As I spoke about in the first blog post Dream End came from a challenge set to me at the start of 2025 which was what I’d do if I was operating at 100%. My answer was that I would make a film. When I started to write the script to Dream End it’s fair to say that grief and trauma were immediate things which I thought would be present and also for it to be a dream sequence.
Films which have particularly inspired me over the years are films such as ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘Mulholland Drive’ by David Lynch. In my film memory it’s fair to say when I watched Mulholland Drive at the cinema in 2002 I don’t think I’d ever felt so blown away by a film. It’s interesting looking back as it certainly never stayed with me to be my favourite ever film (although it’s perhaps up there). It was more that I wasn’t as familiar with Lynch then as I am now and I’d never left a film I’d seen which had stayed with me like that. I had constant questioning about how each part fitted together and what parts were real and what parts were part of a dream.
I watched ‘Lost Highway’ after this time, and I was possibly even more intrigued then and loved how the film was even really a dream but actually set within a person’s mental process. It was amazing to recognise what could be displayed in the film.
It’s fair to say these were quite major inspirations. I didn’t want Dream End to be as dark as these films though. I preferred to have a greater level of innocence in our respective protagonist.
When I started to write it I actually noticed a personal process taking place. The original main character, while having inspiration from the above films actually had more of me in it and a personal process, I was going through at the time. I’ve become interested in the Psychology of Play and the work of Stuart Brown. I had a secondary layer to grief and trauma whereas the protagonist would have been something like a Psychology professor and geekily studying the psychology of play.
I’d become interested in the healing power of play (I still am). I had greater emphasis on how the protagonist more consciously chooses to play and has his own hero journey so to speak of being able to move into play rather than just being in the theory of it. This was something occurring in me at the time. A coach I work with called it ‘the philosophy of Phil’. A kind of way of being in theory without participation.
As the script moved through this process, it became clear that wasn’t necessary and it was more my personal process and not something needed to be represented in the main character. The simplicity of grief and trauma was enough and keeps things to a solid centre rather than overcomplicating, particularly given it is a short film and my first film.
I think the character of Emma had some inspiration from what I’d call very fringe Psychology I’ve read over the years. Books by Michael Newton such as Journey of souls. These books go into hypnotherapy to the level of not only people going into past lives but also spaces between lives. I liked the level of ambiguity in Emma of the unknown if she is just part of our main characters’ process or if she is his girlfriend visiting him from another realm.
I’ve always been kind of a sucker for well-done dance scenes and the great romantic moments which can happen in films. Over the years I’ve loved the dance scene in the original back to the future (my favorite film) and much more recently the dance scene in Final Destination 6. There’s something too about music from the 50s and 60s era to really be able to capture a mood I think which seems almost otherworldly. One of my favorite romance scenes in terms of dialogue is the scene at the end of the (in my view very underrated film) Vanilla Sky between Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. It’s fair to say these inspirations were kind of likely buzzing around in the background as Dream End in its script was coming together.
In the production process our original actor for the main character actually immigrated overseas. It was unfortunate that they were part of the process which didn’t fully come together, but we have now most likely found our new person for this role. It seems now the producer director relationship is now occurring in a manner which can successfully bring this to life with a refined budget and a greater backbone level of organisation to step by step move through to it’s completion.
We are currently in the fundraising component for this film and are scheduling to film in August. Any donations to the project would be greatly appreciated to help bring what should be a lovely piece of work to life. Please go to the link below if you wish to contribute. We hope you enjoy the film once released.
Phil