Mark Jenkin is one of the UK’s most acclaimed but also determinedly individualistic filmmakers. He not only shoots on film but uses clockwork cameras without recording sync sound on location. These technical choices give his films a very distinct stylistic character, which influences how he writes the screenplays and frames scenes.
Jenkin’s films are also rooted in his native Cornwall; the rugged, beautiful landscape and its relationship with the sea and mysticism but also the social hardships faced by many of its residents. This was at the heart of his breakthrough feature, Bait (2019), while 2022’s Enys Men (pronounced Ennis Main, the Cornish for Stone Island) is a reality-bending folk horror. The director’s latest, Rose of Nevada, combines his concerns about the future of local communities with the other worldly; two young men sign up as crew on the eponymous fishing boat, which mysteriously reappears after being lost 30 years before, and then find themselves back in that time.
Rose of Nevada is on a larger, more ambitious scale to Jenkin’s previous films but he says that although there were “huge changes” due to the size of the cast, the scope of the project and the budget, things were not too different for him. “The camera department was still me wandering around with a clockwork camera and a couple of assistants,” he comments. “We had a much bigger lighting team but filming things like action sequences, the storm and being at sea, it was the same as it always is.”
Jenkin explains that while “a brilliant practical effects team” was involved in creating the storm, he decided against a big wide shot for the sequence. “I said I would get the storm via a lot of detail shots and a series of closeups to create this big atmosphere,” he explains. “The storm wasn’t filmed at sea, the boat was always tied up against the harbour wall. It was never moving during any of the fishing sequences either. We had a fleet of jet skis just out of shot that pushed a wake past the stern of the boat. It was all very controlled and built out of these tiny fragments.”
This piecing together of short sections of longer scenes – and using film – has been part of Jenkin’s filmmaking process since he moved into features. “I’d always shot Super 8 and when I realised I wanted to shoot my longer narrative work on film, I decided to try 16mm,” he says. “Somebody lent me a Bolex, which was the first 16mm camera I’d used. I really fell in love with it and bought my own camera and several since. I just fell into using the clockwork camera; the simplicity [of it] puts my mind at rest. I don’t have to think about charging batteries or where there’s an electrical supply. It’s just engrained me in me to keep everything simple.”
What might be seen as technical limitations feed into the aesthetic of Jenkin’s films. “When I wind my camera fully it can run for about 27-seconds before it needs to be wound again,” he says. “That’s a real limitation I’ve leant into creatively [and] means I don shoot long master shots.” Jenkin adds that he also “leans into what makes film unique”, the grain, flare and judder. “I don’t want to hide that my films are shot on a low-fi camera. I think that appeals to humans, especially now digital cinematography is so perfect, clean and sharp. I shoot on 100-feet rolls of film, which last two and a half minutes, and a bit of fogging round the transitions can make them more oblique, although I don’t know where the imperfections will happen or how I will use them.”
The aspect of Jenkin’s filmmaking technique that has attracted as much, if not more, attention than his use of film and clockwork cameras is shooting without sync sound. Jenkin says he realised this would be the case when he started working with 16mm and that the actors would have to record their dialogue later. “I thought that would be a bit of a nightmare,” he comments. “To mitigate that, the first impact not shooting location sound had was on my scriptwriting. I stripped out any unnecessary dialogue and only put it in where it’s absolutely necessary.”
Jenkin feels this has had a “really positive effect” on his writing, adding that recording the audio after filming also gives him options in creating the soundtrack. In some cases he will go back and record natural sounds to match the visuals but in others he creates “an abstraction” rather than something naturalistic. “In Enys Men there’s a shot of a gannet diving to feed from [high} in the air,” he explains. “When I was doing the sound, I was trying to create [the effect] of a bird breaking the surface of the water at high speed and just couldn’t do it. So I put in the sound of breaking glass as the gannet hit the surface. It worked on its own as a shot but there’s also a key moment in the film where a glass smashes with the same sound effect. It’s a weird sort of callback or call-forward that works really well.”
Just as Jenkin continues to use film as part of his visual aesthetic, he works with quarter-inch tape as its audio equivalent. His recorder of choice is the Uher, which he first used while studying film production at Bournemouth University, using two machines to create tape loops for reverb and another for recording. While Jenkin designed the sound and composed the electronic score for Rose of Nevada, he worked with supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer Ian Wilson on the ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) and final mix, with digital technology entering the analogue world through Avid Protools. “We recorded all the dialogue in Ian’s studio,” he says. “It was recorded quite clean and we added reverbs and EQs to thin it out, [which] is what I like to do, take a lot of the bottom out of it.”
At a time when modern film soundtracks can feature hundreds of effects and atmospheres, Jenkin tries to keep things as simple as possible. “I limit myself to quite a small number of audio tracks,” he says. “Each effect, atmos or Foley has to earn its right to be in there. Quite often I’ll get to a stage where I’ve got too many tracks and some of the sounds are just lost in the mix. So I’ll strip stuff back to its basics in the same way I do with my visuals.”
This way of working gives Jenkin’s films a sparse aspect but also makes room for the heart and humanity of his stories, with the unknown not far away. Rose of Nevada, which is perhaps the most complete distillation of Mark Jenkin’s preoccupations and filming techniques, is released in the UK and Ireland on 24th April.
Main image courtesy Bosena. Photo: Steve Tanner
