Sundance Film Festival

Jake Paltrow (Writer/Director) started his career in motion pictures as a set production assistant on the television series Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994. His first achievement as a writer/director came in 1995 with the short film An Eviction Notice, which screened at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Jake Paltrow makes his feature film debut with The Good Night at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film boasts acting performances from Penelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky), Danny DeVito (Terms of Endearment), Martin Freeman (BBC’s The Office) and Jake’s sister Gweneth Paltrow(Shakespeare in Love).

The movie focuses on Gary (Freeman), a once moderately successful musician, who struggles with his career and an inert relationship with his girlfriend. He retreats into his dreams where he is prolific, appreciated and meets his literal dream girl. In service to maintaining this perfection, he discovers how to control his dreams.

“Jake’s a very visual director and had a very clear idea of how he wanted the film to look,” says production designer Eve Stewart. Given the short preparation time, and the limited budget, Jake‘s clear vision was a tremendous help. She continues: “We had many discussions during the pre-production period about how to facilitate his ideas. Once we got going, I think we were flying with the same ideas concurrently.”

Jake‘s characters are very clearly drawn which was a huge help for Eve. She observes: “I‘m very strict about character information and making sure they world they inhabit is believable and that nothing will work to suspend that belief. The design of Gary‘s apartment, for example, was completely character-led. Obviously you have to build into that what angles will work for the camera, what colours work but it‘s character based first and foremost and always serving the story. I‘m very much an illustrator of what‘s on the page.”

This approach served Jake‘s strong sense of – and requirements for – realism well, and is borne out in the design of Gary‘s and Dora‘s uncared for and cluttered apartment – an indication of the crumbling relationship, a sense that they haven‘t invested much time and effort in their home.

Early on the filmmakers had to decide how they would differentiate between Gary‘s waking and dream world. They came up with the idea to shoot the worlds using different cameras and film stock – the waking world would be filmed on Super 16mm, the dream world on 35mm. “It will appear to the audience that the two worlds have different texture.” says Donna. “The waking world is grainier – as is reality – the dream world clearer and crisper, more perfect. For me that‘s the most interesting delineation.” Some slight changes in film speed and sound are also used in occasional and subtle ways to distinguish between the two worlds.

Says Eve: “We were very careful not to make the dream world too surreal, too psychedelic. It has to be very connected to his reality so that you can believe he could really exist in that world. It is rather considered like him. And once you‘re in the dream world, it‘s fairly seamless and you get a blend of waking and dream states which is more fascinating in a way.”

Without a massive special effects budget, the filmmakers came up with a simple device to take Gary from his waking world into his dream world – and to immediately let the audience know where they are – using the door to his bedroom. “It was the bane of our lives,” says Eve. “The door had to have its own truck, we had to haul it over beaches, fields, tracks but it‘s such a good device. Regardless of whether we had the budget for CGI, it was better to have the actual ‘gateway‘ physically there.”

The shoot was an exacting one. Filmed over only six weeks, on a limited budget, the filmmakers‘ biggest challenge was making London look like New York. Choosing locations like Clerkenwell that have a similar feel to areas in New York such as Tribeca and Soho and clever casting of extras – as diverse as possible – certainly helped.

“It was very hard,” says Eve. “London just doesn‘t look like New York. There are a few streets here and there where you can just about get away with it but the architecture is so different.” It meant on location Jake was constantly restricted with angles he could shoot from proving to be both a logistical and creative challenge.

Other locations include the Painted Hall at Greenwich‘s Naval College – a magnificent building providing the backdrop for a key dream sequence, and for two other key dream sequences, a private residence in Kent, made entirely of glass, and the sprawling beaches at Camber Sands, in Sussex.