From a young age, Freddy Macdonald has been making films. His father Fred taught him stopmotion animation and the craft of storytelling, with the duo eventually teaming up to create the short film Sew Torn as part of Freddy's application to the American Film Institute (AFI). Years later, and with a little encouragement from none other than Joel Coen, Sew Torn has been made into a feature-length film and played this year's SXSW Festival, boasting an impressive 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Sew Torn focuses on struggling seamstress Barbara Duggen (Eve Connolly) who, at the brink of losing her beloved fabric shop, happens across a drug deal gone wrong a briefcase full of cash that could save her business. Barbara is faced with three choices – pull off the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away – and Sew Torn explores each one and the bloody, violent consequences that follow. With Sew Torn heading to UK and Ireland digital platforms on 31 March, FILMHOUNDS sat down with Freddy to talk about turning the short film into a full feature, continuity nightmares, and the wild ride he's been on so far.
We're here to speak about Sew Torn, what inspired the project and how did you get it off the ground?
It's kind of a crazy story, how it all came together. The feature film is based on a short film of the same name. It was my application to the AFI in LA, and their prompt was to tell a story about a change of heart in five minutes. I started brainstorming a concept with my dad – whose name is Fred – that we could easily do on a Swiss road in the Alps. At the time I was living in Switzerland and I had established a Swiss team that I loved working with there. We came up with this idea of a seamstress coming upon a drug deal gone bad, which was very much inspired by the work of The Coen Brothers, who are huge heroes of mine.
We blasted the short out into the world, and we didn't think much of it, but then it ended up in the hands of Joel Coen who inspired the whole premise with No Country for Old Men. I was fanboying because he wanted to meet for coffee, and I was so nervous because I didn't know if he liked it or if he was going to be pissed that we put a spin on that premise that he had mastered. But he was incredibly kind, and he said, ‘You guys should turn this into a feature film.' What stood out to me the most was how he talked about working with family, and because my dad and I worked so closely together, he was like, ‘You guys got to keep doing that', and that's very special. Sometimes you're going to want to murder each other, but when it works, keep doing it. So then we immediately knew we had to take Joel's advice and turn it into an independent feature.
You wrote the screenplay with your father. What was it like working with someone so close to you?
I'm very lucky because we have the same taste. He taught me stop-motion animation when I was nine years old – ever since I was a kid, I was in my dark garage, animating puppets, and he would come in and give me feedback. One time, I wanted to animate a little ball bouncing around and doing cool things, but he said, ‘No, you should try to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, but that ending should subvert expectations.' So we've kind of been co-writing ever since I was nine, and I think our tastes are pretty much identical. In terms of the writing side of things, we very rarely get into arguments about the script. Arguments don't come on set because I direct, and then he produces, but the arguments come in the editing room because I cut my work too.
We come to that moment where Barbara comes across the crime scene and decides what to do – commit the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away. How did you decide on the film's unconventional structure?
It was a very long writing process, and I luckily got into AFI and so started immediately developing the script there. We did about 22 drafts of a linear version of the narrative because we had no clue that it was going to be a feature and were just purely thinking about what Joel said – make it a feature and make it work. On the 22nd draft, we got the same notes that we got on the first draft, and that was incredibly disheartening. We knew we had to throw it out, so we completely scrapped it. We'd go on long brainstorming walks, and we're like, ‘God, we got to throw this baby out that we worked on for the past year and a half', but we started thinking about what the short film was at the. At its core was that AFI application prompt and we realized that this is ultimately a film about choice. Ultimately, Barbara only has three choices on this road, and once we knew that, it was so fun to figure out all the different scenarios we could play out and all the ways she can use her thread to attempt to escape her circumstances.
You're essentially making four films in one. What was that like logistically?
It was a continuity nightmare. I was the script supervisor on the film, so I had my screenplay and all my continuity notes around me. I'm definitely not going to do that again, because, as you can imagine, it's not only the continuity of a linear narrative, it's all these other stories and going back to familiar locations. It was a headache on set, but a fun headache. From a directing standpoint, it was fun to work with an ensemble cast who are in these different realities, in a sense, and allowing them to explore different sides of their characters when they're in these different circumstances.
Throughout Sew Torn, little details make up the wide tapestry of the inter-weaving narratives and Barbara's choices. What did you need to bear in mind to bring everything together and reveal info at the right times?
Because I was cutting the film also, there's so much you can do and edit to reveal information. We took inspiration from the short film in that we see all the pieces of our ultimate scheme, but only reveal how they pay off in one climactic action sequence. So, for example, we Barbara driving, the guns, the briefcase, and the men, but we don't know as an audience what Barbara's plan is until we see this kind of Rube Goldberg catharsis. That was something we wanted to maintain in every single one of her schemes, even though we did get notes from people that they wished they understood her ultimate goal was for the briefcase. But we like the mystery of wondering what this crazy seamstress has up her sleeve and then revealing it with everyone else.
Eve Connolly is superb as Barbara. How did she get involved with the project?
Our incredible casting directors – Sharon Howard-Field and Nathan Wiley – were collecting a bunch of audition tapes, and Eve immediately stood out because she's so expressive, and we knew that Barbara was not going to have many lines. We did multiple rounds of auditions, and one of the first things we did was act out the entire scene of driving through this drug deal visually on Zoom in her bedroom. I was giving her verbal direction, and she was reacting to these invisible objects moving past her in the exact way that you see in the film. It was incredible. In the second round, I don't want to spoil too much, but there's a big climactic dance scene in the final act of the film, and I had to ask her to do that dance in her bedroom because I knew it was going to be improvisational. And she did exactly what you see in the film entirely on her own. She's phenomenal.
As well as everything else going on, Sew Torn is a touching exploration of Barbara's relationship with her mother. Why did you decide to include that?
I'm very drawn to characters who are stuck, specifically, those who are stuck in their path. I wanted to externalize that in this film with the thread metaphor around Barbara. We were very excited about the concept of these talking portraits, which are a product in her store that she and her mother created together, that is essentially an embroidered portrait that has audio recordings attached to them. We loved the idea of her taking that concept to the extreme and allowing that product, now that her mom has passed, to suffocate her in a way. She's covered by this web of thread and she's always looking up at these embroidered portraits of her mother.
Are those portraits a real thing, or something you created solely for the film?
They're not a real thing, but we're wondering if we should turn it into a product. Our partners on the film are BERNINA and Mettler, they did all the embroidery work, and we were thinking we should make them.
There's a lot of blood and violence in the film. What was it like bringing in these practical effects and choreographing these action scenes?
Because my dad and I both have a stop motion background, we wanted to make these things work practically, and we knew they had to work practically because we were a small film. The film is very heightened in nature, but everything that you see does work. And a lot of people wonder ‘How can thread be that strong?' And I always have to tell people that thread is that strong, BERNINA and Mettler can attest to that. We spent hours in my backyard making all these things work with cardboard guns and my mom standing in as the drug dealers. We would film them and send it to the entire crew and cast which was very helpful so everyone was on board about how these things would work mechanically. In terms of the blood, we had an incredible stunt team run by Oliver Keller, and that was all very new to me, so it was a lot of fun to learn.
The score is very interesting and ratchets up the tension. How did you decide Sew Torn should sound?
I worked with Jacob Tardien and he's just incredible because, unlike anyone I work with, he wanted to define the sound of the film before even being on set. He was reading very early drafts of the script and would, as he calls it, ‘find the colour of the film.' He was always trying to find the colour of it, until he landed on something that incorporated real sewing machines and thread sounds. It has a kind of eerie, heightened tone, but it also has an emotional aura that just felt perfect for the movie. That was another one of those things where I could distribute the music with all the actors and the crew to capture the feeling.
Sew Torn has gone on an incredible journey, from short to feature, playing huge festivals, and capturing the attention of Joel Coen. What has that been like for you?
It's been a roller coaster ride, and even now, I'm learning so much. I directed the film when I was 21, so I feel like I've been growing up with the film's release. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to even play at festivals, just because this has been such a long process. I feel incredibly lucky to have even had the opportunity to make a film, work with my dad, and to find the team to believe in it and to get it out into the world.
Sew Torn is released on UK and Ireland digital platforms from 31 March
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