Endings and New Beginnings

A Filmmaker's Journal

This coming June will be a marker. The half-year point where much of the work I‘ve been doing for the past six months (or longer) will come to end. Firstly, all being well, The House on Lidderman Street will be finished, or very close to finished. The cut is now locked. Editor Ryan Robinson and I sat and watched the entire film last night, made a few cuts, and locked the film. Finally. Now the sound, music, and the grade will be done throughout May and into June. The finishing line is in sight.

The film is running at one hour and twenty minutes, exactly as I planned. There are some incredible performances in the film. Can’t wait for people to see what Jason Adam has done. He’s a major talent.

If there’s a film Lidderman Street shares a kinship with, I believe it to be George A. Romero’s brilliant and unnerving 1977 anti-vampire film, Martin. Romero’s film has a fantastic and disturbing central performance from John Amplas, and as depictions of troubled young men go (with supernatural inclinations), I feel Jason Adam will sit right up there.

Once the film is properly finished, I want to have a cast and crew screening, then it’ll be over to producer Jeremy Sladdin to try and get it out into the world. Another long and uncertain journey, but hopefully the film will attract some interest.

Time will tell, I guess.

The other work that will come to a temporary end is the screenplay I’ve just co-written. We now have a full 105-page script, which the director and producer have noted up (from which I’ve scaled back to 92 pages on my pass), then there will be another round of notes, another pass, and after that it’ll be into the director’s hands to try and get the project up and running. We’re all pretty optimistic about this one as it is already attracting a lot of attention, but of course, there are no guarantees in this game. It does have a lot of potential, though. Another time will tell, I guess.

The third project that will come to a head in June is The Wilding, the horror-cum-survival thriller-cum-social satire, which I co-wrote with Adam Park and Chris Wilson-Smith, and which was directed by Park. There is a cast and crew screening in London in mid-June, which I’m really looking forward to. Then, I guess, Adam and his team will be sending it out into the world, pretty much like we’ve got to do with Lidderman Street.

In other news, Laura Living Backwards continues to get nominated at film festivals and to win awards. Kate Horlor and I received our second Best Screenplay Award at the recent Wolverhampton Film Festival. Plus, it won for Best Hair & Makeup at that fest as well for Veronica McAleer and Kelly Taylor’s wonderful work. Also, Edward Wolstenholme won for Best Supporting Actor and we won Best UK Short Film at the Bedford Independent Film Festival. It really is a special film that one. Someone needs to pick it for a series. Just sayin’.

Almost forgot another project that will see completion in June. That is the documentary short I was hired to produce and direct for Warwickshire District Council about the final sculpture by artist John Bridgeman. The short (and the sculpture) is called The Unknown Refugee, and will be screening all summer alongside the John Bridgeman Exhibition at the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington Spa. The sculpture itself now stands in Jephson Gardens.

So anyway, two feature films, a documentary short, and a feature script coming to an end, or at least certain stages are coming to an end, in June. Also, I turn 50 in early June (which feels strange and unreal), and on the Solstice I’m going to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise. Endings and new beginnings.

Where to go from here?

Writing writing writing, I suppose. My regular co-writer, Matthew Waldram, and I are about to start writing an action film, which I’m very excited about, plus I want to carry on with my monthly short stories (I’ve been writing a short story once a month and want to have the full 12 by the year’s end).

Plus, I think I need to try and get the next feature set up for me to direct. I don’t want another 15 years to go by like the gap between A Reckoning and The House on Lidderman Street. If I’m going to do it, I think I need to tear straight into the next one. The horror feature I co-wrote with David Bryant called Nerveshredder would be a good contender. It’s fun and contained and doable on about 25-30k. Plus, I think it’s very commercial. And what a title! If I do say so myself.

But we’ll see.

Time will tell, I guess.

… Onwards!