Simon Ryninks is bringing the landscape and culture of Wales to the big screen at Edinburgh Film Festival, in his directorial debut. Out There is a personal, ambitious science fiction outing inspired by a spate of UFO sightings in the country during the 1970s.
The film made headlines after its announcement with “national treasure” Welshman Michael Sheen being part of its cast list, but Ryninks and his casting directors have found a selection of developing, hyper-talented young actors to lead the picture.
FILMHOUNDS sat down with the Welsh filmmaker ahead of the World Premiere in Edinburgh to discuss Out There, touching on everything from Ryninks’ personal experience with UFOs, to how Sheen was persuaded to join the project, and where the director will go from here in his future projects.
Can you talk me through your experience with UFOs, your willingness to believe in alien life and how it links to the setting of Wales?
I don’t necessarily believe that UFOs are aliens, but I do believe in UFOs as a phenomena. I’ve read a lot on the subject and I think there’s a lot of compelling evidence that UFOs exist. But there’s not that much compelling evidence that could suggest they are definitely aliens. I’m really agnostic on the subject. My interest is in how people search for meaning… their belief in in something esoteric and something that’s outside of conventional ways of thinking. I’m fascinated by anybody who will go to lengths to prove something that is unprovable, essentially. Wales had a big spate of UFO sightings in the 1970s; there were tons of visitations from UFOs and pretty out there stories… abductions, cover-ups and close encounters. And when I discovered this, I saw it as a vehicle for exploring meaning, how people find meaning after something traumatic occurs in their own lives, and that being a way into looking at grief. In my case, I lost my mum, and I knew that I wanted to write about that experience of losing a parent. Discovering Wales’s connection to UFOs was the sort of launching pad for that. Exploring grief through the metaphor of people searching for something elusive, and trying to find answers and connection, it really resonated for me.
Wales is a gorgeous location that suits cinema so well. However, it often appears that more films are being filmed in Wales as opposed to being filmed and set in Wales. How important was it for this movie to be a celebration of your country, your culture and your people?
I mean, it was hugely important for me. It was hugely important that it was set in Wales, West Wales, specifically, because it’s where I grew up. It’s where my mother is from, it’s where I have a deep personal connection and, in many ways, where my heart is. I wrote it with my own experiences and my own interactions with people at the heart of it. The idea of setting it anywhere else was just out of the question. At some point someone said to me, ‘Oh, you know, it’d be easier to make it if you just set it somewhere in England.’ But it couldn’t have been the same film if I’d done that. Authenticity and specificity really, really mattered. If it was going to be filmed in Wales, it had to be set in Wales, and it had to have majority Welsh actors. If we didn’t have a Welsh actor playing a part, then they weren’t going to do a Welsh accent. They would do their own accents. That was a clear directive from the jump.
When you were going into this movie, was there anything in particular that you were really excited to get on camera? Or something that you were nervous to get right, that was especially crucial to making sure that this movie worked, knowing how revered science fiction is as a genre for its volume of iconic scenes?
That’s a really good question. There’s a lot of sci-fi imagery in the film and that partially came from certain key touchstones, like [Steven] Spielberg with E.T and Close Encounters. Also, because our film is set in the 1990s, I looked at Independence Day and a lot of other 90s UFO films. And The X-Files was a huge influence on this film. But the aspect I cared for the most was emotional truth. And that was down to casting really well. I was very concerned about how these grand, emotional scenes would pay off, and how they would work. And also getting the comedy right, and getting the blend right between comedy and drama. There’s a few different tones happening in the film and they’re kind of clashing with each other. And there were a lot of moments during the filming where I stepped back and thought, ‘Are all these things going to work together?’ They all seem like quite disparate ingredients… I think that was my main focus, and my main concern, stepping into it.
You’ve said that you wrote the role of Shifty Griff with Michael Sheen in mind, and it’s clear why. There’s a certain freneticism he brings to this movie that takes it to the next level. How did this collaboration come about for you two to be able to work together, and how much of what you wrote on the page for him stayed in the movie?
I worked with brilliant casting directors in Olivia Brittain and Jessie Frost, who had such great eyes for our Welsh cast and found the most amazing ensemble of Welsh actors. [With Michael Sheen], we’d been annoying him for a year, trying to get him to read the script and to come on board. It was persistence, I think, and not backing down. He came on board about a month before we started filming; it was very close. I always had belief that he was out there waiting to receive the script, waiting for me to make contact with him. When I spoke to him, he loved the script, and loved that it was a character he hadn’t played before. There was very little he did in the film that’s not in the script, maybe one or two lines? To have a national treasure delivering the words I wrote… he completely elevated what was on the page. The lines are nothing without an expert to perform them. It was a masterclass in acting; phenomenal seeing the guy work.
How many revisions does a script like that have to go through to get to its final stage?
Too many. I was rewriting the script on set as we were filming, rewriting tomorrow’s scenes… it doesn’t stop. Drafting continues forever. And it can continue forever until someone tells you, ‘This is fine now, you should leave it.’ But you have to re-write when new actors come on board, or when the logistics of filming require you to re-write. And then, when you get into the edit, you re-write the film all over again. It’s a continual re-drafting process. The more momentum a film script has, the easier it is to write. There is a snowball effect that happens. So it’s just about having the right kind of push at the beginning, because the hardest part is starting it. But if you’d read the first draft, you’d think it was a different film. It’s dreadful compared to what we ended up with. I think what’s helpful when you’re writing is to have people reading it right from the get-go, to see the idea taking shape. And I was really fortunate to have a lot of people come on board that pushed me.
Can we get a small preview into the subject material that you’ll be working with on your next project?
What I’ve started with this film is explorations of belief, and finding meaning, connection between people. And that’s what I want to continue pursuing. I also want to continue making films in Wales. I’ve got a period film set in the 1840s in Wales, which I’ve been developing for a while. I’m also doing a romantic comedy as well, with a sort of folkloric twist, and a folk horror.
Out There has its World Premieres this week at the Edinburgh Film Festival
