Labrador Blues Film Spotlight

Today’s film spotlight focuses on the short film Labrador Blues directed by Mitchell Ranisav.

What is the title of your film and what inspired said title?

Well, the title of the film is Labrador Blues, long before the script was even finished. It was some really stupid simple name like Endurance or Family Matters. When I realised it wasn’t gonna cut it I looked to what the story offered. It’s sort of this noir parody in a sense that it’s all these people who are far from good entangled in this murder, which gave me the idea of
the Blues. In the story the main character’s house is in Labrador so it just kind of fit together like that.

Tell us a little bit about the story and origins of your film.

The story goes as there’s this criminal who’s done some very shady things, paying an alcoholic to rob stores for him who gets his plan flipped on him when the alcoholic runs away with all of the money. So the film’s really his attempts to go kill him for crossing him, while he’s been intertwined with a detective who’s trying to pin this criminal to a murder case he’s currently working on. Originally this film was gonna be this cyberpunk set murder noir, vigilante story which I was never gonna film anytime soon. I felt that the cyberpunk elements could be stripped away without taking from the story and so I wanted the story to be told so badly I did that and this short film is what became of it.

Any films or filmmakers that inspired this film?

I can’t really say there’s any direct influence before I wrote it but right now I can tell you there was a lot of influence from Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines. This went so far that I had to change key elements after I realised what I was doing in the back of my mind.

What is the goal of the film for you?

My real only goal with this film is to make something I can call a decent film in my eyes, I want to get myself out there as much as possible but I feel I need to focus more so on improving myself and my films so that I have something to show for myself and say ‘Look, I can do this and I can do more.’

What has the journey been like getting the film into production?

We originally made this film over a year ago, but it took a lot less time and was a lot shorter and midway through 2021 I said to everyone, ‘Hey, why don’t we revisit this?’ I really wanted this story to be told the right way, and I didn’t do that in the original short so I knew no matter what I had to go back and so there was months and months of scripts and improvements and shortening the length trying to get my head out of the dirt and find what really worked and what didn’t. I had previously shot everything in other films on an iPhone beforehand and I knew there was no way I could do that for this film and anything going forward, so I was just putting money together for months to get a Panasonic G85 and I got it and the script was finished so I said ‘Alright, I’m ready to give this another shot.’

One thing you learned from this project?

Film more than you need, never underestimate the power of visual storytelling, there was one day when I had the gear and I was with my friends and I just said let’s go out and look to the script, and film everything the way I wrote it. So we were just walking around Surfers Paradise filming these walking shots, these standing shots and these character introductions and I feel like it really helped me think about the nature of which I can tell stories.

How can folks find you and your film online?

You can find me on Instagram on @minimumwageproductions or my account @mitchellranisav. We have a YouTube channel Minimum Wage Productions where you can find my film and everything else I’ve made on there.

Any last pieces of advice for fellow filmmakers?

Don’t ever think you can’t film something, there’s so many things I’ve done that I never dreamed of being able to capture on a camera a year ago. Experimentation is an amazing way to improve on anything.

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