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having them work long shifts on local farms
‘My experience as an actor taught me what an incredibly difi cult job it is to stand in front of a camera and make yourself vulnerable,’ Lee explains. ‘I knew that I had to build incredible trust with the actors, and give them what they needed to push themselves. With Josh and Alec, we built their characters from scratch, from the moment they were born until the moment we meet them in the i lm. We plotted everything in great detail – signii cant events, how they were day to day, what their school life was like, what their family was like, their sexual encounters. So by the time we started to work together physically, the boys were totally immersed in who [their characters] were.’ This carefully structured approach extended into i lming. ‘I shot the i lm chronologically, because I felt it would really help the boys relationship,’ says Lee. ‘Each scene
felt like building blocks that impacted on the next. I kept the boys separate until they met on screen for the i rst time; I knew that would add an extra layer, an extra frisson. And then once they had met and their relationship was developing, I moved them into living in the same house and they became very good friends. For me, it’s all in the detail and authenticity of character and place.’ Indeed, authenticity is the beating heart of God’s Own Country, from its richly drawn characters and multi- layered natural soundscape to its production design – all costumes and props were sourced from local farms and shops – and portrayal of the Yorkshire countryside as far removed from the familiar rolling hills and gentle i elds.
‘That was absolutely my intention,’ says Lee. ‘Very quickly, cinematographer Joshua James Richards and I realised that we didn’t want to tell this i lm in wide shot.
FOR OLD
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