'Inheritance' Interview: Neil Burger and Rhys Ifans

(Left) ‘Inheritance’ director Neil Burger. Photo Credit: Chris Chapman. (Right) Rhys Ifans in Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.

Opening in theaters on January 24th is the new action thriller ‘Inheritance‘, which director Neil Burger (‘Limitless’ and ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’) shot completely on an iPhone, and stars Phoebe Dynevor (‘Fair Play’ and ‘Bridgerton’) and Rhys Ifans (‘Venom: The Last Dance’ and ‘House of the Dragon’).

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with director Neil Burger and Rhys Ifans about their work on ‘Inheritance’, developing the screenplay, Burger’s shooting style, the challenges and benefits of filming on an iPhone, Ifans and Phoebe Dynevor’s characters’ estranged father and daughter relationship, and working with the actors on set.

Related Article: Neil Burger Talks ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’ Starring Daisy Ridley

Phoebe Dynevor in Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’. Photo courtesy of Angelo Dominic Sesto. An IFC Films Release.

Moviefone: To begin with, Neil, can you talk about conceiving the idea for the film over COVID and the process of developing the screenplay?

Neil Burger: Well, I’d read a New York Times article about a reporter early in COVID, like in April of 2020, going from Serbia all the way to France. The borders are supposed to be open. Suddenly there’s checkpoints with guards with guns. There’s nobody on the street. I was like, “I want to see that, and I don’t want to just do a documentary about it. I want to set a story in it.” So, I began crafting a story, and then the world changed, and the world opened again a little bit, but I still had this story, and I still had this desire to see the new world as it was. I felt like the story was still valid in that way. So that’s where it came from. Then the idea of shooting on an iPhone went hand in hand with that because when you go in with a film crew, you are disruptive. You’re big and you’re noisy and you draw attention to yourself. People are looking at you. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to see how the world was at that point in time. I wanted to see what the new normal were. To do that, we had to be completely under the radar. I thought, what better way, it looks like a friend filming another friend with their iPhone. Everybody’s doing that. So that was the idea. It wasn’t as a gimmick. It wasn’t merely as a substitution to a motion picture camera, but it was because it gave us access. It meant that we could walk through a crowded Cairo market, and nobody would look at us.

MF: As a filmmaker, can you talk about the pros and cons of shooting a movie of this scale on an iPhone?

NB: Well, the pros are that you do have access. You can go anywhere. You can also go right up against somebody’s face and then down to their hands. It’s so mobile. We didn’t use any kind of stabilization or lens or anything like that, and it still looks beautiful. We mucked a little bit with the insides of it. We did, however, shoot on one single lens, the middle lens of the (iPhone) 13. It’s a 26-millimeter lens because the other lenses did not have the resolution that we wanted but the middle lens really does. We’ve blown it up to 60-foot screens, and it looks beautiful. But the other lenses didn’t quite do it, and so then it was like, “Okay, well, we’re just going to embrace that. We’re going to shoot it on one lens.” So, when Rhys, who plays Sam, is talking to (Phoebe) on one side of the street, we don’t go to her on the other side of the street. She’s tiny in the background. That was just like, that’s what it is. That’s the way we’re going to do it. We sort of take that risk as filmmakers and do it that way. So, there were a little bit of lighting things that happened in certain kind of low-light situations, like little bright lights would bounce around in the lens, which we had to remove digitally. But in general, I loved it. I thought it was so refreshing and liberating. I’ve done big movies before and I’ve done big stuff since then, and it’s always like, “Could we move the camera into his hands?” It was like, “Well, the camera’s going to cast a shadow, and we’d have to take out the wall or move that desk.” Then with this, you could just put your hand in and do it. It’s so fast and so fun. It was great.

Rhys Ifans in Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.

MF: Rhys, what was your first reaction to the screenplay and the idea of shooting this movie on an iPhone?

Rhys Ifans: Well, I mean what excited me mostly was of course, the screenplay. But in this instance, the exciting thing for me was one, working with Neil of course, and working with Neil in this very new way for both me and for him, which was shooting it all on ostensibly an iPhone and just what that would do to the working creative process. Then it turned out we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It was very kinetic, immediate, exciting and quick. It took a bit of getting used to. I mean, I say a bit, it took a day or two to get used to and then it was a real thrill. Then coupled with worldwide travel and adventure. When you’re shooting on an iPhone, you get less respect from the public because they don’t think you’re making a film. They just think you’re one of them, which is fantastic. Constantly, there was a sense of this could all go wrong, which for me was fantastic because it gave the whole thing a danger and an edge. It felt like in some instances, a little bit like street theater with a minimal crew. I say minimal crew, I mean generally a crew can be up to 100 plus people, and we had 10, maybe. 10 very skilled technicians. It was great to work with this technology that of course we’re all using, but it was great to be involved with it, with it being in the hands of a great filmmaker like Neil, who knows his way around the grammar of cinema. Those two things, that was the appeal for me, certainly.

MF: Rhys, did shooting the movie on an iPhone change your acting approach at all, or was it the same as other movies you’ve worked on with normal film or video cameras?

RI: It’s funny. It doesn’t change your approach necessarily, but it does change your attitude. On a regular movie, you will come in, you’ll rehearse, then you’ll walk away, and they’ll light the scene and set up the cameras. There’s a lot of waiting time, which in some ways is a good thing. But in other ways it depletes any energy you might discover in rehearsal or during a take, and then they turn around for close-ups, and so it’s a longer process. This felt a lot more immediate in the sense that we could shoot the whole scene, cut and immediately shoot the whole scene again. So, you’re not dropping the ball. It felt a little bit in some ways like a rehearsal room in a theater where you run the scene and the director goes, “That was great. Okay, do that again”, and immediately you do that again. So, what it gave Neil, I guess, was a huge kind of palette in the edit that he could choose from in terms of takes that he liked and that he would ultimately think would serve the story he ends up telling in the edit. So yes, I mean very tiring and exhausting in the sense that you’re constantly feeding the beast, the beast being the film. But I found it very exciting, and a very exciting way to work and a method I’d really love to explore again, in terms of what it does to performance. Then I think the other thing that really helped was of course any crowds or extras you might see in your periphery in this film are real people. Real people in that context are the greatest actors in the world because they don’t know they’re acting and that’s what we all strive to arrive at. So that really fed in the fact that we were in these real situations, and somehow made the situation itself feel realer and more urgent.

Phoebe Dynevor in Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’. Photo courtesy of Angelo Dominic Sesto. An IFC Films Release.

MF: Neil, in addition to shooting on an iPhone, you also implemented an experimental shooting style with minimal rehearsals and minimal camera setups. What was it like for you as a filmmaker to work in that way?

NB: Well, the story is very scripted. It’s a thriller, so it must have all its puzzle-pieces parts in order. So, there’s no improv, yet we were willing to kind of be in situations that were loose. We did rehearse beforehand, but then when we got there, we literally would get ready at a hotel and then we would walk down the street to where we were going to shoot. The crew would fall away. It was just me and the cameraman and then the sound man even staying further back, and then Phoebe or Phoebe and Rhys. I would walk to a place in the street, and we had discussed it, then I would walk away, and I’d get a block away and I would just go, “Come on,” and they would start walking and they would do their thing and they were so great. We didn’t do conventional film coverage. There was no wide shot and then an over-the-shoulder shot and the closeup. We didn’t have time for that because even on an iPhone, the more you stood in one place, you were going to eventually attract attention, and I didn’t want that attention. So, we came up with ways to do it in a very caught-live sort of feel and a stolen feel. So, it has a new visual language to it, which also changed how the actors acted, which was great. They had to always be in character because they had to be ready for anything that happened.

MF: Rhys, can you talk about the estranged father-daughter relationship between Sam and Maya, and working with Phoebe Dynevor on that relationship?

RI: Well, I mean Phoebe’s just a joy to work with. We didn’t know each other, but we’ve got friends in common and she’s just very available as an actor. Phoebe similarly just embraced the process. It’s not a process you can resist in any way, shape or form. You do have to kind of jump out of the airplane and hope the parachute will open at some point. She absolutely did that. I just got to watch the film a couple of days ago for the first time. Of course, my character isn’t present in India, and I was always very jealous that they all got to go to India. So, I mean, that’s the other thing with the film, it really does feel like a wonderfully exciting kind of travel log. But she was just a joy and a thrill and fun to work with. I think with a process like this, it’s important that it’s fun and comes from a place of fun, you’re relaxed and then you’re to make yourself available, fresh and playful with the other actor or character. We’ve found that I hope.

Phoebe Dynevor in Neil Burger’s ‘Inheritance’. Photo courtesy of Angelo Dominic Sesto. An IFC Films Release.

MF: Finally, Neil, can you talk about casting Phoebe and Rhys and what it was like working with them on set?

NB: Well, Phoebe we had seen in ‘Bridgerton’, and she was already cast when ‘Fair Play’ came out, but she’s playing a more proper, kind of put-together, conservative character, and here she’s very badass. She’s troubled and she’s self-destructive, and she can do it. I think it’s a Phoebe that people haven’t seen before and they’re going to be knocked out when they see it. Rhys has a very affable quality to it, and I wanted somebody who you looked at and you’re like, “I like that guy,” even though it turns out he has secrets that she spends the rest of the movie unraveling. But what was great about Rhys also was that he loved this methodology, and he normalized it for everybody else, including her. I mean, she was game, but it was stressful and weird. It was like, “Wait, we’re going to just shoot on the airplane without permission?” It was like, “Yeah,” and he was like, “It’s great. We’re going to do it.” So, they had a great mentor-protege, father-daughter relationship and good chemistry in that way. I just do want to say one more thing, and it is that this movie, we sort of can’t believe what we did on this iPhone. We created this international thriller, that goes around the world, New York, Cairo, Delhi, Seoul, and back to New York. There’ve been other shows that have been shot on iPhones, but this is really the first international thriller that has that kind of scope, that has that kind of excitement of an international thriller but done on an iPhone. It’s unique, and we feel very proud that we’re the first ones to do it.