How Quantum Leap helped time travel film writer

Award-winning Cornish director Mark Jenkin said he watched the science fiction TV series Quantum Leap as part of research for his new time travel film.

Jenkin and co-writer Mary Woodvine's film, Rose of Nevada, tells the story of a fishing vessel lost at sea before mysteriously reappearing in a village 30 years later.

This latest film follows Jenkin's BAFTA-award-winning first feature Bait in 2019, and Enys Men in 2022.

Jenkin said he had tried reflect how he saw his home county, some of which was "pretty mysterious".

Jenkin said: "What I'm really interested in is creating a very strong atmosphere around a simple story and trying to evoke or communicate how I see Cornwall, and some of Cornwall is pretty mysterious."

He added: "There's a mystery here and film's a really good form to be able to convey that mysterious atmosphere."

Jenkin said he and Woodvine wrote the story during lockdown from an imagined scene in which a boat reappears in a harbour years after it disappeared in a bad storm.

Woodvine said the assumption was that "all hands were lost".

The pair then had the challenge of developing the story from that image.

Jenkin explained how he worked on the idea: "Once I knew I was writing a time travel film I felt very conscious that it had to be different from Back to the Future -which for our generation is the definitive time travel film."

Woodvine added: "I just realised what a minefield it is once you start talking about time travel because everything's got to make sense, everything's got to tie up and it was really complicated."

Jenkin said he thought he needed to understand how quantum physics worked but realised it was "really hard" and watched a complete box set of Quantum Leap to help develop ideas.

Time travel poses challenges for the film-maker, Jenkin explained.

"You have to set out a set of rules to do with time travel and then you write the story and you can't break any of your rules."

"You can't have convenient moments in the film to serve the plot that contradict the time travel that you've set up."

In Rose of Nevada, the characters slip back in time 30 years through a sea mist.

"It's more addressing the fall out of that than more time travel," Jenkin said and added it had to be set in a time before characters could look things up online to solve the mystery quickly.

Woodvine added: "It's low-tech time travel."

The movie has been screened at film festivals including Venice, London, New York and Toronto.

Jenkin is preparing for a preview tour before the film's national release on Friday 24 April.

He will meet audiences at his home cinema the Filmhouse in Newlyn on Tuesday 7 April, before other venues in Penzance, Falmouth, Redruth, Truro, Wadebridge, St Austell, Bodmin and Exeter.

Jenkin said he realised from previous film tours "the Cornish have a totally different take" on his work and "there's a sense of ownership because it is a Cornish film" so they "may relate to the subject matter slightly differently".

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