"Hitchhiker's" had a cast overflowing with the offbeat talents of Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Mos Def, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy and John Malkovich, whereas "Son of Rambow" stars two pre-adolescent boys who had never acted on film before -- Bill Milner and Will Poulter, 11 and 13, respectively -- at the time of shooting.
Jennings and Goldsmith had already been working on "Rambow" for two years when they were hired onto "Hitchhiker's Guide." In returning to "Rambow," it might strike some that going from a flush Hollywood-backed adaptation of a much-beloved novel to a scrappy, British independent production with a 10th of the budget is moving in the wrong direction, but the Hammer & Tongs team felt they had everything they needed.
"We hate waste," said Jennings. "One thing we learned on 'Hitchhiker's,' everyone said to us, you need this guy and this guy and all these things. And you don't need any of that stuff. We're used to a commando unit that gets big results and is quite hands-on, which is far more exciting and fun. So we went back to our way of working for 'Son of Rambow,' and it was bliss."
"No one is just standing around drinking tea, although we drink a lot of tea," said Goldsmith. "It comes down to what's the most productive way of making a film, and, for us, it's not to ask someone to move that to there, it's just to move it."
That sense of hands-on problem-solving extended to all aspects of the production. Where "Hitchhiker's" was an extravaganza of rather obvious special effects and movie magic, in "Rambow" the effects are mostly subtle, sleight-of-hand tricks.
Still, even the lo-fi film-within-the-film made by the boys took some technical wizardry. Jennings originally tried to use '80s-era video equipment but realized it created more problems than it solved.
"We tested them, I even had my old one," he said. "But that worked out being counterproductive. You think you're trying to be authentic and what you actually end up with is something people can't see. It was just horrible. We realized we were the only ones who would know if it was authentic or not and it's just a few simple buttons in post-production rather than struggling with something that's real but wrong."
The two now are writing an animated film, although they haven't yet figured out how exactly they'll do it, whether by computers or models or old-fashioned cel animation.
"I love the fact we've done it all backwards," said Jennings, "and where we're going next is probably equally wonky."
