The idea
"TRAUMA" explores what happens when a bereaved man, unable to make sense of his new reality, retreats into a delusional world where he can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is not.  In following Ben's story, the film deals too with many common themes - grief, loneliness, and denial against a backdrop of the current social obsession with celebrity.
Writer Richard Smith's first film was a short called "Leonard", the story of a man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder who overcomes his condition to form a relationship with his long-lost son.  Richard was interested in exploring mental health further, particularly the idea of a man unknowingly suffering from a mental illness and the effect that would have on him and the people around him.  At the same time he had the idea to write a script about a man whose attempts to come to terms with his wife's death are thwarted when a medium tells him she is still alive.  Combining the two ideas, he began writing the screenplay, which would become "TRAUMA".
In January '02, Richard submitted a treatment to Ministry of Fear, the horror label just set up by Anglo-Irish production company Little Bird.  Head of the label, Lizzie Francke, immediately recognised the story's potential, and that it embraced the label's culture of character-driven psychological horror.  Lizzie explains:   "I liked the story of a person whose world is being unravelled, where their sense of reality is not quite in keeping with what's going on around them.  It had spooky potential." 
Equally appealing was the story's accessibility for an audience in dealing with universal themes such as grief and loneliness.  Lizzie continues:  "Most people have experienced grief in their lives but what happens when grief is un-harnessed.  In our story, this traumatic experience is pushed to the max."   Richard was commissioned to write the script. 

Script to screen
With the script in the works, Little Bird sought a director.  Marc Evans, who has established a reputation for taking on disturbing material, particularly with his most recent release 'My Little Eye', was their first choice.  Says Lizzie Francke:  "Marc is a great director.  Particularly with psychological horror, it is so important that the director has complete control of the material and a sense of creating atmosphere - both of which Marc is very good at." 
Nicky Kentish Barnes, who was brought into to produce the film alongside Little Bird's Jonathan Cavendish, adds:  "The combination of Marc's proven talent with the subject matter and his ability to inspire great trust from his actors to go as far as possible with their characters meant there was no doubt as to who should direct this movie…" Once on board, Marc began to work with Richard on the development of the script and Nicky recognises the benefit of that early collaboration, remarking:   "They both inspired each other to go to greater depths."
Marc was attracted to the story in that it belonged to a tradition of films where an ordinary man finds himself in an extraordinary situation, someone to whom disturbing things happen in an urban and familiar environment.  Says Marc:  "The film twists and turns but around something which is basically truthful…" He was also inspired by the film's relevance to real life in tackling such themes as isolation and loneliness, grief and denial, and particularly our obsession with celebrity.  Marc acknowledges:  "It's a film that deals with phenomena which we understand as a generation… The loneliness of urban life in a city like London compared to the prevalence everywhere of media, celebrity magazines, and reality television.  Real life is something we sometimes neglect to take care of…"
Ben's story takes place against the backdrop of a celebrity death, pop diva Lauren Parris. Bombarded by media images, the world unite in mourning her death, Ben mourns his wife alone.  His feelings of isolation are increased, his situation reduced to insignificance compared to the enormity of the news of Lauren Parris' death.   One of the biggest challenges for Marc was creating a world for a fictitious celebrity that was credible.  During the pre-production phase of the film, a team of musicians, stylists, photographers, and designers worked with singer/actress Alison David and invented a life and a body of work for Lauren Parris.  It was important Lauren's songs sound familiar to an audience to ensure her credibility so existing songs were covered rather than new ones created.   Producing music promos and media coverage completed the task.  Says Nicky:  "You can't cheat the audience at any stage, you want them to be with you all the way, and if anything's not credible, you'll lose them."

Cast and characters
With the director on board, attention turned to the cast.   In such dark territory, it is essential the audience empathise with the central character.  The filmmakers were looking for an actor who embodied the essence of an ordinary man, yet could really stir an audience at the same time.  That actor was Colin Firth.   Marc comments:  "I have so much faith in Colin as an actor.  Technically, he is brilliant and he instinctively understood the character…  I find him totally compelling."  He had worked with Colin on a Ruth Rendell adaptation some ten years prior and welcomed the opportunity to work with him again.  Marc continues:  "We chose Colin because I think he is somebody an audience can identify with, and will want to survive this fate that befalls him."  Nicky adds:  "In spite of his desperate situation, Colin's portrayal of Ben gives the character a pervasive sense of hope which will have the audience rooting for him." 
The character of Ben is a return for Colin to quirkier roles he played earlier in his career 'pre boots and jodhpurs' and an opportunity to explore a man's darker side than he had been able to do in the romantic roles for which he has become well known.   He was also keen to team up again with Marc, and Jonathan Cavendish who had produced "Bridget Jones's Diary".  Says Colin:  "It's an incredibly lonely story. Ben is very isolated and hard to reach."  Yet he believes his behaviour is perfectly understandable in the world Ben inhabits:  "If you're walking down spooky corridors and something jumped out, you'd jump too.  If your wife died next to you in a car accident, and you saw her three days later, you'd freak out as well.  These things are happening to him, he'd be mad if he wasn't freaked out".  He continues:  "But Ben's world is so lonely he doesn't have anyone to measure his reactions against…"  Marc concurs:  "Left to his own devices, without people around to support him, Ben goes further into this corner of insanity and doesn't realise how far adrift from the normal he's got."
Playing the character took its toll on Colin.  He appears in almost every scene, distraught and dishevelled, and admits:  "It's been fascinating getting inside his head, but I do go home feeling a little off-centre."  Yet despite the dark subject matter, the set was a happy place for him to be, not least of all because of his relationship with Marc.  "His personality is inconsistent with how dark the work is.  He is the most even-keeled, approachable, amusing, easy-to-be with person you could possibly imagine.  I have never, ever seen a dark side to him - except on the screen."  Colin also finds working with Marc an enormously collaborative experience:  "It's a sign of Marc's security and imagination that he is prepared to take ideas from others and allow them to inspire him.  Marc thrives on that."  He continues:  "However, his vision is very, very strong."
The filmmakers had very specific ideas about casting Charlotte and in Mena Suvari they found the embodiment of their perception.  Charlotte is the one person who brings light into Ben's life.  Marc observes:  "Mena is like an angel, she exudes lights and serenity.  She acts with a fantastic simplicity and truth that seems unembellished and unmediated.  She has this ability to just 'be' in the film."  He continues:  "She seems a perfect foil for a complicated character like Ben.  She brings a great beauty to it too.  And the combination is great because Ben starts doubting who she is and she seems too good to be true and maybe she is…"
Mena was thrilled to join the project, moved by its originality and an interest in 'things that are dark and unique'.  She had seen 'My Little Eye' and says of Marc:  "I just loved his style and what he brought to that film.  I could see so much that he would do with this film."  On set, she found him very supportive.  "He's just there for you.  He understands and makes decisions accordingly… The cameras he uses, the angles he shoots from, the way he does everything has been so exciting."  An understanding of the practise and philosophy of reiki informed Mena's performance.  She spent several weeks in London before the shoot preparing for the role, even attending séances to understand a medium's work.  She says of Charlotte:  "She's somebody who gives and gives - in the field she works in - emotionally and physically.  And I don't think she's really been given much back so she's in a position to empathise with Ben's loneliness.  Both of them are lost in a way…"   
With the leads in place, the filmmakers rounded out their supporting cast with Naomie Harris, Tommy Flanagan, Sean Harris, Brenda Fricker, and Ken Cranham, and just fourteen months after Richard delivered a treatment to Little Bird, TRAUMA began its eight-week shoot in the Isle of Man and London. 

Sets and locations
One of the main themes explored in TRAUMA is the loneliness of urban life in a big city.  The film is set in London's East End though it is not the romanticised view of London with which cinema audiences are familiar.  The combination of a muted colour palette, harsh textures and exteriors rarely seen in the sunshine give London both appearance and atmosphere of an alienating place to live.   
Much of the screen action takes place in Ben's apartment, built on a stage in the Isle of Man Studios.  The apartment is converted from an old hospital and, in creating the space, production designer Crispian Sallis approached the design as an actual conversion, deliberately 'retaining'  such elements as column radiators, exposed piping, linoleums, and twin coloured walls to create a strange and unsettling sanatorium-like surrounding in which Ben's hallucinatory world unfolds.  The camera reveals a strange mixture of objects about the apartment, which tell us a lot about Ben.   "He has a lot of time on his hands and places things incredibly carefully.  I think everything is done for a reason, " says Crispian:  "It's very much a junkyard apartment for a man who's exploring himself and the world.  An amalgam of found parts, found objects… I love bringing together things from disparate worlds, disparate cultures, some expensive, some cheap that don't in themselves seem incredibly special but together create a lair, a world for Ben that's very chosen and meticulous." 
Film enthusiasts may notice that Ben's world - wherever he goes - is bound by the repetition of certain textures and objects. Crispian explains:  "We want to see Ben walk down the road and see things, spot things, pass by things that are either identical or very similar which will bind his world.  It's sinister to have that 'haven't I seen that somewhere before' feeling, a sense of deja-vu."   His new apartment for example, a converted hospital ward bears more than a passing resemblance to the hospital ward in which he wakes up.
Marc relied on the brilliance of director of photography John Mathieson to ramp up Ben's madness with creative lens work, "John is so inventive with the camera, telling the story through distorted opticals and speed-changes.  Techniques I first saw him use in 'Love and the Devil' a film that has stayed with me" John's camerawork can make the ordinary seem strange and turn Ben's world into a hall of mirrors.
In London, the filmmakers found great locations in order to create their own version of
the East End, logistically easier for film crews including The old Midland Hotel, now called St Pancras Chambers, a Grade I listed Gothic style building which fronts St Pancras Station.  In its heyday the Midland Grand Hotel was one of the most opulent in London but, essentially unmaintained until the 1990s, it provided an eerie backdrop for the converted hospital building in which Ben's apartment is located. 
Deep in its bowels, the design team built the Old Morgue - originally part of the hospital - a chilling setting for the cast and crew who spent several days working in the dark, damp location. 
Other locations used included Haggerston Park, one of the few East End locations used by the filmmakers; the Horniman Museum in South East London; and Lower Marsh - an historic market
street in London's Waterloo - which continued to be operational during the crew's three-day shoot providing great interest for public and press.   

MARC EVANS (director)
"My Little Eye", a shocking shot-on-digital-video horror film is Marc's most recent film.  His first, "House of America", was made in 1997 and won acclaim at many international festivals including Sundance and Stockholm. A second feature, the controversial Belfast-set thriller "Resurrection Man" starring Stuart Townsend followed. 
Marc has collaborated extensively with musicians and recent work in this field includes a documentary about the rock group Manic Street Preachers for the BBC, called Libraries Gave Us Power and a musical collaboration with John Cale (of Velvet Underground fame) called Beautiful Mistake. 
Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, Marc was educated at Cambridge and Bristol Universities. He wrote and directed his first short film in 1984, "Johnny Be Good", a bilingual drama (Welsh and English) about the arrival of the first jukebox in rural Wales. Marc's work in British television includes the children's fairy tale - Terry Jones's "East Of The Moon" and the first-ever Welsh language science-fiction comedy, in black and white! - "Ymadawiad Arthur" (Arthur's Departure).
His recent documentary on the work of Giuseppe Tornatore "Un Sogno Fatto In Sicilia" (A Dream Dreamt In Sicily) was screened at the 2000 Venice Film Festival.

RICHARD SMITH (writer)
"TRAUMA" is Richard's first feature-length script.  His first screenplay, "Leonard", a half-hour film, was commissioned by Scottish Screen/Scottish Television as part of the New Found Land series - it won Richard a BAFTA Scotland Newcomer's Award in 2002 for Best Television Screenplay, whilst also touring film festivals and picking up the Audience Award in Clermont-Ferrand, France; the Organisation Award in the Algarve, Portugal; the Jury Prize in Cairo, Egypt; Best Fiction in Tehran, Iran; the Audience Award in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, US;  the Best Single Drama at the Mental Health Media Awards, UK;  and the Independent Best of British Award in Bristol, England.
Richard is currently working on several other feature projects, both in the UK and the US (including a feature version of "Leonard").  He has also begun teaching evening classes in screenwriting at the University of Edinburgh.  Richard is 26 years old and completed an MA in Scriptwriting (with distinction) three years ago. 

MINISTRY OF FEAR
Trauma is the first film from Little Birds new division Ministry of Fear.  Headed up by Lizzie Francke, ex-director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, Ministry of Fear is devoted to horror but with a specific focus on the genre's gothic route.  With a slate of 10 films in development the projects could be typified as stories of emotional, social and moral disintegration. M.O.F. is working with director Carine Adler, screenwriter Larry Wilson, horror novelist Kim Newman and Muriel Gray among others.  In production for 2004 will be Gray's original screen play "You Can't Come In".

LITTLE BIRD
Since Little Bird was established in 1982 the company has become one of Europe's leading independent film and television production companies, with offices in Dublin, London and Johannesburg.  A number of award winning film and television projects have been produced by partners James Mitchell and Jonathan Cavendish since embarking on their first production, "The Irish R.M"., a highly successful drama series for Channel 4.  .   
Little Bird's feature film credits include such classics as; Thaddeus O'Sullivan's "December Bride", winner of twenty-one international awards, Mike Newell's "Into The West", "A Man of No Importance" directed by Suri Krishnama, "Croupier" directed by Mike Hodges, the biggest independent hit in the U.S. for 2000 grossing over $10 million at box office and "Bridget Jones's Diary" a Working Title production in association with Little Bird.
Little Bird has produced 5 feature films this year alone.  The first two of these will both premiere at the Sundance Film Festival; "Trauma", the first of Little Bird's new horror label, Ministry of Fear, directed by Marc Evans (My Little Eye) and starring Colin Firth and Mena Suvari (American Beauty) and "Marie and Bruce", based on the acclaimed play by Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With Andre) directed by Tom Cairns and starring the double Oscar nominated Julianne Moore and co-starring Matthew Broderick. 
The other films which are currently in post production include; "Churchill the Hollywood Years", a comedy spoof, directed by Peter Richardson (Comic Strip, The Pope Must Die) and starring Christian Slater and Neve Campbell; "In My Fathers Den", a UK/New Zealand co-production shooting in New Zealand and starring Matthew MacFadyen, and "Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason", starring Renee Zellweger, in partnership once again with Working Title.

MYRIAD PICTURES
Based in Los Angeles and London, Myriad Pictures is involved in financing, production and worldwide sales of major motion pictures and television programming. Helmed by Kirk D'Amico, the company has risen in the ranks as one of the top independent entertainment companies and holds an impressive and diverse library of filmed programming.
Current projects include the ensemble family comedy "Eulogy," starring Hank Azaria, Ray Romano and Debra Winger, selected for this year's Sundance Film Festival and set for release through Lions Gate, the comedic bio-pic "Kinsey," starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, to be released in the US via Fox Searchlight, "Being Julia," starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons co-produced with Robert Lantos' Serendipity Point Films, the supernatural thriller "Trauma," with Colin Firth and Mena Suvari and currently shooting in the UK, "Piccadilly Jim" starring Sam Rockwell.
Recent box office hits include, the teen horror pic "Jeepers Creepers 2" released by MGM/UA, "National Lampoon's Van Wilder" starring Ryan Reynolds and Tara Reid and "The Good Girl" starring Jennifer Aniston, released through Fox Searchlight.