It’s been over two years since we featured David & Keith Lynch’s Trial on Short of the Week. A stylish high-concept sci-fi short that threw its viewers into the perspective of a quadriplegic soldier who undergoes a pioneering mind transfer procedure, we were positive the sibling filmmaking duo would go on to bigger things following this impressive film.

The last time we spoke, the Brothers were gearing up for the feature adaptation of the aforementioned short, Residual and although the project is yet to materialise, the pair do have a feature project currently doing the rounds on VoD an in select cinemas.

Eager to find out more about their first feature as writers, Final Score, David & Keith join us to discuss working on longer projects and the importance of short film in their career so far.

It’s been a pretty nuts few years but a great ride. Final Score is our feature debut as writers – it’s essentially ‘Die Hard in a football stadium’. That was the request we got from the producers and it was a challenge we relished as huge fans of Die Hard itself.

It stars Dave Bautista, Pierce Brosnan and Ray Stevenson. Bautista plays Michael Knox, a former military type who is taking a fallen comrade’s daughter to the match when Russian terrorists take over the stadium. It’s a fun old school action movie, very much meant as a bit of escapism. They shot the film at the old West Ham United football stadium before it was knocked down. In fact, part of the knocking down was done in the film when they blew up a section of the stands!

It was a really unique process. Normally a script can take years to get right but when they came to us in November 2015 they knew the stadium was getting knocked down the following Summer, so things had to move at a pretty crazy rate. That said, sometimes its good to have a deadline like that. There’s always that question when pitching a movie – “why does this story need to be told now?” – with this one it was a pretty literal reason. It happens now or not all because there won’t be a stadium left to shoot in!

“It’s been really great to get a film out there in the cinemas”

I think we wrote the first draft in a matter of weeks over Christmas that year, we submitted our first draft on New Years Eve. We did another draft over the next month before finishing our work and then the director, Scott Mann, brought on board his regular writer Jonathan Frank. Our entire work on the project lasted about two months but that was two years ago so it’s still been a decent wait to see it all released. It’s been really great to get a film out there in the cinemas and the response has been really encouraging. In general people seem to be enjoying it for what it is – a bit of fun, switch-off entertainment.

Keith (left) and David at the Final Score premiere

Yes it was always the plan to have someone else direct it. We’re still ramping up to direct our first feature and because of the ridiculously tight timescales on this they needed someone with more experience than we had. We met Scott a good few years back after his debut film The Tournament – it’s a low budget action movie but he did an amazing job with the money he had and pulled together a great cast. So we were really happy when he came on board for this. He did a great job.

“Once that script leaves your hands it’s no longer yours”

I remember listening to an interview with Christopher McQuarrie about finishing The Usual Suspects script and handing it over to Bryan Singer. He said, once that script leaves your hands it’s no longer yours. It will be changed by the director, the actors, the editors, the producers and even by the audience in their interpretation. Once you accept that, it makes that transition a lot easier. So I think we were well prepared for the project to shift and change after we finished our work – which it did, but ultimately the DNA of the movie we wrote is there. The tone, the plot, the action sequences, the characters, are all very much everything that we brought to the table so we’re really happy about that.

Honestly, I think writing short form story telling is harder than feature films in many ways. Obviously the workload is greater on a feature film, the time spent on it is vastly different. However, you have so much more time to develop characters, sew in your core themes, create a narrative arc. Trying to establish that over fifteen minutes or so is a really tough nut to crack. What it teaches you is efficiency. It makes you strip down the scenes to the bare necessities. Learning that at a short film level just makes you better at making a tighter feature film.

“Short films are the perfect learning ground”

Directing wise, short films have been imperative to us. Keith and I attempted to make a feature film when we were younger (and far more foolish). It didn’t work. We weren’t remotely ready. Short films are the perfect learning ground, or at least have been for us. I’m sure there’s more talented folk than us out there that can walk straight into a feature film without batting an eyelid but in our case it was an absolute necessity to start in short films – it’s made us better and better every time.

Career wise, it’s opened many a door for us. Our first short film, Dual got us our UK agent at ITG and our third short film Trial got us our US agent at WME. We’ve always been good at pitching and over time our writing has really stepped up but it wasn’t until we made Trial that we really started getting taken seriously as directors.

We are literally, as I type this, putting the finishing touches on our latest (and we believe last) short film. Zero is a sci-fi thriller set after a mysterious electro-magnetic pulse renders all the world’s technology useless, leaving a young girl (played by the amazing Bella Ramsey of Game of Thrones) isolated and alone with only her father’s strict set of rules to keep her alive.

It’s an intense thriller but at its heart it’s about a daughter’s rebellion against her well-meaning but over-protective father. We’re very proud and happy with the results and can’t wait to get it out there. It’s being released via the Dust sci-fi channel as a Dust Original. It acts as a prequel to a feature film of the same name set in the same world. The idea being to use the short to raise the finance for the feature film, but it also works as its own self contained piece as well.

Feature wise, we’ve got a few irons in the fire that unfortunately we can’t share just yet but watch this space…