Immediately after university, I will be done with full-time education. It’s a scary prospect considering I have obviously been in education basically my entire life. The starting gun is going off and I have big plans!
In the months immediately after university, there are a few things I need do straight away. My grad film, The Hollow Men had to be cut down in order to fit the specifications for the university submission. However, this is not my preferred version of the film, as I think it throws the pacing off and, while it doesn’t affect the basic plot, it is missing several key character moments. So immediately after university, Harris Redpath, the editor, Juliet Brown, the sound designer, and Aaron Ross, the colourist, have agreed to work on a slightly different cut of the film that is more in line with my original vision. Since we’re still busy with university, we haven’t agreed on an exact date for the film’s deadline, however by early June I hope to have The Hollow Men completely finished.
The next step upon The Hollow Men’s completion is to try and do the festival circuits with it. I’d like to submit it to every festival I can and try to get into as many as possible. Obviously, there are no guarantees that I will get into any festivals, however if I send it to as many as possible, then that should increase my chances of getting in. Submitting films to festivals can be a costly process, however I will submit to as many of the free festivals as I can and then carefully select a few appropriate paid festivals. Ruth Aitken, the film’s producer, and I set aside a portion of the film’s budget early on in order to cover entry fees for film festivals. If festivals do accept my film, I’d like to attend as many of them as possible. Film festivals can be a great opportunity to network with other filmmakers and get your name out there. This could prove to be particularly useful for local festivals, as it will provide an opportunity to network with potential future collaborators.
I have done a lot of research into which festivals I would like to submit to and this can be viewed on my journal. Film Freeway has proven to be an invaluable resource in doing this. However, here are a select few festivals which are worth applying to. Firstly, I’ve looked at more local festivals like the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Edinburgh Short Film Festival. These would be amazing to get into, however they are very highly contested and don’t necessarily tend to award genre films like The Hollow Men, but rather smaller scale social dramas. For this reason, it’s also worth applying to festivals like the BUT B-Movie, Underground and Trash Film Festival, because it’s emphasis is very much in low budget genre cinema. As a neo-western, The Hollow Men might well fare better at a festival like this.
Traveling to festivals can be very costly, so if I’m very lucky and The Hollow Men does get accepted by some overseas, international film festivals, it’s worth applying for a ‘Short Film/ VR Festival Travel Grant’ from the British Film Council page (access via https://film.britishcouncil.org/opportunities/short-film-travel-grant). They offer up to £1,500 as a travel grant. Things like this are very unlikely to go my way, but there’s no harm in applying if it comes down to it, as I likely wouldn’t be able to afford to attend international festivals otherwise.
As soon as I’m finished university, I’m going to need to work out my living arrangements for the foreseeable future. My preference would be to stay in Edinburgh for a whole plethora of reasons. I have been living in Edinburgh for four years now while I’ve been attending university. The vast majority of my connections within the film industry are Edinburgh based, so from that viewpoint, it is the only logical place for me to be based. However, Edinburgh is an expensive place to live. I’ll need to get a job to cover living costs, but it might be a struggle to save up in order to fund my filmmaking on the side. I have had offers from several people to flatshare in Edinburgh, however we’ll see how practical it will be for me to stay there. Moving away from Edinburgh, potentially even back home to Northern Ireland, is certainly another option, however I would be essentially starting from scratch in terms of finding crew to work with, making any attempts at making films infinitely more difficult. The upside of moving home is that I could potentially move back in with my parents for a while, depending on their generosity. This would certainly make saving money easier. This is something which I have already done a considerable amount of research into, and my preference is definitely to stay in Edinburgh, however it requires a lot more attention in the coming months, before I move out of my current flat.
In terms of what kinds of jobs I can do, I’d ideally like to stay within the film industry where possible, for experience and networking. I’ll apply for entry level positions like as a runner. This is not a job I want long term, and it is not a route I want to go down either, however, I think any job on a film set, regardless of what it is, is going to be more helpful than a job entirely disconnected from film. It will hopefully give me an opportunity to meet other like-minded filmmakers who might be willing to collaborate on my own films. It would also be an amazing opportunity to observe other departments at work in a professional capacity. I will apply for these jobs through places like Screen Scotland and Creative Scotland.
However, this might take some time before I’m able to get these sorts of jobs since I have limited experience. I may need to volunteer on several low-budget, independent sets first. These kind of films often crew up using Facebook pages such as Scottish Film Makers and Actors. Because this kind of work may prove challenging to secure, in the meantime, I will likely try to get a more general job in order to keep me going. For example, I might try to get a job in a cinema, ideally an independent one like Filmhouse. It might not exactly be in the film industry in the sense that I’d prefer, but getting discounted cinema tickets wouldn’t hurt! Whatever job I end up getting, the point is simply to allow me to continue my own independent filmmaking; writing, directing and producing my own films. I’ll need a job that will allow me enough free time to continue making my own films.
Over the first three or so years after university, my main focus will be on making short films. It’s ambitious, but I think I’d like to aim to make two highly polished short films each year. This might mean six months on each, or maybe I’ll try to make something bigger scale and so want to spend longer on it, paired with a small-scale film taking only several months.
How am I going to fund this? I’d like to keep my budget extremely low. Ideally, I’d be able to save enough money from my job just to self-finance these films. This will likely require other crew members merely to volunteer though, as I doubt I would be able to pay them. Again the Facebook pages I mentioned earlier are a great place to find crew, however, it would be great if I could continue collaborating with people from my university course. They will likely be aiming for HOD roles, however probably won’t be able to do this straight out of university, so it could be an opportunity for them to expand their credits and add to their showreel. In theory, we’d be helping each other out.
Other ways to get perhaps more significant funding for short films would be to apply for grants. For example, First Flights offer up to £7,000 contribution to your budget and Short Circuit offer up to £15,000. The deadline for applications to Short Circuit is 17th May, so I’m in the process of putting my application together at the moment. One hitch is that often these grants require you to pay crew at least minimum wage, so when that is taken into account, your budget rapidly begins to deplete. It’s an avenue which is difficult to go down, considering how hotly contested these grants are, but it’s definitely worth a shot because it’s an amazing opportunity.
No matter how I get my films funded, I’d like to continue down the route of sending them to film festivals. Beyond this, I’d also like to develop more of a social media presence, so in future I’m going to put more of an effort into sharing my films online and actually getting them seen by people. I never like showing people my films, perhaps because they are so personal to me, but obviously that’s something I need to get over!
As I have mentioned previously, I am currently setting up a production company with another filmmaker I met through Napier’s film course; Harris Palmer. Production company might be a bit of a misnomer, because it’s more than that. It’s a collective of filmmakers under one banner. It’s a support network for independent, director-led film production. It would have a shared attitude; a manifesto almost. It would put the filmmaker’s creative vision first. It would very much have an attitude, not of “We can’t do that on our budget”, but rather “How can we do that on our budget?” We may not be dealing with huge budgets, but we would make the films we want to make the way we want to make them.
It’s also a great way of pooling resources. For example, if one associated filmmaker has a microphone, then everyone has a microphone. Similarly, it would be a great way of expanding my network of connections. But ultimately, it’s also a way of holding myself accountable. Once I no longer have to make my own films because the university is telling me I have to, it would be very easy to fade away and stop making my films altogether; because after all that is the easier option. The production company would hold me accountable. It would be the responsibility of every director involved to make sure everyone is always working on something new and it would be their responsibility to support them as they do it.
Harris and I both grew up wanting to make it in Hollywood, however as we’ve grown up we’ve realised that Hollywood isn’t what it seems. The promised land that is Hollywood has either lost its way or it never existed to begin with. We have been very inspired by the attitude and approach of people like Cahiers du Cinema, but also perhaps less obviously from people in the music industry, including record labels like Good Vibrations and Factory Records. In the same way these were created by people who were disillusioned with the state of the music industry, we feel frustrated by the state of the film industry’s tendency to focus more on making mass-produced, easy to sell films. Much like Good Vibrations, we would be punk, not in sound, but in vision and in attitude. To read into some of my research and for more information, see my journal.
It’s early days yet in the development of this production company; we don’t even have a name yet. However, I think it’s an incredible opportunity. It’s important to me that the company stands for something, instead of being about soullessly scratching for money. It would be a badge of honour; a mark of integrity. I’d love to build an audience for the films of the company itself. Make it less of a film studio and moreso something the audience can feel part of; they could feel like they are equally responsible for it like a community project. We could set up our own underground screenings of our films and make a trip to see a film exciting for people again. Harris and I have discussed writing articles about film or making a podcast on the side and releasing it through the company. Perhaps we could also expand to further creative avenues beyond just limiting ourselves to film. If we come across a creative who falls in line with our outlook and manifesto, we could invite them to join us and become an associated creator.
One gap in my knowledge which I feel I’d like to address is working with actors. Before university, my films tended to be focused exclusively on learning to tell stories visually and so were almost entirely without dialogue. This was a great way to improve as a visual storytelling, but it perhaps shifted my attention away from the actors, when it really shouldn’t have. While at university, there haven’t been any classes on how to direct actors; my only real experiences have been just jumping in and working with actors on shorts. I learned a lot from my experiences directing Hostages and I’ve absolutely loved working with the actors on The Hollow Men. In fact, it might have been my favourite part of the process. However, I’ve never been formally trained in how to direct actors. I’ve read countless books on the subject, perhaps the most useful being Judith Weston’s Directing Actors, however I can’t help but feel lacking in that area. The more I direct actors the more confident I’ll get, I’m sure, but I think that perhaps the issue is that I have never acted myself, so I can’t fully relate to the experience of an actor. To this end, I would like to attend some kind of an acting course. For example, I like the look of Acting Out Drama School’s Adult Beginners Drama Course (https://actingoutdramaschool.com/acting-out-drama-school-beginners-drama-course). It runs once a week, but it does cost £160. I think it would be a lot easier to direct actors when I can more easily relate to their experience having done it myself.
Another avenue to explore is the possibility of shadowing a director. I’m going to email as many professional directors as I can, because if I cast a wide net then I’m much more likely to return a yes. I interviewed director Leo McGuigan before, so I have good experiences approaching people and just asking them for things like this; particularly independent filmmakers.
In the long term, my end goal is to write and direct my own feature films. Over the next few years, while I’m making short films, I’d like to be developing a feature film. In fact, I’m already in development of several feature film scripts. Within five years of leaving university, I’d like to be gearing up to make a feature film. I don’t want to spend years of my life on other people’s films, working my way up through a system that wasn’t designed for me. So the way I see it, similar to my plan for my short films, there are two avenues I would consider for making features.
The first avenue involves applying for funding. Silent Valley is a sci-fi film about a young, rebellious girl who must work with her PTSD-suffering uncle to find her missing brother. It’s by no means massive budget, but it’s certainly beyond anything I could self-finance. I would love to apply for a grant to make the film and there are various places which do provide funding for this kind of thing. For example, again, Short Circuit provide grants for feature films. They also provide funding for various development stages along the way.
The second way of getting a feature film made, is independent in the purest form; self-financing. Radio Underground is about a man trapped in a bunker post-apocalypse. He scans for survivors using his radio, however eventually he begins to run a radio show broadcasting to an audience of no one. The reason this film is so low budget is because it only requires one actor and one location. It’s still going to be a challenge; however I reckon if I save up, it’s feasible. I’ve had great experience crowdfunding on my most recent short film, so that could be an avenue to explore as well.
I’m fully aware that this is a risky, arguably unwise path to choose, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do my whole life and I think I have the passion and the drive to do it. I’m still young, I’m only responsible for myself at the moment and I think if I’m ever going to just go for it, then now is the time.
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