Tuesday 14th March 2023
That’s it then. No going back now. The agreement between myself and Stephen Volk has been signed and a fully executed version has been sent back via Volk’s agent. Looks like my next short film will be Baby On Board, written by the same man who wrote Ghostwatch, Afterlife, Gothic, and The Awakening, not to mention a host of brilliant short stories and novels (Whitstable being a personal favourtie - I would love to make that one). The man has written films directed by Ken Russell, William Friedkin, Pen Densham, and Nick Murphy, to name but a few. And soon, one by, err, me.
I know, nuts, right?
So how did this happen? The first time I was aware that Stephen Volk even knew of my existence was when a filmmaker friend of mine told me he’d seen Volk leaving a writing event at Derby’s Quad carrying a copy of my book Dead Leaves, after it first came out in 2015. Now I don’t know if that’s exactly true or not, but I do know that he did later read another book of mine, The Electric, and got in touch to say that he really liked it. Like, really liked it. He even gave me a quote to use. As you can imagine, it was a bit of a pinch-me moment. From there we started talking, before finally meeting in person at Fantasy Con in Chester in 2018. He was there for the release of his Dark Masters collection.
And so over the years we’ve kept in touch and he’s always been very supportive and gracious with his time towards me. Moreover, when I returned to filmmaking in 2018 and began making short films again, he took an interest. Skip to the winter of 2023 and I was telling him about my latest short, Here Lies… - then in post-production - and he just happened to say this: “How’s it going? I wrote a short story and thought it might suit a short film for you to direct. or are you concentrating on features now?” Then added, “Two hander. One location”. This was on the 23rd of January.
I immediately replied and said I would be very interested and asked to read the short story. I read it that night. Now I don’t want to say too much about the actual story of Baby On Board, but I responded to it right away. It was pure Volk: heartfilled, emotional, with great characters and dialogue, and that old suggestion of the supernatural brimming beneath the surface. Moreover, it was indeed makeable on a small budget with a small crew.
I wrote back to Stephen saying that I would love to make it and suggested a couple of minor changes and he went away to write the screenplay. A week later, I had the script and he’d taken on board my notes, including a slight addition to the ending I’d suggested. After that, I turned my attention back to Here Lies… while Volk’s agent worked out our agreement.
Ok, you’re gonna need a bit more, aren’t you?
Baby On Board is about a grieving father and a police officer talking in a quiet, late night eatery. The father is a haunted man, the policeman is an expecting father, and their lives merge during one unnerving conversation. It’s simple, but very effective, not to mention beautifully sad and filled with an underlying dread.
I asked Stephen why he asked me if I wanted to do this. He said it was because of a short film I made in 2018 called Two Old Boys. That was the first film I made after stepping away from filmmaking in the aftermath of making my micro-budget post-apocalyptic feature A Reckoning in 2011 (that’s another story entirely). Two Old Boys was simply an experiment in getting something done. It was the simplest, easiest kind of film I could think of to make on no budget - two working-class fellas talking nonsense in a pub. It turned out alright for saying how we made it, and the two old boys themselves, Phil Molloy (Ripper Untold) and Mark Tunstall (McKinley) were wonderful and great fun to work with. It was this film that Stephen said he watched and thought I’d be a good person to make Baby On Board.
Now that is generosity in itself. I make films on a very small scale using like-minded cast and crew who are willing to just go out there and make stuff. I have essentially been slowly and steadily building back up after the failure of A Reckoning. I went off and wrote novels and it took about five years before the drive (need) to make films came back and when it did I only wanted to work on my terms. What I mean by that is I make films that are doable on very small budgets with people I trust. Here Lies…, my most recent short, has been a step up from my last few shorts in terms of the size of the crew and its ambition. But I’ll talk more about that one in a later diary entry.
In short, someone as known and as celebrated as Stephen Volk entrusting me with one of his scripts, at this stage in my film career, is a great honour and I feel very excited and positive about this project.
This is the first part of the 'Baby on Board' Production Diary, which I originally wrote for Horrified Magazine. I will release all the diary entries I wrote during that time, leading up to the filmmaking journal I have continued to write, which is now at 30,000 words - so lots of posts incoming!