Movies You Made: “Missing Mrs. Claus”

Four years ago, I featured a group of U.K.-based filmmakers here called Realm Pictures and recently heard from them again about a short film they have just finished for the Christmas season: Missing Mrs. Claus. Background on the project from director David Reynolds:

Having recently suffered a catastrophic setback on the feature project we have been developing for the last year, we couldn’t bear to let 2014 slip by without having anything tangible to show for it.

We realised that it had (somewhat terrifyingly) been four years since we made our short ‘loveletter to indie filmmaking’ and decided to make something inspired by the same spirit. We had six weeks to Christmas, and figured that if we knuckled down we could deliver something in five.

A number of us have lost family members over the last couple of years, and so the idea of elderly loneliness was high on our list as we sat down for coffee and discussed our options. Initially we started building a tale about a lonely old grandfather struggling to prepare for Christmas, but inevitably the idea got injected with a bit of ‘Realmyness’ and rapidly became vastly more difficult to pull off when we started writing in Reindeer and the North Pole…

Here is the movie:

More about the movie from David:

The critical point was the transition between the Santa Claus fantasy and the Grandpa reality, we had to ensure that there was a narrative and aesthetic that was at once consistent and distinct, just in the right measure. There were a lot of setups to get right such as the badly wrapped presents, poorly knitted jumpers and of course everybody’s favourite dog/reindeer reveal.

Major concerns in the writing and storyboarding phase were:

how explicit did we have to be in establishing that Mrs Claus had passed away?
 would the contrast of Santa/Grandpa be too much of a jolt for people — would we lose/confuse them?
 how to balance the more comical elements against the sentimental ones

In the end we spent just over £1100 ($1700), mostly on reindeer, fuel and fabric. We worked like the clappers for four and a half weeks to deliver everything on our self-imposed deadline of Dec 17th. We had a total of seven shoot days with a crew averaging seven people. I was literally uploading the finished render while sat on the runway en route to a corporate job in Luxembourg.

So far, about 85% of all comments have related to the viewer having cried — which I’m choosing to take as a positive thing. Obviously we aren’t trying to sell anything, so we have the opportunity to be a little less saccharine and feelgood than the Christmas commercials that we were inevitably going to be compared to. With any luck this story will stay with people and trigger them to think a little more about the elderly at this time of year.

Here is a behind-the-scene video on the filmmaking process:

Cast and Crew:

Santa Claus — Robert Townsend
Reindeer — Scrabble & Tanner
Dog — Boogaloo
Grandaughter — Martha
Grandson — Noah

Directed by David M Reynolds @DavidMReynolds
Director of Photography — Eve Hazelton @EveHazelton
Producer — Valgas Moore @ValgasMoore
Production Designer — Shahriar Abdullah @ShazAbdullah
Original song — Sarah Ruddick
Assembly and Mastering — Rob Westwood
Make Up Artist — Lexi Gilbert bluegirlfx@gmail.com
Production Assistant — Sian Deasy
1st Assistant Camera — Jake Bench @cocobeamfilms
Behind the Scenes — Josh Adams @cocobeamfilms
Animal Handlers — Alex & Emily from Cairngorm Reindeer Centre

Thanks to David and crew for this touching story, especially for those who have lost loved ones and feel their absence this time of year. A special blessing to all of you. May your family, friends, and memories bring you some measure of joy this holiday season.