Benjamin Spike Saunders & Marie Dutton: 'Long Friend'

Feb 1

Feb 1 Benjamin Spike Saunders & Marie Dutton: 'Long Friend'

‘Beb’ are Marie Dutton and Benjamin Spike Saunders, a creative filmmaking duo from Bristol. They met through Stuffed Reece, a taxidermy raccoon, who has a rather large social media presence given the fact that he’s dead. After Ben had the idea for what turned into ‘Long Friend’, he approached Marie with the offer of a meeting at a chain pub. The result? An award-winning film and the blossoming of a relationship…

Firstly, a big congrats on the award! You guys must be made up?

Ben: Honestly, we're over the moon. We didn't expect this film to be any more than just a tiny passion project for us both.

Your film, Long Friend, is also a music video. Which came first? Was it always your intention to submit to festivals or was this always supposed to be a music vid?

Ben: It started out as a music video. It was only ever meant to be a little project that we could both have fun doing. Marie has a background in making short films so it was her idea to submit them to festivals.

Marie: Also the response we got from people watching the music video was really lovely, there were a lot of people suggesting we label it as a short film.

How did you both come to collaborate. Is this your first project together?

Ben: Yes, it's quite a romantic story actually... We kind of met through @stuffedreece, a taxidermy raccoon who has a remarkable social media presence given the fact that he's dead.

Marie: Ben contacted me asking if I'd be interested in making a music video starring Reece, and so we met at Spoons (very professional) with the intention of discussing ideas. Instead, it turned into eight hours of talking about everything other than film ideas. We both walked away unsure of whether it was actually a meeting or a date.

Ben: It was probably around our 5th date when we thought we should probably make this film.

As filmmakers, you guys use a lot of vhs and hi-8 (which we also love and use ourselves). How does the process differ from modern-day digital filmmaking?

Ben: I find there's a fine line between a great looking digital camera and a shit one, annoyingly we can't afford either. We stick to mainly hi-8 so we can record for longer and there's something about the format that has loads of character, there's a comfort in all things analogue and lo-fi. Although it is a bit of a pain to transfer all the footage to digital.

Your film is a love story that features two dead animals. It sounds crazy but it works superbly - how did you guys formulate the idea?

Ben: The initial idea was meant to be me on a date with Reece, but I quite quickly took myself out of the spotlight and accepted the modest role of the world's worst waiter.

Marie: Then Amy (taxidermy badger) came into our lives and we thought it might be quite funny to have two very static characters combined with a rollercoaster of emotions. Ben came up with the script, and everything else came together very naturally.

The film was part of the lo-budget mayhem programme at LSFF. What is it like to produce a film on a shoestring budget and what are the constraints you faced as filmmakers?

Ben: We always wanted it to be a low budget film, we're big fans of making props both big and small. We find that it's the little details that make a video special. Obviously with a bit of money we could have actually sorted a better set but the fact that everything to do with the video was made in my bedroom makes it even more special.

Marie: I often get overwhelmed with film ideas that I so badly want to come to life but unfortunately can't because of money constraints. With Long Friend, we made most of the props and borrowed things from friends, we had no crew to pay and the two main actors were dead so that made things pretty easy for us.