Alex MacQueen as Roy in The Hide
Few low-budget films make such a powerful impression on the viewer as Marek Losey's feature début The Hide, a tense thriller set in the marshes of Suffolk. It's the story of Roy, a lone birdwatcher whose big day, awaiting the arrival of the rare sociable plover, is interrupted by the arrival of a bedraggled stranger, Dave. The two men are from very different backgrounds but form a tentative friendship nonetheless, only to have things go awry as news comes over the radio of a police manhunt in the area. I caught up with Alex MacQueen, who plays Roy, and asked him to tell me a little about the film in his own words.
"I'd describe it mainly as a thriller," he says. "It has comedic elements to it - there are some quite comic exchanges - but I wouldn't call it black comedy because that often has an element of farce to it. This is gentler in that way, but towards the end it does get quite dark."
Alex has done quite a bit of previous comedy work - you may be familiar with him from In The Loop, where he plays Sir Jonathan Tutt - but this is a very different style of work.
"Because I'd done In The Loop and I'd done The Thick Of It I was quite comfortable about asking to come off the actual scripted words and loosen up the dialogue and maybe improvise with the cameras rolling until we'd run out of things to say," he explains. "We had a combination of improvised dialogue and remaining truthful to the script, because we couldn't come too far off the script without destroying the delicate plot line we needed to keep going."
I ask about his previous involvement with the play which the film is adapted from, The Sociable Plover.
"I did the play version at the Old Red Lion in Islington," he says. "In fairness it was therefore quite easy for me to transfer to the film. It was a very small theatre so I could actually see all the audience very close up in that small pub, which meant the performance didn't have to alter particularly from the stage to the screen. If it had been done at a large West End theatre the performance would have to be really quite different in terms of reaching the back and all that sort of thing."
Was this also a factor when it came to working in a very small set? Most of the film is set within Roy's birdwatching hide.
"Yes. It was very, very small. All the walls were able to be pulled away so the camera could be placed wherever it wanted to go, but the performances were naturally suited to the small space."
I suggest that it must also be an intense experience working in such a small team. 
"Absolutely. We shot in seven days at Pinewood and then three days on location. We were picked up at six in the morning to be in make-up by seven to be on set by eight, and we didn't finish until about seven in the evening, so it was pretty gruelling. By the end of it getting through a scene was becoming quite difficult and there were points where lines were having to be thrown in from the side.
"The camera still rolled and we just cut around that. But although it was gruelling it was always extremely good fun. I got on with Phil [Campbell, who plays Dave] and Marek very well. If we hadn't got on it would have been a dog's breakfast, but we were all coming to it from a very similar angle. Marek was very flexible in terms of letting the performances work themselves out without too much interference. Marek's style was very much in tune with mine and Phil's. Luckily Phil and I got on socially and that meant we had a very easy relationship on set. Within the lifts to and from the studio, within the dressing room, we had a friendship, and that's reflected onscreen."
For me as a viewer, the friendship that develops between the two characters was important to my emotional engagement with the film. Alex agrees.
"Had we not got on so well or had we kept ourselves to ourselves, it's possible that chemistry wouldn't have come through."
I ask about working on a low budget and how that affected the production - it must have been a factor in limiting the length of the shoot.
"The seven days we had at Pinewood were absolutely strict. During the last two hours of shooting the technicians were removing lights because we had to get them back to the hiring shop by ten o'clock that evening or we'd have to pay for another week's hire. So we were under considerable pressure at the very end. Bits of set were being loaded onto vans while we were still shooting. We had to get stuff out of there because at midnight Pinewood was going to switch off the electricity supply, just because that's their routine.
"But I think one of the reasons why Chris [Granier-Deferre], the producer, did this is that it could all be shot in one location. Having a studio meant there were no interruptions from passing planes etc. and no issues with any weather or light changes, so it was a very controlled environment. Also, importantly, we were able to approach it in chronological order. That made it a lot easier with the characters and also with the production stuff and continuity."
Roy is a very distinctive character with all sorts of hobbies, obsessions and esoteric knowledge. I ask Alex how he went about researching the part.
"Truth be told, I didn't really research it much," he admits. "A lot of that had already been done by the writer, Tim Whitnall. He has a background in birdwatching and that sort of thing so he brought the technical knowledge. I'm more inclined to think that observations about how people - any sort of people - behave, are what you store up in the back of your mind and try and draw on when it comes to delivering the lines, giving them as natural an intonation as you can. It was less a researched performance and more an instinctive one."
Was it challenging to make Roy sympathetic?
"In some ways the script did that for me. In some of the exchanges the character is quite churlish and unattractive, but other sequences in the script and the way the dialogue plays out make him softer and more approachable. For me the challenge was making sure that everything was consistent as the character developed. When we learn more about Roy, everything he says has to fit with the way he talks when he's going on about silly things like birdwatching and pressure washers."
So what are Alex's hopes for the film?
"Naturally I hope it's a success!" he says. "But I think it's the sort of film that's really aimed at a small audience who have the patience to let that sort of story develop. It is a thriller, but I don't think it would do well in the big cinemas alongside whatever blockbusters are out there. It's been to a few festivals and done quite well so I hope to see it in quite a few independent cinemas around the country, where I think people will enjoy it."
Before we finish, Alex is keen to add a few words about the film's cinematographer, George Richmond. "He's really a very accomplished first camera operator," he says. "He's worked on things like Cassandra's Dream and The Golden Compass, so we were very lucky to have him. And because we had him we were able to get access to very high end equipment which there's no way we would have been able to afford otherwise - we really had high end resources on a plate, which was wonderful. Also, whenever Marek was off set, he would look after me and Phil. He was very good - he could tell straight away when we were fatiguing or when we were in our element, so he was ready to push us when we were in the zone, and that really helped everything to come together.
"We were under so much pressure that we didn't have any time to waste, so a lot of shots were set up in just ten or 15 minutes. I think that was good for me and Phil. It really kept us on our game and kept us fresh."
So what about Alex's own work - what is he up to now?
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The Hide is out in cinemas this week.
