How Dark Times Led to a Light-filled Love Story

Written by: Murray Suid

The ingredients: a deaf barista working to earn a pilot’s license; a hip musician planning to turn his music into light. The result is “Lightning,” a beautifully crafted romance directed by London-based filmmaker Cristina Isoli Sandri. In the interview (below), Cristina tells how she came up with her original idea. She also explains the importance of finding the right cast, locations, and composers. The movie was produced by Giacomo Mantovani, whose time-travel comedy “History Lesson” we featured here.

Interview with Cristina Isoli

MMM: How did you develop your moviemaking skills?

Cristina: I started to work in partnership with Producer and Director Giacomo Mantovani, who taught me everything about indie production. In 2016 I did a short course for screenwriters at Raindance Film School and after that I wrote my very first short film LIGHTING.

MMM: Are there any moviemakers who influenced you?

Cristina: I was inspired by Sean Baker, who was one of the first filmmakers to shoot a feature film with an iPhone. I said to myself, “If he did it in a professional way, we can do it too.” Indeed I believe that mobile filmmaking will definitely grow in the future, as it is a more democratic way to approach the medium.

MMM: Anyone else?

Cristina: Yes, Wes Anderson. My love for his movies is the reason I spent lot of time working on the colour palette of “Lightning” so that the locations and outfits of the characters match perfectly. His influence is also refleced by the choice of short focus. I wanted the characters to be part of the scene and melting in the scenography. Basically the idea was to create a portrait.

MMM: How did you get the idea for “Lightning”?

Cristina: Funny enough everything start from a bet that the producer, Giacomo Mantovani, and I made. He was challenging me to push my boundary, arguing that I hadn’t done anything completely mine. So I decided to take over the challenge and write an original story that I would love to see in the screen. I was in a dark period of my life as I had just split with my partner. I wanted to remember how it feels—in that magic moment—when you meet someone with whom you share a connection. My idea was to show how important it is to find a way to communicate, because the lack of communication could ruin this very delicate and precious moment.

MMM: How did you plan the action?

Cristina: Everything was carefully arranged in order to optimize the production and respect the schedule given that the actors had other work commitments. The script was pretty rigid and left very small space for improvisation. Every single dialogue line was linked to the next one and allowed only one way direction. However there were some part in which actors suggestions were taken into account and actually added to the filming.

MMM: Could you give an example?

Cristina: There is the part in which the two characters exit from the launderette and they both go on the wrong direction and then they come back embarrassed and they switch side. That was actually a really nice suggestion made by Andy Steed—the lead actor who played Sean.

MMM: How long did the shoot take?

Cristina: Five days.

MMM: That seems like a tight schedule.

Cristina: Actually, it was fairly relaxed because there was much more dialogue than action. This allowed us to have some late starting morning to allow actors and crew to rest.

MMM: Could you talk about your casting process?

Cristina: It was different for the various actors. Genevieve Barr (who played Summer) did not audition for the role. I had seen her performing at The Royal Court Theatre in London, where she was in a play together with Matt Smitt and Jojo O’Neill. I was completely blown away by her performance, and I could not believe that she was deaf in real life. Her voice was so powerful. She could hold the stage without problem, and I was completely mesmerized by the performance of this young woman. That night when I walked out of the theatre, I said to myself that she will be Summer in “Lightning.”

MMM: And what about Andy Steed?

Cristina: The process of casting him as Sean was very different. We looked for months. I even contacted some well-know actors, but despite that they liked the story, they politely said “No.” Because I was a first time director they probably didn’t want to risk too much. That brought us to auditioning for the role, and that’s how we found Andy, who is the living incarnation of Sean. He was the first actor on the first day of audition. As soon as he walked into the room, I knew it! He was him! And not only me, but every single person in the room who knew “Lightning” and the character of Sean had exactly the same feeling. Originally Sean was supposed to have a Liverpool accent, but after meeting Andy, Sean was relocated from Liverpool to Manchester.

MMM: The locations are as perfect as the actors. Could you talk about how you scouted those places?

Cristina: Most of the locations were easy to find as they were local places around where we lived at the time in North London. The only location that was a bit challenge to find was the café, as I had a specific idea in mind: a small, cosy and bohemian corner café in North London. Unfortunately, the location that we wanted dropped us at the very last minutes, so the producer did a massive online image research of all the best corner café in London. And believe me they are lots—more than 2000! He managed to restrict the research to only 20 cafés and we eventually got the right one, which was based in South West London, Wandsworth Town. This alternative location was actually better that the first one.

MMM: With script, actors, and locations set, let’s talk about your approach to directing.

Cristina: Once I found the right actors, directing them was pretty easy because the casting process helps to find the one more close to the actual character. Before the filming started, I met with the producer and the actors for a read through the script. That was the moment for addressing performance issues But they were such great actors that it was really easy to work with them. They got it from the very beginning.

MMM: Could you talk about the gear you used?

Cristina: We shot the film entirely with three OnePlus 5 phones. They sponsored the film and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without their support.

MMM: What’s the reason for using three phones?

Cristina: Having three phones allowed us to save time in production, because we could shoot static scene—such as the exterior of the cafè or the launderette—from different points of view at the same time. The rest of the scenes were shot with the OnePlus 5 on a gimbal to produce more cinematic shots.

MMM: Can you tell us which brand of gimbal?

Cristina: We used DJ Osmo Mobile, but every film is different, and every filmmaker has a different point of view, we suggest that readers use the gear they feel more comfortable with and that can deliver the results they’re aiming for.

MMM: And what about editing?

Cristina: We edited “Lightning” on Adobe Premiere. An important part of polishing the film was to cut some unessential scenes.

MMM: And the soundtrack?

Cristina: This was big piece of the production considering that “Lightning” is about a musician and a deaf person! I had more musicians working in scoring the films than actors. While there were three main actors, five people were involved in scoring the film, all of them London-based artists. The opening song and closing song is Laura Maidment (in art MOCHUDI) a singer and songwriter based from Essex, but based in London, she is actually a really nice person, friend and musician and a real hippy soul, she also lives and composes music on a boat along the London canal.The background song on the launderette, it was an original score of ‘DogTablet’, which are also ex-colleagues that I met when I was working at EMI Music Publishing, back on the days. Whilst the theme songs was made by a London based young composer Oliver Lyu, who has his own record studios in Edgware Road in London. Doing the music was one of the best part of the post-productions.

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Here’s a fascinating three-minute behind-the-scenes video on the making of “Lightning.”