The Cut, starring Orlando Bloom, is an intense film about all the psychological drama that goes on behind the scenes of a boxer determined to make weight and redeem himself. It’s gritty and massively thrilling and one of the most interesting films of the past year. That’s why I was really excited to chat with The Cut’s director, Sean Ellis, about what went into bringing this film to screen.
Ellis, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker best known for Metro Manila, was drawn to the script because it was a different kind of boxing movie. The Cut goes into the psychology of a fighter, a perspective Ellis could dig into thanks to his own background in Taekwondo and boxing. The director also talked about shooting reverse-chronologically to match up with Orlando Bloom’s extreme weight loss and making scenes shot in close quarters still have a sense of scale. Read on for the full Zoom conversation.
The Interview with Director Sean Ellis of The Cut
[Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.]
Ayla Ruby: So congrats. This film was super intense, fantastic. And I didn’t see how he was going to make weight coming at all, and I gasped. So thank you for the amazing surprise. Can you talk about your journey to the film? How did you come on board? I think I read somewhere you were looking for a boxing script.
Sean Ellis: Yeah, I was looking for a boxing script, and this got sent to me over a Christmas period, and I read it, and then I just suddenly realized that probably this is the boxing film that I’d been looking for because it wasn’t really a boxing film in the traditional sense of a boxing film. And I guess I didn’t want to make a traditional boxing film in the sense of a traditional boxing film, and I think the almost running out of people to make boxing films about, if you’re looking as sort of a real-life character. So I mean, that was what was left was something that was a little bit more left field, and I thought this is a really interesting take on a boxing film. It’s a boxing film with no boxing for a start, and it’s more about the inner psychology of what a fighter has to go through or go through in order to do the thing that they feel gives them validation.
Ayla Ruby: I’m glad you say that too, because it’s such… There’s so much humanity in it. Right? There’s just seeing that drive is incredible.
Sean Ellis: Thank you.
Ayla Ruby: So I think I read as well that you had some kind of insight into the athletic mind from your Taekwondo training, or is that true?
Sean Ellis: That is true, yep, and I was part of the UK English Squad when I was 19. I was the lightweight in the five-man team, so I used to fight at 58 kilos and under, which is probably about the same weight as my sister, to be honest with you. So I think I was quite small for my age, but it did become quite apparent quite quickly that I wasn’t going to stay in that division, and I was struggling to make weight in that division. It was also apparent that what a disadvantage I was in the next division up because I was probably the lightest in that division. And so you’re fighting guys that are a lot bigger than you, and they’re a lot stronger than you. So yeah, I mean, I do have some experience with that. And then I sort of, at some point, switched to boxing and sort of boxed and trained in a boxing gym. And I mean, punching the bag is probably still the thing that I do to keep fit and to keep the demons at bay.
Ayla Ruby: So in addition to that kind of mindset, what’s your process? You’ve got the script, you want to make this film, where do you go from script to shooting? How does that work for you?
Sean Ellis: Well, on this, it was a call with Orlando, and seeing Orlando’s commitment to what you wanted to achieve was inspiring, and then basically, I mean, I got the script at Christmas, and we were in pre-production by May, so it was pretty fast. And then we were shooting June, July, and we finished just before the actors’ strike. So yeah, in that respect, it was a pretty quick on-set filming. It was only 25 days. It was a small shoot, small budget.
Ayla Ruby: I think I read that Orlando Bloom dropped weight for this film and it was shot reverse chronologically.
Sean Ellis: Yeah.
Ayla Ruby: How does that work for you as a collaboration process? What’s that like because the end of the movie’s got these really intense… I mean, all of it is intense, but it’s the height of everything.
Sean Ellis: Yeah, well, we shot those first, the ending. We shot the ending first, and he came to us at his lightest weight, and then he had to start eating and putting on weight as we went towards the end of the shoot, which was going to be the beginning of the movie. My AD team did a great job in just scheduling all that because it’s just a complete head mess to even get into it. And I had enough to deal with, but so I relied on them heavily to schedule it to a point where we knew what we were doing in some kind of reverse chronological order. And then again, fitting in with what was available with the sets and the locations, which you are often dealing with it in any way, but it’s much harder when you’re shooting a film in chronological order or reverse chronological order.
Ayla Ruby: Now, to back up a little bit, this is a very intimate film in a lot of ways. You’re dealing with this person, but physically, there’s lots of hotel rooms, and almost these, it seems like a lot of close shots. How do you communicate these sense of big stakes and movement? Because I felt like that also came through with the movie as well.
Sean Ellis: Right. Yeah, I knew early on that most of the film was going to be in a hotel room, and well, I was like, “God, it’s going to be an hour. We’re going to be filming about an hour of the movie is going to take place in hotel rooms.” So first of all, we designed three different lighting setups, which were going to be like morning light, afternoon light, and then evening light. And then, so that would differentiate some of the scenes from each other as far as timeline goes, and then sometimes we’d have five people in a room. And again, I didn’t even know how you block five people in a hotel room, plus the camera. It wasn’t a set; we couldn’t float walls. So I figured probably a good way of doing it was to put the camera in the corner of the room.
Do the scene, and slowly zoom in on a Zoom and find… We would block it first, where everybody knew where they were going, so they could repeat it, take off the take, and then I would then slowly zoom in from one corner. And once that was complete, I would then go to the other corner and do the same scene again, but from the other corner. And then I would do the four corners. So at that point you’ve got a scene that’s slowly building and the actors is getting bigger and bigger in frame as it goes. And hopefully you’ve got coverage of four different angles so that you always got an actor to be on. I mean, there was a couple of times where we actually got them to change positions a little bit and just clock it 30 degrees or something just so that somebody wasn’t hidden. But generally, yeah, that was kind of all we had time for as well. It was quite a speedy shoot. Some days, we were hitting 30, 40 setups a day. So yeah, it was a lot.
Ayla Ruby: Wow. No, I know we’re pretty close to the end of our chat, but was there anything that we haven’t talked about that was your favorite thing to bring to life or that was the most professionally gratifying or challenging to pull off with this film?
Sean Ellis: I liked the fact that we shot film even on a very small budget, and that was a challenge, but we found a way to do it, which was great. And this was the first film I’ve shot back in the UK for a very long time. I mean, I hadn’t shot back in the UK since 2007.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, wow.
Sean Ellis: So it was the first time I’ve been shooting back. And it was kind of interesting because the crew was quite young and they’re all a different generation, two generations, I should say. So just the change in mentality was a bit of a learning curve for me as well. Like, oh, okay. So things have changed in the industry, some good, some bad. And so that was interesting just to see a whole new generation of crew that are coming up through the ranks. So that was interesting, but yeah, I mean, listen, I think it’s always difficult when you make a film. No film is easy; it’s just an uphill battle constantly, and so one day anything gets finished to be honest with you, but it does. And there they are, the little gem of hope and emotion and sorrow and sadness and all the other things that movies do to us.
Ayla Ruby: Well, this was lovely, and thank you so much for taking the time to chat.
Sean Ellis: Thank you.
The Cut is now available on digital and demand.
Find out more at the official website for the title.
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