Come take a look behind the scenes of one of the hottest restaurants in London on one of the busiest days of the year. Boiling Point takes the perspective of the staff and puts their personal and professional problems on display. If that’s not enticing enough, the film is one continuous, 92-minute shot, adding tension and a unique dynamic to the chaotic restaurant life.
Co-written and directed by Philip Barantini, the concept of Boiling Point was originally a short film that grew into a feature. Also co-written by James Cummings, the feature brings back many of the same actors including Stephen Graham, Alice Feetham, Hannah Walters, and Lauryn Ajufo, and brings on board Vinette Robinson.
Barantini brings a lot of deep research from the restaurant world to light in Boiling Point and how he conducted it was quite natural. Barantini had an acting background, working in the U.K. for nearly 22 years where he found success, having roles in Band of Brothers and Ned Kelly. Like many actors though, he needed to make money elsewhere. He started working in a restaurant kitchen and, over the course of 12 years, worked his way up from the bottom to become head chef.
“I was head chef for two years and I witnessed and saw a lot of ups and downs. Everything that’s in the script was something I experienced,” Barantini said.
Although he enjoyed acting, he always had a passion for being on the other side of the camera, where he could write and direct. When he was working in the restaurant world, he couldn’t help but think that there was so much that goes on that he wanted to share.
Yet, the idea for Boiling Point didn’t start with a restaurant, but rather the concept of shooting a short film in one shot. The idea then evolved into following a head chef (Graham) as he navigates through the hectic night. What worked for a 22-minute short film though, had to expand to include more characters, complex camera movement, and many more scenes.
To create this world, Barantini had to establish rules on how the camera movement would impact the story, and vice versa. In the short film, the camera never leaves the head chef.
“With the feature, we wanted to expand the world a little bit and follow different characters and pockets of individuals' lives,” Barantini said. The rule though, regarding the camera: “It can never leave a person. It can cross over so one person can walk past another and we can then follow that person.”
Creating the one-shot movie
Writing Boiling Point, Barantini took a different approach than a conventional way to write a screenplay.
“We had the short, so the way we wrote it was we wrote all of the stage directions and the way the camera moved, scene by scene,” he explained. “It’s one big, long scene where there are moments when the camera moves so stage direction was imperative.”
He describes that the first two drafts contained no dialogue, and the script was created with bullet points to indicate what they wanted to say.
Barantini continues, “We did workshops with actors with what dialogue had to be said then left it to them to come up with some magic. We then added the dialogue into the script.”
Even after that, he said he didn’t want them to be so tied down to the dialogue throughout the scene. “If something feels natural,” he said to them, “then go with it.”
Creating characters in a one-shot environment
To create, introduce and bring to life characters in such a setting is a challenging task as well. While Barantini allowed the camera to pick up another character and follow them, he couldn’t cut to a different location in the restaurant — he had to make the interactions seem natural and flow between stories seamlessly.
As any writer is expected to do, they gain inspiration from the people around them. Families must know that any conversation could find its way into a screenplay and any interaction with a customer or stranger could inspire the next main character.
Barantini’s means of character creation was no different.
“All of my characters are based on people I come across in my life,” he explained. “I have to make these people someone I know a little bit and think about how they move, talk, and how they interact with people — to have that in my mind, I had to base it on people in my life.”
The people don’t necessarily have to be longtime friends or family. There are some characters based on someone he met maybe once or twice but who had an impact on his life. But it’s about getting into that past and trying to remember who they were and what made them memorable.
Life is often stranger than fiction, which goes with characters as well.
"You also have to think ‘is that believable?'" he suggests, adding that a story, “has to have an authenticity and realism to it, that includes the dialogue.”
Lessons in making a feature out of a short
For a film like Boiling Point, rehearsal was key. For the short version, there was only two days dedicated to rehearsals. With the feature version, Barantini and crew were afforded more time.
“In total, we rehearsed about two to three weeks with the cinematographer [Matthew Lewis] for camera moves, then two to three weeks with the actors,” Barantini said. “We gave ourselves more time with the actors and talking about the characters’ journeys. We needed to know where the characters came from and where they were about to go."
When it comes to writing, Barantini believes no idea is a bad idea and writers should go with whatever is in their head. He also suggests to, “write about what you know as best you can. You may not know about traveling to the moon but do your research, put in the work in terms of research and exploring something real.”
Boiling Point is in theaters on Nov. 19, 2021 and on Digital and On Demand Nov. 23, 2021.