A Minute With: ‘Shepherd’ actor and director on the horror film

LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Tom Hughes stars in British indie horror “Shepherd”, portraying a widower searching for respite from his spouse’s loss of life by taking a job on a barren Scottish island.

However what first seems as a distant getaway turns right into a terrifying nightmare as Hughes’ character Eric, a shepherd, is haunted by a mix of guilt, paranoia and ghostly apparitions.

Filmed on the Scottish island of Mull, the film premiered eventually month’s London Movie Competition and hits British cinemas on Friday.

Reuters spoke to Hughes and director Russell Owen. Under are excerpts, edited for size and readability:

Q: What was the genesis of “Shepherd”?

Owen: “There was a really well-known story off the coast of Wales, the Smalls lighthouse … what I took from that was the isolation and the insanity, then created a personality to occupy that atmospheric scenario.

“… The event of (Eric) was born out of associates that I would recognized had gone via despair, some had misplaced their lives to it and so I wished to craft one thing that was open-ended so individuals might resolve whether or not he was mad, whether or not he was alive or not, whether or not he was nonetheless on the island.”

Q: What have been the challenges in placing this collectively?

Owen: “One of many hardest issues is encouraging everybody to go and movie on the far northwest of Scotland in the course of winter, on an island, get a home constructed and a lighthouse, and all kinds of the insets constructed and whatnot.”

Q: How did you come throughout the venture?

Hughes: “I … learn the script and was drawn to it … I discovered the problem thrilling. You do not typically get the chance to helm a movie and attempt to maintain that story with out anybody to actually bounce it off … For lots of the movie, it is simply me by myself, and that was a problem.”

Q: Did the isolation on Mull play to the strengths of what you needed to deliver to the function?

Hughes: “The island was like a manifestation of his inside state. He is nearly conjuring the isolation for himself by going to this island … And so due to this fact, by proxy, being the actor taking part in the function, the island carried a weight for me on being there, getting to 5 o’clock, you’ll be able to’t simply go to a restaurant in the course of a metropolis … there might solely be one focus, and that one focus was the movie (and) the character.”

Reporting by Mike Davidson; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Enhancing by Alex Richardson

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