Everyday conversations inside cars about love, relationships and mistakes.

We are often adamant about films with little or no camera movements. Since the emotional side of the story is often greatly enhanced by the small details hinted by the photography. But every so often some filmmakers like to prove us wrong. Daniel Lundh’s ‘People in Cars’ is as static as a movie can get, but it’s the focus on a series of stories that really manages to grasp our attention. The film was a personal attempt to steer away from the commercial world but also an exercise in creating truthful dialogue. Originally writing as screenplay for another short, Daniel says that when it came to dialogue he felt it just didn’t fly, “no matter how I approached it always felt flat”. So he decided to learn and set out to film a few long dialogues, people sharing secrets.

Shot in Stockholm with a minimum budget, and bottles of wine

Film was shot in Stockholm, Sweden over the course of a year between other projects. We had no budget what so ever, actors actually got paid with a bottle of wine. Even down to grading & sound work: bottle of wine. The film was initially an experiment, an attempt to create dialogue that didn’t feel flat, after shooting one of the scenes I felt we were on to something, so I wrote five more stories and the rest is history. The actual process was very initutive, based on my short stories I let the actors improvise each scene 2-3 times before shooting. I knew where I wanted them to end up, but how they got there was more or less up to them. Some scenes took over twenty re-takes, other scenes only needed one take.

Wonderfully contained, the film is unexpectedly engaging. The segments are conspicuously broken up at key moments to create great anticipation. The individual stories by themselves feel absolutely real and intriguing. But the segmented build ups certainly brings everything up to another level. Surprisingly ‘People in Cars’ was shot on minimal equipment. With mostly natural lighting and some small LEDs used at times on the roof, shot it on a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera and two Sennheiser Lavalier mics hidden in the car ceiling.