Plastic Surgery: In Conversation With Guy Trevellyan

Photo by Joss Barratt

Harrowing to watch and impossible to ignore, Guy Trevellyan’s Plastic Surgery is an unflinching look at the pollutive waste within us all. The award-winning horror short film is his directorial debut, but is far from his first venture behind the camera. Since graduating from MetFilm School in 2019 with a master's degree, Trevellyan has worked on a number of the decade’s biggest blockbusters in assistant director roles. Beginning his career as a runner and intern to Wes Anderson on The French Dispatch, he has risen through the ranks of filmmaking to establish his place in the industry. Now, under his newly founded production company, Nice Guy Pictures, Plastic Surgery is the first of many shorts to come, aiming to “raise awareness about social and human issues” through filmmaking. With flesh and bone, the film certainly makes good on this promise.

So rarely does a film truly get under your skin like Plastic Surgery. Confirmed by a landmark study in 2022, microplastics are inside the human body, having infiltrated our organs and bloodstream through plastic consumption. We are no longer just killing the planet in its ubiquity —we are effectively killing ourselves. Trevellyan channels this disturbing reality into visceral body horror, unfolding over one doctor’s final shift before maternity leave. As played by Anna Popplewell, Dr. Terra uncovers a surge of plastic-laden patients, a single case soon spiralling into an outbreak. Across one night of desperate decisions, Earth’s quiet apocalypse is laid bare in grotesque plain sight. There’s no escaping it – humanity’s environmental footprint has become a part of us. With so much time left, but so little action, the question remains: is it too late? 

As Plastic Surgery continues to be screened at festivals across the world, STRAND met with Trevellyan to reflect on his path to this point and the journey that lies ahead for the rising filmmaker. 

You’ve been active in the film industry for five years, having collaborated with some of the most prolific directors working today. How did you get started in filmmaking? 

I started out in filmmaking as an assistant director. I went to MetFilm School and did an MA in producing. When I finished school, I still didn’t really know anyone in the industry or how to get in. I took loads of random interviews online, applying to anything and everything… I was rarely able to be on set, and that was where I wanted to be. I loved the practical nature of making films. 

I had this random text from a friend called Vanluke Watson. I still don’t know, till this day, how he got my CV. He said, “We’re looking for a runner on The Witcher”. I was immediately like, “let’s do it, let’s make it work”. And he replied, the classic, “we can only hire locally based crew”. They were filming in the middle of the Lake District. I mean, who is “locally based” there? I lied and said, “I have family who live in the Lake District, of course!”...

I met this production manager, who got me into the world of Wes Anderson and his filmmaking. I started off as his UK assistant and evolved into becoming an assistant director. 

He’s credited in the “special thanks”, right? 

Yes! We read the script, discussed it, and he gave me a really valuable piece of advice. A very simple one, which is to just take one shot at a time. Try not to get overwhelmed with the overarching nature of the story. Just focus and treat every shot as valuable as the next. Even down to the inserts, to the tiny little things. He was a great mentor to me. 

Walk me through how the film came together and how it compares to large-scale studio productions? 

Well, I took a lot of my experience working on those sets into this.… The process is normally the same for me. It starts with a script, with a story, then you build out and find a crew, and while you do that, you find the cast, the locations, the main HODs – then you’re rolling. 

With Plastic Surgery, what kicked us off was getting Anna on board. We had a call, and then she revealed she was actually going to be six months pregnant during the time of filming. She said to me, “Are you okay adapting that into the story?”. I then rewrote the story around her, which altered everything in the best possible way. I believe writing is a collaborative medium, and I’m never too precious about certain script elements. You need to allow an actor to bring something from their side… I could be sat there writing something, but it will never be as good as an actor bringing their performance to the table as well. With Anna, we honed that down together to a fine arc. 

You’ve discussed before seeing environmental damage first-hand. What was that experience like, and how did it come to inform Plastic Surgery? 

My sister worked for The Ocean Agency. When I was at film school, I did a video for the agency, with my sister and Richard Veener, who's their CEO. We brought them to the MetFilm School, interviewed them, and pulled together this great video summing up what their company does, looking at coral bleaching and the effects of global warming on marine life. That exposed me to what is really happening. 

I started to do research about plastic pollution. I also had experience diving myself and seeing that firsthand. It was quite horrifying to see turtles swim past you with a six-pack ring stuck up their nose, or plastic suffocating marine life… I immediately started to think, “What if that was a human being?”. “What if that was a person walking around with plastic sticking out of their body?”, because of waste they haven’t been able to control. It’s not their fault. It’s us. We’ve done that to them; we’ve polluted the ocean with our toxic waste. 

I just started to have these images pop into my mind. Then, I watched a short film by Denis Villeneuve called The Next Floor. It’s all about how Mother Nature can’t keep up with the rate of human consumption in the natural world. It takes a group of individuals who are eating all these endangered species. Every time they eat too much, they break through the floor to the next level. The butler, the orchestra, the waiting staff, they essentially represent nature. Every time we break through the floor, they have to run down the stairs to keep up, until they can never keep up – because we just keep falling. 

With the images from diving, the inspiration from Denis, I combined the two, and suddenly, that’s where Plastic Surgery was born. The idea of building this hospital, with these plastic patients, and seeing how a team of surgeons would react to that. 

It wasn't until Anna came on board that I realised the story needed to be told through a character-narrative. She represents Mother Nature. She is a woman on the verge of giving life and is thrown into this world of chaos. That’s kind of how we see Mother Nature today. Mother Nature is full of life inside, but is in an extremely vulnerable and fragile position. 

If there’s just one action you want people to take away from this, what do you hope it will be? 

The main thing that I hope people take away is just a heightened understanding of microplastics and the threat it poses to us. Maybe people might think twice before buying a plastic bottle from a supermarket… The one thing I don’t want to do is make people feel guilty. It’s not about guilt, and especially because we, as humans, we’re all guilty of doing the same things. I know I’m guilty of it. I’m trying my best to live a life that’s away from plastic as best I can. 

But it’s still hard to avoid, don’t get me wrong. I’m not perfect, none of us are perfect. We have had a massive effect on the world, and what we’re doing to the world is also from our making, which, in most cases, is from what we can’t control. But as soon as we understand the threat we’re posing to Mother Nature, the better we are in a position to change what we do in our individual lives. 

For example, when I started researching more about plastic pollution and its effect on our health, now I only drink from a water bottle. We partnered with a company called FOSH, and they made these water bottles for our crew. It was a gift, but also a reminder that all this stuff is out there. There are little things people can do in everyday life to change. On top of that, there is also the [responsibility} on governments and organisations to make change… It's an understanding that it's up to us as individuals, but also that there’s a bigger picture at play. 

This is the first of many projects to come from Nice Guy Pictures. What’s the next story you’re hoping to tell? 

I’m doing a film in literally two or three weeks, called The Act of Learning. That is all about undiagnosed dyslexia. I went undiagnosed for a long time, until I found a learning support teacher who really helped me to learn, read and write. Without her, I would never have passed school. I was always in the bottom set for everything. 

It’s all about self-belief. It’s about finding your own true self. It’s about mentorship and teachers that find the hidden potential in kids out there. It’s set in the mid-90s, so it’s a period piece. With Nice Guy Pictures, we’re trying to look at social and human issues. This is one where we’ve gone down the route of learning disability, like dyslexia, that I have a personal connection to. Should be a fun one!

On streaming, Plastic Surgery is expected to be made widely available this Autumn. Updates on both this and Trevellyan’s upcoming projects are available on Nice Guy Pictures.

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Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor