate duo?
DOUG: A lot of it comes very naturally. When we first started filming sketches, it was usually just the two of us, learning as we went, writing, directing and performing in them largely because there was no one else around to fill those roles. So in a word, “necessity”.
CHARLIE: We are also extremely lucky to have an incredibly talented bunch of mates as our production crew, and a fantastic DOP in George Pearton who is like our third brain, and instantly understands the comic and cinematic beats we want to hit in our angles. So we can talk to him about what we want to achieve, he says what’s possible and then delivers amazing shots. So thank you George! Big kisses.
What fascinates you about mediums and the supernatural?
DOUG: Mediums are a great way of showing something supernatural, without having to show it, which is not only cheap, but handily complies with the old (occasionally misunderstood) ‘don’t show the monster’ rule.
It also makes everything more human and real, even when dealing with a supernatural subject. Sometimes ghosts and overtly supernatural phenomena can take you out of a story and lessen the impact of the horror. But in something like ‘The Exorcist’, the horror is perfectly contained in the human experiences and reactions to supernatural possession.
Would you like to expand on the issues and themes explored in this short into a feature idea?
DOUG: Not exactly a feature…
CHARLIE: … What my colleague is getting at here is that we are certainly interested in expanding these ideas, but into a Television series. We have an idea for bringing a charlatan medium character and an involuntary clairvoyant into each other’s worlds.
DOUG: A lot of what we do reflects our fascination with how real people respond to the big issues of death, grief, fractured family relationships– you know, all that hilarious stuff.
As such, we like to take things you might associate with the supernatural or horror and present them in a more muted, naturalistic way, finding comedy (and heck, even drama) in how real people might behave in such situations.
Who and what are your key cinematic influences?
DOUG: Inevitably there are so many. To name one, I might say Thomas Vinterberg. We’re very keen on letting things breathe and take their time visually and dramatically and he’s a real master of that kind of less is more approach.
CHARLIE: I hate to be that guy… No actually, I will be that guy!
We love Spielberg. There, I said it. Those iconic one-shots where you let the atmosphere breathe, keeping the horror hidden or obscured as in Jaws or Duel. Comedically, we love Airplane! and The Naked Gun series of playing the ridiculous deadpan; and of course Monty Python And The Holy Grail is a huge inspiration for, “Fuck it, let’s have fun!”
What issues and themes are you keen to explore in future work?
DOUG: Our tendency is to be ‘story first; themes later’ in our approach. Which is not to say we don’t think about themes or social issues as we write, but they usually arise naturally from the initial idea, so it’s hard to predict what will grab us in the future!
CHARLIE: He said it. We want to make great characters and force them together in uncomfortable situations- hey, sure, that’s drama. But we hope that themes and feelings come out of the subtext of the film for an audience to decide in their own way, rather than put together a riveting lecture on issues (we’re also not clever enough for that)
SEANCE premiered at the London Independent Film Festival. What was the experience like and how do festivals help short film-makers like yourself?
DOUG: LIFF was such a fantastic experience. It all sounds obvious, but it’s so gratifying to see your film on the big screen and to meet other independent filmmakers. Especially when you spend so much time working by yourselves, it’s really encouraging to meet like minded people, all doing similar and exciting things.
CHARLIE: It was a huge pleasure to have the opportunity to show our work to friends, family and a new audience, and we have a lot of gratitude for LIFF.
It was awesome to meet such talented filmmakers and hear about their work. I think festivals are a great help for getting your work in front of new audiences outside of your circle. Thank you LIFF!
Finally, what are you most proud of about this short?
DOUG: It made the audience laugh in the cinema. That might sound simple, but having done a lot of live comedy at university and the Edinburgh Fringe, we’ve learned what an audience not laughing can sound like, so it’s nice to know it did the job.
CHARLIE: My colleague here is exactly right. Spending months in isolation editing the same jokes over and over again, you do begin to forget if it’s funny or if people will like it. Having that instant reaction was affirming to know that our work held up and we’re on the right path.
Read Film And TV Now’s review of SEANCE here:
