Kate Madison - Born of Hope interview

Born of Hope. What is that I hear you ask? Well, allow me to enlighten you. Long ago in a country far away a cinematic version of Lord of the Rings was filmed by a little know man called Peter Jackson. Now with news of The Hobbit soon being in all cinemas near you Born of Hope has crashed its way into the wonderful world of Middle Earth films.

Directed, produced, production managed, location scouted and prop & costume managed by the wonderful wizard Kate Madison, Born of Hope is a big time film with a small time budget that introduces us to the life of Aragorn’s people before the power of the dark lord Sauron became overwhelming however throughout this mini epic his power is steadily rising.

During the course of this film we find out about Aragon’s parents and how he became so close to the Elves of Rivendel. The peace of young Aragon’s people is soon disrupted and an epic fight between Men and Orcs and Trolls begins. The CGI Trolls are made with high skill and precision and even with the low cost of the work that was put into them they look almost as good as Jackson's multi-million dollar versions.

The film, considered by some to be better than the Jackson epics, was met by the media and a large amount of the public with anticipation and many of those who have seen it have fallen in love with it.

Bearing all this in mind I cheekily asked Kate Madison for an interview about her not Hollywood funded film and, to my absolute delight, she said yes.

One of the challenges with Born of Hope was the lack of material to work with. How did you come up with the script and what challenges did you encounter doing that?

When I was looking for a story to do I found those few paragraphs and the idea of a film about Aragorn’s parents and where he came from seemed a great idea. Aragorn is such an important character in LOTRs but we know hardly anything about him until he turns up in the Prancing Pony in Fellowship. To my surprise I soon discovered that Tolkien actually wrote very little about Aragorn’s parents, Arathorn and Gilraen. Together with the main scriptwriter I took the characters and started to build a world around them. We discussed what they were they like as people? Who were their friends and colleagues? What events might have happened in their past, and what events might happen in our story? Tolkien didn’t really tell us much about the relationship other than that Gilraen’s father, Dírhael, did not approve of the marriage because of Gilraen’s age. We therefore had to start from scratch: how did the couple meet? Did they grow up together or meet later on? The script took a number of years of work to evolve and we were still doing some changes and additions once we started the edit process, even writing in new scenes to go and film.

Being a small film means a low budget, what problems did you face in terms of equipment, costume and props?

We obviously didn’t have very much money to spend so we couldn’t exactly hire huge cranes and lights etc. Most of our camera operators owned their own cameras and I also borrowed one off friends. We had a home made jib and dolly track we used, rarely, and the odd glide cam and fig rig. We did have a few shots that required lights so we scraped together what we could from crew members. We did have to hire large lights once or twice. Costumes did take a large chunk of the budget, either buying material and making things from scratch or buying items on ebay and adapting them. Many of the costume items were constantly recycled and mixed together to create different looks. Props were a similar issue. I did hire a few larger items to try to dress the village but with the low budget it was cheaper to try to make a lot of items, like the cart for example, that was made from scratch using wood donated by West Stow and wheels bought on ebay.

At any point did you almost have to stop filming due to finance? How did you overcome this?

Luckily I’m already starting to forget most of the bad moments. The village scenes that were shot during November 2008 were hard, mostly because of the weather conditions and the number of people involved. Finances were at an all time low and I was spending thousands of pounds arranging accommodation for everyone close to West Stow. We had no facilities available to us so were using the huts as our only shelter. It was very cold and I was very stressed out. Strangely, despite all that, I think we got some of our nicest shots. The weather conditions gave the village this wonderful look, as there was a mist that just hung around everything.

After that shoot I realised that we desperately had to raise some money or we might not be able to finish the film. During an emergency fundraising meeting we came up with an idea to copy a viral campaign done for the US elections, called “Don’t Vote”. Our light hearted “Don’t Give” video just made people aware of the situation and fans slowly started to help out with a pound here and there. In the end about 400 people from around the world donated and we were able to finish making the film.

There has been a lot of hype recently about Born of Hope. How does this make you feel, has it changed your view of low budget film making?

All the publicity and hype about BoH has been fantastic. It’s very odd to talk to a stranger and when I mention I’ve just made a film many of them go “oh I’ve heard of that”. I’m not sure that’s it’s changed by view of low budget film making but it has enforced my opinion that low budget doesn’t have to mean a modern gritty gangster flick. With a bit of hard work and a lot of help you can do something that’s usually reserved for big budget Hollywood. We hope to test this again with our next film.

How do you think this publicity will affect projects such as yours?

It’s hard to say really. It might make the general public more aware of independent films and “Fan films” but I’m not sure if more people will watch them. If nothing else we hope that because people heard so much about BoH that they would be more inclined to give our next project a fair chance.

Your film has been described as ‘better than the Peter Jackson epics’, which is a great reflection of your work, how does this make you feel?

Obviously it’s extremely flattering to get good feedback, though I don’t think BoH is or ever could be better than Peter Jackson’s Trilogy. I know that Tolkien fans have been very supportive and have loved the simplicity of our story and that we stuck extremely true to Tolkien’s timeline of events. Some people were disappointed that PJ changed parts of the story or left bits out but you have to do this when making a film. It’s a very different medium and way of storytelling to a book. I think in the end we were lucky that Tolkien wrote so little of our story, making it easier to stay true to that small amount. Again it is amazing the kind of response we have had and I certainly hope that it means that people will want to see future films we make. It also hopefully proves to people trying to make their first films that you don’t need a huge budget and lots of fancy equipment to make a good film.

You worked as director and actor on this film. Did this present any difficulties trying to do both jobs at once?

It was certainly hard work wearing so many hats, as well as directing and acting I was also the producer, production manager, location scout, prop and costume manager etc. It was hard to do everything and do everything well when I was stretched so thin, it’s defenantly something that I would try to manage better on the next film. Directing and acting is do able as long as you have a good solid team to work with and ideally someone to be your eyes behind camera when you are in front of it. Due to the nature of the film, many people had to take on multiple jobs and just pitch in wherever it was needed.

Having contacts in the business is obviously important, what aspects of the film could you have not done without the contacts you have?

Most of the contacts I have were actually made while making this film. I’m a big believer in the saying “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” and it’s certainly been true for this project. There was no way I had the budget to get five original, uniquely designed swords made for the film but I asked and Raven armoury helped out. The same is true to Jon Peck at Norton Armouries who supplied loads of rubber armour for our orcs. There are so many other examples like this and you just have to remember that the worst that can happen is someone saying no. One great thing about working on BoH is that hopefully many of the people involved will be willing to come back to work on the next project too.

Have you had a lot of people working for free on this project? Is there anyone you would like to thank?

Absolutely everyone worked for free on the film and everyone deserves to be thanked but there are far too many to list here! :) The credit list consists of about 400 cast and crew and about 400 financial supporters. Everyone who had the slightest involvement in this film deserves a thank you and the only other thing I can do is hope that it furthers their careers, it’s certainly forged friendships. Now I just can’t wait to get everyone back onboard for the next project, we hope to be able to even pay them next time!

What is your next project?

We are currently developing about 3 feature film projects and it’s hard to tell you too much about them as it’s still early days. However, they will not be fan films although they will be fantasy inspired films which stay close to the Lord of the Rings style. They will also be relatively low budget films though we hope to maintain our high production values. Stay tuned to our websites for more information.

Many thanks Kate!

You can visit Kate's personal website here