In Blood Star, Grindhouse Meets Arthouse on Desert Roads

Lawrence Jacomelli had never made a feature or even a short film before Blood Star, a grisly road movie thriller playing today at the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival. Though he had spent 25 years in the ad world, he just couldn't find the right script.

Luckily, his wife, Victoria Taylor, had an idea: an officer of the law abusing his power. It evolved into Blood Star, a story of a young woman (Britni Camacho) in a bad relationship who crosses a sheriff (John Schwab) in a middle-of-nowhere stretch of New Mexico. As he torments her on the open road, she realizes he's done this sort of thing before.

"We threw around a lot of different ideas, different locations, different monsters, and after a few weeks Victoria had the idea about a corrupt lawman," Jacomelli tells MovieMaker.

The pair are based in Brighton, about 50 miles from London, home of Beast London, their commercially focused production company. They initially thought of setting their film in the UK, but then turned to the American Southwest. (Palmdale, California, outside Los Angeles, quite credibly stands in for New Mexico in Blood Star.)

The found screenwriter George Kelly online to help hone the idea, and he became the first of many collaborators they found online. Blood Star is his first writing credit. Additionally, actors Camacho and Schwab were both leading a movie for the first time. And the production had a tight shooting schedule and budget.

"I threw myself into this movie with a no-fear attitude and a beautiful naivety that you have when you do something like this for the first time," says Jacomelli. "It enabled me to take risks and experiment. I knew it would be hard work and there would be pitfalls, but I was determined to make it work and produce something we could all be proud of, despite huge budget restraints.  Obviously, with hindsight, I might not have been so quick to jump headfirst into the project, but then we might never have made a movie!"

What's striking is that they didn't just make a movie, but also a genre film that finds time for unforgettable Tarantinoesque moments, including one in which we watch the sheriff just eat chicken. It also makes the extremely bold move of rendering our heroine speechless for the last 15 minutes of the film — a real calling-card move that pays off.

Though it is available on video on demand in the UK, France and Germany, Raven Banner — the company behind the impressive run of Hundreds of Beavers — is representing it as it seeks distribution in North America.

Also Read: ‘Rat King’ Reflects a Chilliwack, BC Film Scene That Takes Young Filmmakers Seriously

We talked with Jacomelli as he prepared for the film's screening 9 p.m. Saturday at the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival, in a British Columbia setting that couldn't be much different from the New Mexico desert: Chilliwack is surrounded by splendid mountains, greenery and untamed rivers, and when we ran into Jacomelli Saturday morning, he was hoping to go out and watch eagles snatch salmon.

We talked with him about first-time filmmaking, the power of silence, and predators.

Lawrence Jacomelli on His Directorial Debut, Blood Star

MovieMaker: You're British. Why set your first feature film in the American Southwest?

Lawrence Jacomelli: At first, we looked at different story settings for that character and considered shooting it in the city, and it could have been London, which might have been easier.

But I was drawn to the idea of a road movie and also the approach of setting it all in a car. That idea was then developed into the first outline for Blood Star, which is a road movie with a few pit stops. The car still plays an important role but ultimately I felt that a desert road movie that showed off the landscape and other aspects of Americana I love would have a broader appeal.

We set it in the American Southwest because we needed the story to take place in the middle of nowhere. A place full of nothing, where there is no escape.

MovieMaker: What were the benefits and setbacks, if any, of having never made a feature before? And was there any experienced old hand you looked to for guidance? 

There were a lot of inherent costs that were unavoidable due to the nature of the script and setting: buying the cars, housing the crew out in the desert, plus expensive extras like a low loader trailer and an 80-foot condor (used to raise the lights for the desert night scenes).

On the flip side, there is a lot of production value in shooting a story in a setting like that. And this was a big consideration. I wanted to make a visually beautiful film that would connect with the audience and have production value. So it was a conscious decision to use the sheriff and the desert roads — it’s familiar and people love that, I love that too — but the story itself I think is unique, and that’s the most important consideration of all. 

As for the experienced old hand… I would say that role was taken by our lead actor John Schwab. John is a fantastic actor but he also brought a lot of experience to the table and with that a lot of reassurance. He was incredibly helpful when it came to the rehearsals and blocking the scenes. John is also a producer so he understands the process of filmmaking very well and he was an incredible part of the team. Just having his experience at 2 a.m. in 12 degrees when it came to nailing a scene in one take was amazing!

MovieMaker: How did you assemble your team?

Lawrence Jacomelli: I think when you are making a first film, you are in a catch-22 situation. You don’t have the luxury of a budget where you can get proven talent, so you have to look for rising talent, and that in itself is a skill. We didn’t have budget for a casting director, so Victoria took on the role of casting for the movie. It takes more time, but the talent is out there. 

We found all of our crew online — firstly our screenwriter and then the production team. The first person we attached to the project was the first AD, Nick Ryan. The 1st AD is the key person who can immediately tell the director if it’s possible to shoot the movie in a certain number of days. 

This was followed by the line producer, Zaina Tibi, and the cinematographer, Pascal Combes-Knoke, making up our three key heads of department. They were all experienced in indie film production with budgets from around $200,000 to $1.5 million. It was crucial for me that they all had a really deep knowledge of movie production and of low-budget movie productions in particular.

The crew were also living locally to the movie set and they’d all had experience shooting in the Palmdale area on more than one occasion, so they had background knowledge of the filming restrictions in the desert. It was essential that we wouldn’t be wasting too much time navigating unknown waters.

The crew all worked for the same rate — it was amazing that they were prepared to make this concession and I believe it was because everyone bought into the script and wanted to be part of something cool.

As for the actors, I do believe that casting is everything, especially in a movie and especially one like this, where there is so much weight on the two lead roles. Normally I’d audition a lot of actors but it just so happened that both John and Britni came to me as recommendations from colleagues, and when Victoria and I met them, we were hooked.

MovieMaker: What surprised you most as a first-time filmmaker?

Lawrence Jacomelli: When Victoria and I got on the plane to go home after shooting this movie in 10 days, we were wrecked, physically and emotionally. I had all the drives in my rucksack and to be honest, I had absolutely no idea if we had everything we needed to cut all of our scenes together successfully.

The schedule was brutal, and many of the plans for shots and scenes went out of the window.  A lot of the shots were actually filmed in one take and some I didn’t even get a replay on! So the big surprise for us came after the first cut when I realized that we did indeed have a movie.

MovieMaker: You have a pretty long scene of the sheriff eating chicken. You're perhaps breaking a supposed rule of filmmaking, in that I don't think it advances the plot. But it's one of my favorite scenes because it helps establish tone and somehow makes me dislike the sheriff even more than seeing him commit murder. Why was it important and/or fun to include?

Lawrence Jacomelli: The purpose of that scene is to show that he is sitting and waiting for his ‘prey’.  The main action is that he answers the phone and reveals that he has many old phones in a box, suggesting that he has done… whatever it is that he is doing… before.

As for the chicken… Firstly, I wanted a visual motif that represented how he saw his female victims: as meat. I wanted a scene that captured him consuming meat in the same vulgar way that he did those women. Secondly, I wanted an action that would put the audience in the car with him and make them feel uncomfortable and start to be repulsed by him and ask questions about him. I think it was fun and important to include this scene. Most scenes are about pushing the story forward, but this scene is about pulling the audience in.

MovieMaker: 11. You make a very bold decision to render your protagonist speechless for the last 15 minutes of the movie. The drawback is no pithy dialogue, but her deeds end up being more powerful than her words. Can you talk about how you landed on what I consider a cool move? 

Lawrence Jacomelli: Blood Star is a film about violence against women: It explores the core themes of brutality, coercive control, misogyny, and the silencing of the female voice. Through the character of the male protagonist, the film also tackles the issue of abuse of power – the threat sometimes posed by those in positions of authority whose task should be to protect the vulnerable in society. 

The decision to render the protagonist without a voice was the big decision of the screenplay and we thought and worked on this a lot. It’s not just about the 15 minutes without dialogue, but the action resulting in the actual silencing of the female voice.

Women who suffer at the hands of men are left with horrendous emotional and physical scars, so we felt that just giving her a few bruises that would heal in time wouldn’t deliver the message. So, I had to trust my gut on that and, as you say, be bold. Most people don’t question the fact that there’s no dialogue in the last 15 minutes — it’s such a visual ending to the story, packed with tension and set-pieces, that you just don’t need any more dialogue. 

You can learn more about the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival here.

Main image: Britni Camacho in Blood Star. Courtesy of Lawrence Jacomelli.