In the new movie Lucid, Caitlin Acken Taylor stars as Mia, an art student who takes a mysterious and trippy drug to overcome a debilitating creative block. The film, set in the mid-1990s, is a psychological drama and horror that explores the depths of the subconscious.
People often say travel is a true test of a relationship, but filmmaker Ramsey Fendall offers another compatibility litmus test: making a movie together. Fendall, who co-directed and co-wrote Lucid with his partner Deanna Milligan, said, "Try making a movie together, because that's really one of the most arduous things you could do."
The pair, who call Victoria home, had known each other for a few years before they began shooting Lucid in 2023. Once on the Vancouver Island-shot film, their relationship turned romantic. The film plays at the VIFF Centre from May 29 to 31 and June 2 and 4. The May 29 and June 4 screenings will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
"We were friends. And through this crazy filmmaking journey, we just fell in love and discovered that we can work together under the most trying of conditions," said Milligan, a veteran Canadian actor with a long list of film and TV credits.
A Unique Creative Partnership
On set, the pair have a defined way of working together. "The way we describe it is Deanna is the heart, and I am the eyes, and that's sort of how we proceed," said Fendall, the cinematographer on Lucid.
Set in the gloriously iPhone-free mid-1990s, the film focuses on Mia, an art student on the verge of being expelled due to a creative block. Desperate for inspiration, Mia ingests a magical, mystical, and maybe a tad malevolent substance. Under the heading of 'be careful what you wish for,' the creative spark comes with a dark dip into the subconscious, forcing Mia to revisit her rocky childhood.
Lucid is a dreamy, art-punk trip — literally and figuratively — that, at times, feels like it's covered in a gauzy scrim, heightening the wooziness of Mia's creative world.
Visual Language and Handmade Feel
"We very much wanted the whole film to be beautiful, but also to have this very handmade feel to it," said Fendall. "There's actually a coherent visual language for everything that was happening. It had to feel like she had made it; it had to feel beautiful, but also because she had made it, it had to have a kind of messiness, untidiness. And that was really, really important."
Shot in 35 millimetre and Super 8, Lucid began life as a short film in 2019. In 2021, the film got into Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival's shorts-to-features lab, which got the feature ball rolling.
Unsurprisingly, the going was challenging. To help make the film, Milligan and Fendall roped in friends and family, including Milligan's two actor daughters, Violet and Josephine Gaffney, to work on the project. "Our crew is tiny, really small," said Milligan. "Our film is super-collaborative in every way."
An example of that collaborative spirit was Acken Taylor chipping in on the set design side. "All the painting on the walls, the writing on the walls — a huge amount of that was her work," said Fendall. "It's incredibly important to trust the people that you're with, and that can be a hard thing, because obviously, as a director, you want to keep a fairly tight hold on the reins."
