Writer-director Ben Woodiwiss breaks down the intricately crafted opening sequence of his feature debut, the psychological thriller Benny Loves Killing.
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Benny Loves Killing is my first foray into narrative drama as a writer-director. Everything I’d done before was either screenwriting or personal non-narrative short film projects. I really wanted to create a connection from my non-narrative films to this one, including sub-textual aspects like gender and film analysis. Of course, the film had to stand up as a narrative piece. I wanted to do this differently: I wanted to get away from too much dialogue, using images that build mood through color, sound, and movement. Benny Loves Killing is a film about women, film, obsession, and more. I wanted it to be a film of flesh and blood; something with a heartbeat, rather than something cold and dead you might find on a pedestal in a museum.
Beginnings are always a delicate matter in a film. There’s so much to communicate in the opening moments of Benny Loves Killing. I know that’s the case with every film, but let me explain. We had to cover two spaces: the dream space and the real space of the film, introduce our eponymous title character in two distinct prologues without using any dialogue at all. We had to bring people up to speed with the atypical form of the film in terms of camerawork, sound, and editing. It’s only a little over four minutes of screen time, but it’s a lot to get through.
So here’s what we did.
It all starts with a one-of-a-kind technique of movement: the camera tracking up the body of Benny (Pauline Cousty) from behind (Figure 1-4). It’s the only camera movement of its kind in the film, and it eases the viewer in with a symmetrical precision, which the film both mirrors and breaks at multiple points over the next 100 minutes. It’s an ostentatious, attention-grabbing opening movement, and this, twinned with ethereal music by Jon Henning Orten, creates a sublime, otherworldly feel.
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Everything here is shot on a Glidecam, giving the shot a dreamlike float, and freedom of movement. The whole film features a ballet between the DP/camera operator Markus A. Ljungberg and Pauline Cousty, and it starts right from this first shot. Benny walks around the gallery, framed by paintings of women (Figure 5), looking at these images in the same way we’re watching the image of her. Then there’s the first cut.
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But before I talk about that cut, let me explain a little about how we shot the film. Everything was shot in long takes, with no second unit photography or pick-ups whatsoever. When you see a close up of Benny putting on her shoes, it’s from a five-minute scene. Everything was filmed with the intention of catching a complete performance throughout. Breaking up scenes into shots and asking the actors to play it piecemeal (for the benefit of a precisely composed shot) creates an acting style that is (for me) more “indication” than performance. So I had a different philosophy. We put the actors at the center, and let the technical teams follow. For each scene, Markus knew the distance and framing to attain at all points, but he was also encouraged to be loose with it. Therefore, every moment in Benny Loves Killing comes from a complete immersion in the scenes for everyone involved.
Going back to the editing, there’s a contrast between these long takes, and broken, fragmented moments. With that in mind, our first cut needed to be as harsh as possible to get the audience into the rhythm. Here’s that first cut: Figure 6 to 7.
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In traditional editing, you’d be going for match cuts on framing or movement. You’d want those cuts to be as invisible as possible, but in Benny Loves Killing we do both: make them visible and invisible, occasionally bringing our techniques right up front. This is a film about film, after all, and we want audiences to see the stitches sometimes.
Back to the scene: the soundtrack introduces a nursery rhyme which will (just like the dream) repeat and grow as the film goes on. This is quickly followed by another jump cut, which takes us into a different dream space with a cooler color palette (Figure 8), and also brings the unreality of the whole scene to the fore. If the audience thought the scene was set in reality, this moment should alert them to the fact that it’s not. Cut to a dolly shot, track all the way in to Benny (Figures 9-14) and then… cut.
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And we’re in the space of the film: the real world (Figure 15). This is all marked out with a noticeable series of choices: handheld camera, natural light wherever possible, 50mm and 100mm lenses (some 35mm shots, but very few), and layer upon layer of sound: production sound, wild track, Foley, atmos, room tone, manipulated sound design, and a spare use of non-diegetic music to create a hyper-real sensation.
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There’s also a noticeable development of colors: they’ll get deeper and richer as the film goes on (before burning up for the final act and turning into angelic whites), but at this early stage Benny is in a muted palette of creams, browns, and blues.
Here’s how the opening moments in the real world play out: Benny wakes up on a couch, washes, packs her bag, puts her shoes on, heads to the kitchen, pours a cold cup of coffee, and rolls a joint (Figures 16-23); giving us everything we need to know about the character without overbearing exposition.
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It’s the combination of performance, sound, camera, color, movement and props that asks audiences to do the work and search for the meanings. For example, in the kitchen, Benny picks up a long-stemmed glass and studies it for a moment, giving the scene a pause to breathe (Figure 24). There’s also more to this moment, but this is only revealed much later to reward careful viewers. This kind of game goes on throughout the film.
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I always wanted the film to have something different to offer when it is re-watched. I read a great interview with Robert Altman where he mentioned that the first time you see a film it’s a game of navigating who, what, where, etc. Once that’s out of the way you can revisit the film, and that’s where you start to appreciate how everything is done and why it’s done in that way. For Altman, everything was about the “how,” rather than the “what.”
Benny Loves Killing is a film that can be re-watched for the “how” and “why.” It asks the audience to join Benny in going through an experience, one made of jagged fragments and longer (often painful) moments. The sounds and colors of the world as Benny walks out into the garden (Figure 25) will hopefully get people to consider how these moments feel, just as much as what they mean. That’s what we’re watching here: an impressionistic snapshot of the events and emotions during a key period of Benny’s life.
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In the garden Benny finds two objects in the grass in a moment in which the 100mm lens really comes to the fore; something that will be a visual motif throughout the film. First she finds a dead insect (the film features a cornucopia of animals, both dead and alive. You might have noticed a picture frame of dead insects in Figure 19), then an old pair of scissors (Figures 26-28): death and the threat of violence are two elements that will be revisited frequently in the film.
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Benny stabs the scissors into the lawn repeatedly and then… cut. And we’re out of the prologue and into the opening dialogue scene. It begins with a gentle ripple of applause from outside on the audio track, a splash of the red hues that will come to consume Benny, and Benny’s first line: delivered at first with an awkward smile, which then dies away to reveal her underlying anxiety (Figures 30-33).
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So let’s sum that up: we’re creating a distinction between the real and dream spaces that the film lives in for 100 minutes. The technical aspects are familiarizing viewers with how the whole film will play out, but also foreshadowing elements that will become stronger as the film goes on. The editing works to be both visible and invisible, and often leans toward a system we called “Quiet/Loud,” whereby cuts are highlighted: one shot ends in silence, the next begins with an action and a sound, and vice-versa. The compositions maintain a healthy combination of both adhering to and eschewing the rule of thirds and central positioning, with Markus always knowing which ones to favor in a given scene. The performances are done in long takes, with everyone (cast and crew) falling into a trance as the scene goes on. There are small patches of color bleeding through from objects in the kitchen, and the garden; pre-figuring the color transformations Benny will go through later in the film. There are layers upon layers of sounds, building texture, both emphasizing the cuts and bleeding over them. Like I said, it’s a lot to get into within four minutes, and it was important that the film had an identifiable languid tone that isn’t rushed. The amount of thought and work that went into these few minutes was extremely thorough. Hopefully it shows.
I spent years preparing to do Benny Loves Killing, I’ve spent years talking about pretty much nothing else, and I’m looking forward to continuing to do this as well as having the film exist in the world forever. MM
Images courtesy of Ben Woodiwiss and Look/Think Films.
Benny Loves Killing is currently available on Vimeo on Demand. The opening scenes of Benny Loves Killing can be viewed here.
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