Q&A with RSA director Lena Beug on "Mandy & Lester"


How did you come to work on this project?

Hill holiday (the agency) approached RSA directors with the brief - we pitched one page outlines and then based on those the ones that got chosen we developed the idea into a script.

What was the brief?

The brief was to make a film that would make people think about responsibility - and in a way that would appeal to a big cross section of the country, the subject matter also needed to be family friendly.

What was your inspiration?

We wanted to make a film that was inspiring - the good things that can come from being responsible rather than focusing on lack of responsibility or the burden of responsibility.

Responsibility is a privilege - We wanted to make a film about someone who takes on responsibility without ever questioning it - it's a simple and old fashioned story, Lester sees Mandy lose the cookies and knows its up to him to return them, he then faces all manner of trials and tests in his quest to do the right thing - and return the cookies to their rightful owner.

It is always  interesting to me that young children often have a stricter moral code than we give them credit for.  They know what's right and their judgments haven't been clouded yet.  We can learn something from them.

Anything I should know about the shoot? Project?

We shot for three short days - you can only have children on camera for five hours a day so it was fast and furious. Time was extremely limited so we only ever did two or three takes of every shot and I think we used every shot in the final edit.

At the same time when you have kids on set it sort of calms everything down, no-one can get to freaky as the kids will pick up on everything.

There were gale force winds blowing on one of our shoot days - and it happened to be the day when Mandy & Lester were putting up the posters and when we put Lester in the tree - it was a bit stressful!

Anything else interesting I should know?

First foray into longer form and narrative - and I absolutely loved it, whole new set of challenges.

I really wanted to make a traditional film, a story with a beginning middle and end.  It's probably a kids film, and my nephews seem to love it but I hope its a kids film that adults can enjoy.

The music - composed by Geremy Jasper who was also the writer and Chris Sanchez.  Might be nice to mention the film has an original score - I think the Mandy and Lester theme could be a hit!