Troubled Children Films

Quality Indigo (2005)

Format: Digital Video
Duration: 115 Minutes
Director-Writer: Jaspreet Grewal

Cast:
Frank Jakeman, Michael Brand, Dean Holley, Adam Leese, Paul Marc Davis, Cameron Jack, Tom Wontner, Richard Fry, Lewis McKie, John Enthoven, Peter Dombi, Darren Darnborough, Julian Lee and Martin Ritchie.

Links:

BUY 'Quality Indigo' NOW FROM WWW.INDIEFLIX.COM!!!

View the TRAILER for Quality Indigo.

For Quality Indigo's MySpace profile see www.MySpace.com/qualityindigo

Go to the following link to view Quality Indigo’s entry on the British Film Council web-site:
www.britfilms.com/britishfilms/catalogue/browse/?id=3EFF400B0c7a138B2BKgQj2CE44F

See Enchanted Entertainment's review of Quality Indigo here:
http://www.enchantedentertainment.co.uk/indigo.html

See DVD Snapshot's review of Quality Indigo here:
http://www.dvdsnapshot.com/January07Review/QualityIndigoIS.html

Screened at:

TBC.

Synopsis:

Don Paice crashes into depression after wife Angie is catastrophically murdered in an arms deal gone sour, in Rainham, London. Retreating to their native Essex, Paice’s crew duly serves revenge on the perpetrators but that only momentarily placates the crime king-pin, as he realises that he has virtually nothing left to live for without the spiritual connection of his darling wife.

Paice tells faithful right-hand man Charlie Harley to engage the services of legendary hitman ‘The Sandman’ … “He’s been putting people to sleep for years now”… Sandman is given the whole fee upfront to KILL Paice - no matter how desperate he may later get to change his mind. The depression now seems a bottomless pit…
However, when Paice is told that Angie uttered the name of his long lost son ‘Terry Mallstrom’, on her deathbed, he retracts his request. The Sandman though refuses the offer of retracting the job - even if Paice waives any fee refund.

With Paice desperate to find Mallstrom, Sandman desperate to carry out his vow, and a second assassin - hired by Paice to ‘neutralise’ The Sandman - also on the prowl, things become chaotic and dangerous. With the Met Police also on the trail of Paice’s probation violating second assassin, the streets of London are about to catch fire!

Background:

Quality Indigo was financed on the back of Give and Take, and Take’s success and was conceived by writer-director Jaspreet Grewal only four months before production began: “I knew that I wanted to revisit the crime genre because it’s definately my favourite, but for a while I didn’t know what to do with this character that I had created called ‘Don Paice’. I realised I wanted to explore mortality because of quite an intense experience that happened in my personal life and that’s when I decided to bring Paice’s grim-reaper to life in the form of ‘The Sandman’. I wrote this script fast and literally within 7 months we were shooting it.”

But why should the 24 year-old writer-director be having a mid-life crisis? Don Paice is estimated to be around 50 in this film and (appearing in virtually every scene) he is the closest thing to being the writer’s alter-ego in the piece: “I wouldn’t say ‘I am Don Paice’ but I certainly understand him intimately. He’s actually having a set of crisis’ that most of us wrestle with everyday, albeit in a slightly more subconcious, secondary or laidback way… Questions about God, life after death, all those things. These are universal, so I wasn’t worried about making this wise-guy so old. I certainly wasn’t going to make him a young, hip, pretty boy for the sake of a few cheap sales. Frank (Jakeman) gives Paice so much charisma and depth that I think any adult would engage with and enjoy this movie.”

With a limited budget of only 100,000 UK Pounds, how difficult was it to get the nearly 2-hour epic made? Grewal says the answer is simple: “We did what all low budgeters do - cut corners.”
“Everyone believed in the script and everyone worked for expenses - that sort of thing. We stole some street scenes completely guerilla style and got good deals on some others. A couple of the locations used were actually houses and flats that belonged to family and friends so we wrote the script keeping this in mind - to keep costs down.”
Why shoot on a Digital Video format having shot Give and Take, and Take on 16mm?
“Budgetary reasons again, mainly. But also because I knew that we could achieve things in low light areas, with our video equipment, that film could not achieve. I’m a massive fan of film, and will shoot on it at every opportunity, but even with a fast, high quality stock I knew that we wouldn’t be able to achieve the look I was after for certain important night scenes. Much of this film, which I would class as neo-noir, is shot at nighttime - inspired by everything from Little Caesar and The Maltese Falcon to Heat and Bladerunner - so we tried to get a phantasmagoric night look, while keeping costs down.”

Does Grewal think that he has made a film good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the above classics? “I’m no fool - but I hope so! That’s for the audience to decide of course. But I certainly think that some of the guys and girls (in the cast and crew) have out performed themselves on this movie, and if it gets the same reaction as some other low-budget breakthrough gems have got over the last couple of decades, then I’m sure we’ve got a chance.”

Interview and words by Jennifer Grant.

View the TRAILER for Quality Indigo.

BACK