Movies You Made: “The Secret”
March is Movies You Made month at Go Into The Story where we feature the work of some independent filmmakers.
Today: The Secret.
Production notes from the movie’s writer Thomas Howalt:
First of all — greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark. I really enjoy your site and visit it daily.
My name is Thomas Howalt. I am a dramatist, teacher and director, and have worked in theater, computer games and film for many years.
Last year we made a feature film called “The Secret” which had rave reviews with our core audience, 12–18 year olds, but a short life because distribution didn’t want a film with this story! Happily we have received first prizes in the following festivals: European Youth Film Festival in Flanders, both the Children’s and Youth Film Prize and the Prize of the Children’s Jury in Lübeck, the ECFA award in Schlingel, and special mention in CineKid in Amsterdam.
Story synopsis: One morning three children find their mother lying dead in the kitchen. A storm outside have isolated them because the phones lines are down. They realise that they will be split by the authorities, when the news gets out, and they decide to keep it a secret and continue as nothing have happened. But that isn’t easy when money is short, family and friends are asking questions and they have nowhere to take their grief. In their struggle to survive they uncover many secrets about their mother and who she really was. It is film about the love of a mother and the three children.
The film was directed by Morten Kohlert, produced by Morten Kaufmann (who also produced “The Hunt”, “Submarino”, “The Celebration” and many of Thomas Vinterberg’s films) and I wrote it based on a play I wrote back in 2007.
The cast and the crew lived for a month in southern Denmark and had taken over an old cherry orchard. Igor, who plays Plet, is a very promising cellist. The actor playing “Keld Heick” is Keld Heick himself, a very famous danish musicians with more than 40 years in business.
Full Cast & Crew
Director: Morten Køhlert
Writer: Thomas Howalt
Cast
August Igor Svideniouk Egholm… Plet
Marta Holm Peschcke-Køedt… Donna / Monika
Nanna Koppel… Rianne
Bjarne Henriksen… Flejnert (Neighbor)
Claus Riisd Østergaard… Søren/Soren (Plet’s father)
Keld Heick… Himself
Anja Owe… The Teacher
Produced by
Signe Leick Jensen… executive producer
Morten Kaufmann… producer
Music by Halfdan E
Cinematography by Bo Tengberg
Film Editing by Anne Østerud
Casting By Lena Paaske
Production Design by Anne Mette, Bo Drivsholm
Costume Design by Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen
Makeup Department
Bjørg Serup… makeup artist
Production Management
Jakob Langkjær… production manager
Amalie Næsby… production manager
Janus Schumacher… production manager
Sound Department
Jakob Garfield… sound editor
Hans Møller… sound designer
Camera and Electrical Department
Stine Hein… best boy
Here is a trailer for The Secret with an English transcript below:
00:10: PLET: Mom! Mom, have you seen the storm? Everything’s blowing away.
00:14: PLET (VO): We are very close in our family. We take care of each other in our family. Mom makes things work in our family. So why would we need a dad? They tend to die or end in jail.
00:28: (SUPERIMPOSED): One ordinary morning
00:31: DONNA: No!
00:34: (SUPERIMPOSED): When the world ends
00:35: PLET: Mom? Mom, wake up! Donna! Rianne! Hurry down stairs!
00:40: DONNA: What’s going on?
00:41: RIANNE: The phone is dead. The phone is dead.
00:43: DONNA: If we make the call now they will be here in 30 minutes.
00:46: POLICE OFFICER: Hi, I am Rasmus; I am working with the police.
00:48: DONNA (O.S.): They will split us.
00:51: PSYCHOLOGIST: Hi, my name is Ib, I am a psychologist.
00:53: DONNA (O.S.): If no one knows…
00:55: PLET: Do you want to keep it a secret?
00:57: (SUPERIMPOSED): They make an extraordinary decision
00:57: SOREN (O.S.): Hey, Monica!
00:58: PLET: He is outside!
01:00: SOREN: Monica! Why don’t you come out and talk with me, goddammit?
01:03: RIANNE: Mom is lying down here, right, and she is bloated and in a minute, she will puncture and then she will leak out all over the cellar.
01:07: DONNA (O.S.): Yikes! Stop it!
01:10: SOREN: What the hell is that smell? Anyone who farted? (Laughs)
01:17: FLEINERT (O.S.): Where is your mother?
01:22: RIANNE: Listen! We need to talk about this! All of us!
01:25: RIANNE: You are one sick bastard!
01:33: FLEINERT (O.S.): Such fine drawings, Plet. The place looks beautiful.
01:38: DONNA: How do you know our mom?
I asked each of the filmmakers in this month’s series to answer this question: What inspired you about this particular story to make it a movie? Thomas’ answer:
The idea for the story came because I saw the sentence: “do you want to know a secret”, and thought, yes! Of course, I want to know. What could that be? What would be the worst secret one could have? Then I played the “What if” game with myself for a couple of days while I was painting my house. It was February, outside was a huge snowstorm, and I painted 10–12 hours a day, and wrote in the evening. I knew fairly early (instinct, I guess) how it would end, but researched a lot on the practicalities of the situation — e.g. what happens with the body when it decays, real life stories similar to this, and so on.
The peculiar thing with this story is it never stopped generating more scenes, lines, side stories, characters. Somehow, it continuously presented more and more content by itself. I sat down to write a scene, and before I knew it, I had ten pages. Moreover, it continued to do that. The energies of the kids (in that crazy situation) conflicted greatly with their second tier of connections, which constantly generated new situations, twists and turns.
When I wrote the play, I thought I could turn it into a TV series, but never had the time to pursue the idea. Then one day in 2009, I arrived in San Francisco. It was early afternoon; I was jet-lagged and had to kill some time, before meetings started next morning. By accident, I saw on the net an announcement from the National Danish Film Institute calling for ideas to produce a mini TV-series for teenagers and their parents. The deadline was NOW, but because I was in SF I was actually ahead of time. In less than a couple of hours I had a one pager ready with a logline reading something like: “One morning three kids finds their mother lying dead and decides to keep it a secret”. They invited me in for a meeting, then another, and finally I got the money.
With the money from the Institute, I called Morten Kaufmann, who is a very experienced producer, told him the story over the phone, and he decided on the spot he wanted to produce the TV series. We worked for a couple of months on the manuscripts for all four episodes (it actually went from six to four to three to four episodes during development…) before we invited Morten Kohlert to join the team. The deal was I wanted to write the manuscripts all the way to shooting drafts, but three months before shooting started, I said to him: Now I have written the version I wanted to do. Now I am going to write the versions you want! Whatever you want to change — I will do it with no discussion. In the end, the shooting scripts are quite close to what I delivered.
Funnily enough — the same thing happened writing the TV versions: new material constantly popped up! Anyway, when I was halfway writing the scripts I had arranged a reading with my wife (who is an actor), and some other friends and the producer and myself. After listening, we realized it could work as a film. We continued to work on the TV version, but when the editor began to work with the material, we made both a TV series in four episodes and the feature. That made a lot of noise within the system, because the money was earmarked for a TV-series — but hey! They got both! The film was a bonus!
I learned that each platform offered some unique aspects of this story to come to life. The theater version is more claustrophobic (due to the limited amount of actors) and never leaves the kitchen, whereas the film allows spreading out the story like the different rooms of the house, between inside and outside, and involving a greater cast, which opened for exploring Mom’s secrets. Due to budgetary constraints, I had to change the snowstorm to an ordinary storm (we filmed in May, and even if Denmark is a northern country we do not have snow in May). The play has a more lyrical quality due to the monologues of the kids, where the film allows for more action-oriented scenes with cross cutting and trees falling. Finally, I could involve a Danish rock and music star, who has been playing since I was a kid — playing himself! The play is translated into French and German — and it is really a spacy experience to sit in a theater and see your own play, and not understand a lot! Priceless!
In short: it has been a great pleasure and a great learning process to work with the material over the years on different platforms — next stop could be a novel — or what about a game. Well, maybe not! Haha.
The movie’s website is here.
Drop by Comments to give some feedback on The Secret.
Tomorrow: Another Movie You Made.
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