Michael Alexander speaks to Haston McLaren –a Perthshire writer, producer, film star and cameraman whose movie debut has been sent to the Cannes Film Festival.
Self-taught amateur musician and composer Haston McLaren has been teaching himself to do things all his life.
Even through his day job as an avionics design engineer, he has carved a niche taking on overall control of aircraft modification projects to earn a living.
But the Glasgow-born 57-year-old, who lives in Carnbo, Perthshire, has taken the one man creative process to a whole new level by writing, producing, directing, filming and starring in a feature film which he has now dispatched for professionals to judge at the Cannes Film Festival.
A Life In August, which took five years to make, has been self-financed to the tune of £20,000 and stars a host of “real life” actors.
Filmed on location entirely in Scotland, and “avoiding heavy complicated story lines”, Haston’s 84-minute directorial debut centres upon Lisa (Lisa Miller) who, with her dancing career on hold and her baby due in three months, is focused on saving her marriage, while husband Harry (played by Haston) seems more committed to his role as aviator than that of father.
Haston, who is married to June in real life, insists the film is not autobiographical.
But rather than coming up with a storyline and then writing music to fit it, his approach to film making has been the complete opposite – he came up with the music first and built the film around it.
“I’m not really a Hollywood type of guy,” says the married head of electronics and avionics design for a company at Cumbernauld Airport.
“I’m not into car crashes and smart a**e one liners and what have you.
“I’m more into films that create an atmosphere and a space that you feel like you are inside.
“But one of my pet hates is when you see visual images and there’s music playing over the top which feels disconnected. There’s a lot of that on TV.
“In recent years I’ve composed more and more orchestral music – purely for my own satisfaction – and people kept saying to me it sounds very filmic and what was I going to do with it?
“I thought about it and said I’d like to hear my music over something it’s not disconnected from.
“That’s really what made me start thinking about what kind of film would this be suitable for?
“The more I thought about it the more I came to the realisation that perhaps I should make the film and would know it was completely harmonised with the visual images.”
Haston discovered that the process of editing film is remarkably similar to that of music production.
With much of the film making process technical, he found his engineering skills migrated easily between different disciplines and having control over the whole process helped reduce costs.
Both visual and performing arts also share the same goal of eliciting an emotional response.
But while he may have started A Life in August with no connection to the film industry, by strange coincidence that is not how things were to remain.
“In my day job, I was asked to install the gizmos in the aircraft 007 flew in the film Spectre,” he says.
“Actually the real fun was building the other aircraft which were used in the more destructive parts of the movie. As they would never leave the ground there were few safety issues to consider, so it was all just play.”
Haston says that the “hands down” biggest challenge to making his film was the Scottish weather.
But what made up for this was the kindness and generosity of others who provided amazing locations, equipment and their services without charge, and without whom the film would not have come to fruition.
Also working free of charge were the actors who brought “believability” to their roles.
He says: “I wanted realism so I sought out people who actually play the roles in real life that they actually play in the film.
“All of us ‘act’ every day – we have a role at work, we have a role at home. That was the way I approached the whole thing.
“I was really lucky I found some fabulous people. One or two have done some acting but on the whole they play the role they play in real life.
“The lead female Lisa Miller from Kilsyth, for example, was six months pregnant. She was a natural. “It’s quite a thing to ask a six month pregnant woman to act in film. But it worked!”
Haston won’t hear until mid-April whether the people at Cannes are interested in showing his film.
He admits he’s learned a lot and would “do it differently” second time around.
But the response will likely determine whether he makes anymore.
“I have every intention of making more films,” he says, “but it obviously depends on what the return is on this one.
“Obviously I have to sell this and distribute it.
“If we don’t it’s a lot of time and money to think about another venture.”
