You’ve probably heard of microplastics, but it might be the case that you can’t necessarily put your finger on what they are or why they’re harmful. Siobhan Gardiner sat down with Guy Trevellyan, to talk about his directorial debut Plastic Surgery, a horror thriller which hopes to shock audiences into realising just how dangerous they can be.
Well firstly congratulations on your short film, Plastic Surgery, which I really enjoyed but did also find absolutely disgusting. As this is your directorial debut, how has it all felt from putting it out into the world, screening at Holly shorts amongst other film festivals?
Yeah, I mean it’s feeling great. As a directing debut, it was a really challenging script and story to make, it was kind of ‘right time, right place’ with how we filmed it. In terms of how we’re feeling now, I mean we’re kind of halfway through the festival circuit and I think we’re near to now something like 40 festivals, which I never would have expected with the film to be honest because you don’t think about that when you’re making it. You just pray that someone might one day watch it and maybe like it. So it’s feeling really great, really happy that it was the first one I’ve done because we had such a great crew and Anna Popplewell (who plays Dr Terra), I was blessed to have her as an actor on the film and she was brilliant, it was really, really great to have her on board. So, yeah, I feel very lucky actually that that ended up being the debut really.
I couldn’t believe it when I watched it. watched the first couple of minutes and then I went, is that Susan from Narnia?
And she’s lovely by the way! She’s really lovely and she’s very kindly doing my next film as well, so we kind of kept that collaboration going.
So Plastic Surgery takes on a very serious and frightening social issue. Was there a single insighting incident or did it build up over time that you decided you wanted to write about this?
I think it was a build up over time to be honest. I knew I wanted to create a thriller – I wouldn’t necessarily call it a horror, there’s essence of body horror in there – but I knew I wanted to make a thriller. And then it had kind of been building up over time. I’ve always been interested about topics on the environment and sustainability and the effect that we’re having as a species on on the planet and through my sister who used to work at the Ocean Agency, I got a better insight into the real effects we’re having beneath the waves on marine life and that’s where I kind of started to do some research about plastic pollution. And the one thing that kept coming up the most was its effect on our health which was something that I haven’t really known. And this is back during COVID times and I think the first paper on it was released during COVID or just post COVID, where they kind of discovered that it was in our blood for the first time in 2022, which was a study done in America and then confirmed in the UK. And then the British Heart Foundation did a research study on microplastics in the plaques around our heart and that showed increased risk of heart disease, heart failure, blood spotting. Lots of different factors. So to see these massive organizations and charities doing research on this subject and identifying its risk to our health was quite scary. But I thought that it’s just not a very well-known or well talked about subject. So, I thought if you could blend the environmental climate you know with the thriller/horror genre you’ve got something really interesting there because the reality of the environment is pretty horrific. You don’t have to go too far away from reality to find quite a horrific tale and so that’s where it kind of started.
The film really builds into becoming a thriller with the first occurrence of being in someone’s body being quite a humorous occurrence. What was the decision behind taking it from something that first comes off a little bit funny and then making it more sinister and building over that over the course of the film?
The idea behind that was that we wanted to kind of lead the audience down a kind of false sense of security and maybe make the audience feel a bit more comfortable at the beginning of the film and then completely detach and go a different way. So you kind of trick the audience and I feel like when you do that you can increase your level of tension, you can increase your shock value, you can increase the kind of interest and intrigue in the subject matter because when something completely goes on a tangent and then just completely detracts and goes to a different angle um is quite unexpected and that can be very engaging for the audience to keep watching. So, we always wanted to try it wasn’t actually scripted that way. Originally, we opened the story in Dr. Terra’s office and then we went into surgery but in the edit – and this is something where the edit is so so important. Luckily we filmed it in a way that we could kind of chop and change the order of things but we decided to start in a surgery and then move us into the office, so that we could go straight into the medical world, which was a lot more engaging from the offset.
So we have this kind of comedic moment but then the music doesn’t quite match so you kind of left feeling a bit like what is happening and then it takes you into the office and you realize a bit more the context of her character, her world, who she is, you know, the fact that she’s on her last day of maternity leave. She’s clearly going to meet her partner after work and they’ve got a party that night to celebrate. They’re seeing all their own friends that they call ‘the usual suspects’. All these little hints to starting this new chapter of her life. And then she gets pulled away and out and back into surgery because they need her when they’re kind of thrown by another case that turns up.
One of my favorite bits of this film is absolutely the body horror with the special effects and the prop making. Rebecca Wheeler, who worked as your hair, makeup and aesthetics designer, did a fantastic job. So I’d just like to hear more about creating those moments – was there anything in particular you really wanted to include and what things worked as inspiration?
Yeah, Rebecca was our designer. She was amazing. We knew we wanted to develop these 10 plastic patients and we had an opportunity to kind of highlight the ways in which plastic enters the human body through air, water, food, clothing. So we tried to use that and then think about how we can put everyday objects that link to that method of transferal physically seeping out or coming from underneath the skin. So we went down the root of the six-pack rings, choking the throat through what we drink. We had the bottle [in a character’s throat], we had bottle caps in the stomach, we had food packaging in the stomach, referencing food that we eat. We had bubble wrap underneath the skin which is kind of a reference to clothing and what we have in packaging that comes from Amazon or all these things, the bubble wrap that has a kind of weird skin looking cell texture structure, so we wanted to play with that and we really liked the idea of this kind of bubble wrap skin cell stuff that was underneath the skin and almost becoming skin. And then the use of straws again was all linked to what we drink so we did that with the throat and we put loads of straws in one of the woman’s throats. We had toothbrushes as well that we put on the face and legs, we had all these different methods. And then the three surgeries at the beginning of the film all reference and are symbolizing ways in which plastic transfers through the body. So the first one is rectal which is all food packaging so the plastic fork. Then you’ve the PPE equipment that surrounds the lungs in the second surgeries, that’s the air that we breathe. We wanted to do a little commentary on COVID because I just found it very ironic that all the protective equipment we use to protect ourselves ends up just washing up and becoming waste in the ocean which then in turn also damages us as well. So, there’s a whole kind of negative impact of it. And then and then the final one is the throat which is the water, the liquid we drink. So, that was the bottle. So, you have the stomach, the lungs, the throat as the three main opening [incidents]. So, yeah, we really really had fun designing them, coming up with clever ways and making something really striking visually that we could capture. So that was a really great day filming.
The final scene where all of it comes together is just incredible, especially all of the bits on the floor as well all covered in blood.
Yeah, we asked the crew to collect as much recycling as possible for I think a month prior to filming. So all the crew bought loads of plastic food packaging and bottles and stuff that they gathered up within the month prior to shoot and then we used that in filming and then recycled it after the shoot. It just meant that we weren’t buying stuff specifically for the shoot. We were reusing everyday items that people have used from the crew during the months before. It was part of our sustainability mission because obviously we had so much plastic to source for the film, we then didn’t want to have the negative impact ourselves on creating more plastic, so we wanted to kind of balance it if that makes sense.
I wanted to talk about Nice Guy Pictures which you created in order to create films about social and human issues. Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about your next film, The Act of Learning and what else you hope to achieve through Nice Guy Pictures?
So Nice Guy Pictures is an independent film production company that started it up for Plastic Surgery. Again, as you said, the highlight is on social and human issues, so issues surrounding the planet, issues surrounding human issues, whether it be learning disabilities, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, really focusing on characters of vulnerability and putting them in situations that you might not have seen characters like that ever before. And with the next one The Act of Learning, that’s all about my personal experience with dyslexia, being undiagnosed for a long time and then finally finding the help I got through a learning support teacher Mrs. Mendelson who kind of helped me to learn to read, write mathematics, and without her help I wouldn’t have been able to pass school or get into school. So, I very much attribute my early learning abilities to her and her teaching method and also finding my own self-confidence, self-belief that I wasn’t just a stupid lazy kid but I had something inside that that I could access and I think the film is all about that. It’s all about believing in yourself, it’s a coming of age, kind of fantasy drama and we follow – I won’t say too much about it but it’s all about a child kind of discovering their dyslexia and and how they deal with that and the mentorship the teachers that kind of help realize kids hidden and forgotten potential. It’s set during the mid 90s so it’s a period piece in 1995 which is going to be really exciting because we’re designing all the costumes and the looks, the uniform, the production design, everything’s on another scale. With Plastic Surgery the challenge for us was this kind of environmental issue of plastic pollution and and on our public health but now I’ve gone into more of a human issue with learning disabilities, neurodivergence and doing a story that way, which is quite personal to me. So yeah they’re both kind of two ends of the spectrum because one is very like body horror, this one I’d class is more of a kind of fantasy adventure coming of age drama. So yeah, it’s going to be quite a fun one.
And then one final question, what do you hope viewers take away from Plastic Surgery?
I hope they watch the film and that they are kind of shocked a little bit, maybe by the visuals, by the story, and that they come away with a better understanding of its effect on our health, but also maybe just an increased awareness about plastic every day, that maybe you might cut something out of your everyday life, use a water bottle instead of buying the plastic bottle from a supermarket or try and get fruit or veg, instead of in packaging, you try to do it from a different wholesaler or you try to buy it locally. There’s so many different things you could do, even getting a water filter at home which filters out your micro plastics from your taps. So there’s a lot of ways you can do stuff in your personal life and advocate as well for change. Because the first step is individual change and the second step is the wider kind of governmental change which is in the process in some countries. But it always starts first with the individual and I think that is the most important change you can make and if you change that then that’s amazing. We’ll see how the film does but that was always our goal, to kind of raise awareness a little bit about the subject and not make people feel guilty at all but actually just highlight a certain topic and make people understand and be a bit more aware about the problem.
Follow Plastic Surgery on Instagram for updates on when it will be available for a viewing near you. If you would like to learn more about the impact of plastics on humans, you can read here at the British Heart Foundation.
