Interview: Mark Jenkin on the Sounds and Sensations Behind Enys Men and Bait

In spite of Mark Jenkin winning BAFTA’s Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer prize in 2020, American audiences have had to wait three years for his work to wash up across the pond. The filmmaker’s output does contain the distinct regional flavor of his native Cornwall, a working-class county in southwest England, yet pulsates on a wavelength recognizable beyond borders. Thanks to distributor Neon, stateside cinephiles can experience a double shot of Jenkin with his freshman film Bait alongside his follow-up Enys Men.

Jenkin’s feature work is most immediately notable for its heightened attention toward sound, all of which is added in post-production. He shot Enys Men, like Bait, on 16mm with a Bolex camera that captures no synchronous sound. In the editing room, he then layered in ADR, foley, and score to create a soundscape that resides confidently in the uncanny valley between hyperreal and surreal. It’s remarkable to see the process generate and unite these two features, which are similar sonically but otherwise vastly different in both subject and form.

The sound of Bait adds mounting anxiety underneath the grittily realistic story of Martin Ward (Edward Rowe), a Cornish fisherman struggling with his brother’s decision to use their family vessel as a means to attract tourist dollars. It’s this sense of gnawing unease with the direction of Martin’s community that tapped into undercurrents of Brexit and lent it a wider resonance in its native country. Enys Men builds on a sense of isolation experienced on a much broader scale—the solitude of Covid-19 lockdowns—as it chronicles the collapsing daily routines of a wildlife volunteer (Mary Woodvine) on an otherwise uninhabited island off the Cornish coast. Jenkin leans more consciously into conventions of the horror genre to create a sensory experience that invites the spectator into the nightmarish mental state of the volunteer.

On the week prior to the American theatrical debut of both Bait and Enys Men, I spoke to Jenkin from the studio where he edits his work over Zoom. Our conversation covered the geographic and philosophical underpinnings of his work, how he approaches sound and image, as well as why he thinks of himself as a silent filmmaker during production.

I was with a British critic friend when I was putting together my schedule for the New York Film Festival. When I asked her if Enys Men was good, she replied, “It’s very Cornish.” Which, now, I realized was a perfect explanation. In a more serious sense, how does Cornwall imprint itself on you and your films?

As a proud Cornishman, I always take “it’s very Cornish” as a compliment, never as a criticism. I think Cornwall was just imprinted in all my work because it’s where I live. It’s where I come from. It’s the only place in the world that I get anywhere near understanding. And I think the important thing with filmmaking is that there’s an authenticity at the heart of it, whether people like the film or connect with it is out of my control. But in order for them to be able to at least have a chance of connecting with it, then there’s got to be an authenticity.

Audiences see through things that are inauthentic, so that authenticity is hopefully baked into what I do. Places that are perceived as being aesthetically beautiful or slightly different from the rest of the country that they’re in, they can be used as a bit of a foreign background for familiar stories. Cornwall has a bit of an identity crisis, I think, on screen. It’s often used as a background for other people’s stories. This was unconscious, but what I’ve realized that I’ve started to do through my work is attempt to redress that balance and bring the Cornishness to the foreground and make that the subject rather than the background for other people’s stories.

I recently came across your SDLG 13 manifesto. On a broader scale, how does one come to write a manifesto outlining their artistic principles like that?

You just have to be really pretentious! I mean, I grew up shooting film. I started making films at the tail end of Super 8 being the default home movie format. Video cameras were coming in, but they didn’t really appeal to me because they didn’t have the magic of a film camera. But as I was starting to work in film, I followed the technology, and I ended up shooting digitally. I think it was probably 12 or 13 years ago, I decided to go back to shooting film. Mainly because it looked like Kodak was going to go, a lot the labs were closing, and so I thought, “I’m going to shoot film while I can because it’s not going to be around for long.” And I was scared, like a lot of people, of the cost. You mention film and think, “It must be so expensive!” And because I’d been shooting digitally a lot, I’d been shooting endless hours of stuff. And I thought, “If I start shooting film with the same attitude that I shot digital video, I’m going to be bankrupt in 10 minutes.”

I wrote a list of rules to remember or consider when I’m shooting film just to stop myself from spending too much money. And then a friend of mine, a graphic designer who loves manifestos, said, “You should write that up as a manifesto and publish it.” I had 12 rules at the time, and then he gave me the 13th rule, which is that you have to break one of the rules. Which, obviously, could be the 13th rule, and then you get in a bit of an endless cycle of what that means. I thought I’d publish it, and I did. I only published it on Twitter, and, at that point, I probably had about 100 connections on Twitter. I put it out there, and nobody paid attention to it. But now, because my films are getting a bit more attention, people bring up the manifesto. It was always like a practical manifesto to stop me from being bankrupt, really. All of my films now break all of those rules, but I think the essence and the spirit of that manifesto runs through everything I do because I’m just about avoiding bankruptcy at all times. So, it’s working!

On the note of the rule about subverting or ignoring the genre constraints, how did that come into play on Enys Men?

It probably didn’t.

One of the many broken rules?

Yeah, most of the rules with that one! I suppose I went the other way and leaned into a few of the conventions of horror. I was probably conscious of the fact that maybe if I was going to make a horror film, it wouldn’t necessarily be conventional. But the more I’ve gotten into that, the more I’ve thought, “What is a conventional horror film?” All the best horror films subvert the genre. I probably watched more horror than I had before when I was getting ready to shoot Enys Men. But I do watch horror all the time, and so much of cinema has genre elements in it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized you don’t have to think about these things, really.

Was there an aim to push your form or process in between Bait and Enys Men? American audiences will most likely be experiencing them together due to the way they’re being released.

Yeah, I think it’d be interesting to see what people think if they’re seeing them back-to-back in America. Because, obviously, here [in the United Kingdom] there has been that gap between the two films. A friend of mine who came to see one of the early previews of Enys Men came out and I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Well, it’s certainly a Mark Jenkin film.” I still don’t know whether he likes it or not, never really got to the bottom of it. But I thought it was an interesting comment because, for me, they feel very similar. Formally, I work in a similar way.

I didn’t change anything other than very specific things. I mean, the major thing is that one is in color and the other is in black and white. But that was less of a big change than I thought it was going to be. When I’m shooting black and white and look down the viewfinder, I’m still seeing color. It’s not like I’m working in a black-and-white world. It’s a level of abstraction that’s built into the process I don’t really think about. I used different equipment in terms of lenses, but I used the same camera, restrictions, all that kind of stuff. I think I’ll probably watch Bait in New York when it’s screening because I haven’t seen it for a couple of years. I’d probably find it easier to answer that question [after]. I don’t know how more sophisticated Enys Men feels than Bait…or it might feel less sophisticated. I certainly try to make a film formally that fits the subject matter that I was working with, in both cases. They’re very different films, but it’d be really interesting to see what an audience’s reaction is when they’re watching both back-to-back.

We can’t talk about your films without talking about your approach to sound. Do you hear a movie at the conceptual stage in the way that so many directors say they can see the movie as they’re conceiving it?

Yeah, I think so. I can see and hear it. I can’t separate picture from sound. When I’m in post-production, I work on the sound at the same time as the picture. I do it all here on this bench. I’m doing the sound. I do the music over there. I did sound effects here. I did a picture cut here. I’ll jump from one thing to the other. They’re all really linked together. Normally, it’s a problem-solving thing where if the picture cut isn’t working, I’ll jump on the sound. If I get frustrated with the sound, I might jump on back on to the picture, and then I might go on to the score.

While I’m editing, it’s all happening at the same time. And I always think that writing is the same process as editing. When you’re writing, it’s just editing but with footage that you’re imagining. I hear it all the time, but then it changes. Because then you go to a location, there are sounds there that maybe you didn’t imagine in the same way. Or you get there and it doesn’t look like it did last time you went there because the light’s different or the wind might be blowing in a different direction. Or I might hear a bit of music in the car on the way to location, and suddenly I’m thinking sonically about it in a completely different way. The sound is huge. The sound is massive in my films, which is why I don’t record any location sound at all—because I want to give it the attention that it deserves, and it needs to be done later.

I think of myself when we’re shooting as a silent filmmaker. We’re not constricted by sound. We don’t have to keep the camera in a certain position because there’s a microphone hidden in a flower pot like the early sound pioneers. We’re not constricted. We’ve got complete freedom in that sense. And that’s less to do with kind of chucking the camera around and being extravagant with camera movements. It’s more about where we can film and the worlds that we can create out of specific fragments because we’re not ever compromised by any sound.

The house in Enys Men is supposed to be in the middle of nowhere. In reality, there’s a huge farm next to it which is incredibly noisy. To the other side of it is a tourist attraction, an old configuration of standing stones which lots of people go to. But if we were recording location sound, we couldn’t have gotten that sense of isolation. But by not recording any sound, we just frame a shot that frames all of that idiosyncratic stuff out. And then, when it comes to the audio, I can sound design isolation much more easily and creatively than you can visually. The cliché [is] sound is 50% of the movie, but I would say in the way that I work, it’s much more than that.

What about the most artificial and unnatural sound of them all: silence? Do you think about it differently because it’s an additive rather than subtractive process?

That’s exactly it. I start with nothing, then I add. That’s what I really like about working in this way. If you’re working on a low budget with not much resources or time, normally by the time you get into the sound element of post-production, the starting point is mending stuff. You’re trying to remove an airplane off the soundtrack or the sound of a fridge. So, to start with silence is a great creative starting point. What deserves to be on the soundtrack? Because if it’s not there for a reason, then it doesn’t make it onto the soundtrack. And it’s never complete silence unless it’s needed. That’s normally a dramatic thing. Complete silence is louder than the biggest explosion that comes in the middle of a film. I’ll start by just putting in room hum or a low wind, and I say, “Well, is that enough?” So, yes, definitely an additive process. Once you add stuff and create naturalistic sound, it’s great then to have the ability to just remove those sounds one by one. You can lull the audience into thinking they’re hearing naturalistic sound, and then, suddenly, all those layers start disappearing. You’re just left with a very specific bit of foley sound design, and that’s a real powerful creative tool that I love.

You want the film to be a little bit nonsensical or illogical with regards to the way that you portray time, which makes Enys Men a puzzle box of sorts. Is the idea to get people to solve it or just surrender to it?

I’d never tell the audience how I want them to react to a film. Personally, I think of myself as an audience member more than a filmmaker because I go and watch a lot more films than I make. “I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it,” like the Bresson quote. I think going in and surrendering yourself to the film and to the experience is what I enjoy as an audience member. I know that pisses some people off. People will find that frustrating. And I find that frustrating sometimes! But that’s the beauty of going to see a film—you get a different experience each time. I think most people know that I’m not going to answer questions about the meaning of the film, but my favorite thing is listening to people’s theories about the film.