The contrast has increased. We live through screens and in 4k resolution issues that used to be black and white now howl their outrage in super whites and deepest blacks. Your opinions are not just wrong, they make you wrong. You are wrong and I hate you. 

Believe it or not dear reader, I used to use Shooting People to shoot my mouth off. But arguments stop being fun when every position is instantly reduced to outrage and offence. Collectively we have forgotten that to explain is not to excuse. To understand is not to justify. And to make no attempt to do either is to perpetuate problems, not to solve them.

I’ve written a lot recently about examples of directors abusing their power, both on set and in auditions. These are, of course, not the only ways the artistic authority granted to a cinematic auteur can create tyrants of even the sweetest of us. Film crews endure the black moods, the sharp tongued put downs, the open humiliations and the occasionally life threatening working conditions that are so often justified as the inevitable fall out from the quest for perfection. But for most directors bad behaviour has a simpler cause than the extravagant myopia of their own creative vision. Like children being cruel to their pets, directors are often dish out shit because they’ve spent too long taking it from everyone else.

Remember, to explain is not to excuse, to understand is not to justify… For many, for most, a director’s life is one of pure precariousness. A choice between sacrificing any financial security to create your own work in obscurity or becoming the paid scapegoat for the dull and unworkable ideas of other people. Making a film is a slow, intransigent, capricious process and unlike cast or crew who move from project to project within months, a director will carry a film for years, often decades before shooting and will never escape it once completed. Those demands and mistakes you took reluctant possession of are ghosts that will never be exorcised. If you’re really lucky, millions will take to twitter to call you a failed human just because you made Luke Skywalker milk a space cow.

Besides a few notable exceptions, producers take less public blame for the failures of their work, even those springing directly from their own lunacy. However they also struggle to ever get anything like the due recognition for their work’s success, even when almost entirely down to their own sublime insight. As a result producers and directors are caught in a ghastly mirror dance, each performing an authority neither has. When powerless people who act like Gods are given a moment’s real control over, say, the employment opportunities of a group of emotionally vulnerable but very attractive young people, the results can be appalling, but not unpredictably so.

To explain is not to excuse, to understand is not to justify. The illegal and abusive behaviours of producers and directors that caused a landslide within our industry, within our culture, are individual acts of personal monstrousness. It is worth reflecting though that they issue from a creative culture where the authors of the work are often as powerless as the audience sat at screens pouring their rage into social media timelines because SOMEONE MADE A MOVIE AND I DIDN’T ENJOY IT AND NOW I AM STILL ALIVE AND IT’S AWFUL SO FUCK YOU YOU FUCKS.

Despite the hashtags, the making of movies remains a process formulated on dividing the creative act into two distinct and competing roles where each trades responsibility for their own mistakes for the task of coping with the consequences of the other’s failure. What better environment for monstrous personalities to remain unaccountable for their behaviour?

We all know how auditions work, right? A desk, a group of poker faced creatives and an actor who will do anything to impress them. Quite possibly anything at all…

Like dodgy scoutmasters before Jimi Saville, the casting couch was a joke before it was an outrage, a normalised nightmare hidden in plain sight. But then the culture changed and everything is ok now, right?

Arguably the series of cultural detonations that became the #metoo movement were sparked by the election Donald Trump as President of the US. Buffeted by irrefutable evidence of his misogyny, bullying and actual sexual assault, his victorious campaign was a final insult to a long buried fury that needed to be expressed. Ironically, before he became the global face of brand Patriarchy™, Trump had a possibly more pernicious cultural impact as the symbolic boss in the reality TV contest The Apprentice. Here he first found a multi-million audience, pantomiming the leadership skills required to run a large organisation with a single catchphrase – “you’re fired.” 

Not that he invented the management style that revels in the simple power of bestowing employment and takes egotistical delight in keeping a pack of hopefuls hanging on his every word. Before the Donald, if you wanted to caricature the nightmare job interview then it was the audition with the defeated candidate heading for the door, their ears ringing to the tune  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

I’ve heard many justifications for auditioning as if you are Donald Trump. You want an actor with that x-factor that makes them stand out from the crowd. You want to see how they perform under pressure. You want to be sure they can learn the lines. You want someone who just “is” the part. So you demand your candidates turn up in costume and off book. You sit behind your desk, perhaps you decide not to talk, to keep them on edge – after all they’ll be nervous when you’re filming, so best make them nervous now. Best of all you get someone else to film them and you’ll watch it later without meeting them. Ideally getting them to hold their name on a piece of card and look front and profile like they’ve just been arrested.

All I’ve described is a perfectly normal audition process –  nothing here would warrant a hashtag. But even though no one is naked, if this is your approach you’re still a complete and total Donald.

This is a process designed to make a director feel powerful, it has nothing to do with finding the right cast. Rather than a process designed to make actors fail, if you want to find the right cast – audition to help people succeed.

Yes, you need an actor who can deal with the pressure of a shoot, but more than that you need the actor you can best support through that shoot. Yes, you need an actor who can give a mesmerising and award winning performance, but that means finding the actor you can best guide towards that performance.

An audition is not be a process where a director judges an actor’s ability, their professionalism or their reading skills. It’s not even really a process where you judge their suitability for the part. Fundamentally it’s an experiment to find the actors you communicate most interestingly with. Who inspires you? Who takes your nudge and gives it back as a definitive choice? Who understands you? Who stretches you? Who brings the depth or insight that you lack? It should be the first act of a beautiful relationship, not just a one night stand…

Most of last year’s Weinstein inspired fury focused on abhorrent and often criminal behaviour off camera. However the revolt against filmmaking’s abusive culture also resurrected the grim controversy surrounding Bertolucci’s “Last Tango In Paris” and Maria Schneider’s story of how the famous sex scene between her and Marlon Brando was sprung on her unscripted and left her feeling humiliated. Bertolucci later defended himself by saying “I wanted Maria to feel, not to act” a statement that sits uncomfortably besides Schneider’s claim that “…even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears.”

Later, after Schneider and Brando had both died, Bertolucci, who himself passed away last month, claimed that the only unscripted element was the infamous use of butter and that Schneider had been aware of the scene’s inherent violence. Whatever the lived or remembered truth might have been, the joining together of a fictional rape and a performer’s lack of consent makes the ethics of the situation horribly clear.

But what of the story of Ridley Scott surprising the cast of “Alien” by hurling animal guts at them when filming the chest burster scene? Or Kubrick’s intransigent bullying of Shelley Duvall in making “The Shining”?

I’ve avoided names in these recent posts as I’m not looking to apportion blame. I don’t know how true any of these stories are and neither do you. My intention is to question the behaviours we all share, or aspire to. Behaviours that have come to seem inherent in the act of filmmaking. As ever though, what matters in film is the legend. These legends are just some of the directorial exploits that have been cited to me (and occasionally by me) to explain how great directors get great performances by artfully manipulating their cast into giving something more real, more truthful than mere performance. So deep runs this idea that I’ve had inexperienced actors ask me to withhold aspects of a scene so they can be genuinely startled. I’ve also made this mistake myself, making films as a teenager and assuming that making a performer angry was the best way to capture her character’s fury. It wasn’t. It isn’t.

Bad acting is easy to define as that which doesn’t seem real. Therefore, good acting must be that which does seem real. Therefore, the best acting must be reality itself? It’s easy to see how you get there but its nonsense. Good acting, like good dialogue, like all good art, is about truth, not reality. Many of cinema’s greatest performances have no reality to them at all. No one has ever really been like Brando in “The Godfather” but that performance expresses a truth about a certain type of total bastard that we do recognise. Truth offers us insight whilst realism simply extends our incomprehension.

Filmmaking naturally attracts messy personalities. Vulnerable, controlling, anxious, scared, needy, uncalm, these are often amongst the best qualities of both directors and actors, the livid source of their most compelling and inquiring work. But this can have a downside. The common misunderstanding of the relationship between truth and reality offers such personalities a dangerous excuse. The myth of the genius director moulding, goading and tricking their cast into delivering is artistically barren and morally reprehensible.

Rather than celebrating those moments of reality caught on camera, like Duvall’s screams or Veronica Cartwright’s blood splattered revulsion, we should instead see these as a director’s failures. Unable to help their cast create anything more powerful they instead had to fall back on flat reality. These events break the illusion of the story just like a bad effect or wobbly set might. Schneider’s tears are only ever hers, they belong not Jeanne and are not expressive of her fear or pain, they are only the tears of a scared and humiliated actress having a horrible day at work. Bullying is not a necessary part of filmmaking and whilst many of us choose to suffer for our art, no one has the right to make their art out of your suffering.

I’ve long been troubled by the assumption that men struggle to write women. Don’t get me wrong, I know why this attitude exists, a review of primary evidence makes a compelling case. Many of our most lauded writers have a womb based blind spot. But why? And why does no one expect women to struggle with their fictional men? Again a purely evidence based approach shows why that’s not a question commonly asked. So rare is it to find a male character badly written by a women that when it happens I get genuinely excited, it’s like getting that rare rogue kit-kat finger that’s got no biscuit…

Of course it’s worth looking at how male characters benefit from bad writing. Speaking only in cliché, incoherent in motivation, lacking in depth and expressing an idealised traditional form of sexuality, the lantern jawed butt kicking hero is just as badly written as his supportively vulnerable bikini wearing girlfriend. That bad writing for men is largely aspirational should not obscure the fact that it is still bad writing.

Even so, men who write human women still garner weird admiring glances of the kind usually preserved for women who write good action. Both men and women have told me this disparity is because women are more sensitive, or emotionally intuitive. That’s the writer’s equivalent of “all black people can dance.”

Page, stage and screen have long been mastered by men who make great show of their sensitivity to the emotions of men. So does a writer’s dick just get in his way? Do claims of equality founder on man’s inability to conquer his genes? Are we actually just the weaker sex? Or do women just get more practice. Still. Even now. Why?

Now we must accept our sample is skewed. The massive under representation of women as screenwriters means there mathematically has to be more bad male writers than female ones. It’s also unlikely that talent is as evenly spread across the female writers we do have. The few that make it are probably amongst the better ones, appalling gender bias robbing us of generations of journeywoman hacks who think all guys only talk about sports. However whilst it’s comforting to think that this disparity is because evil powerful men are blocking women’s way, it’s worth remembering that in the UK most debut writer’s first films aren’t made within the industry. For 70% of the films I watched for BIFA this year no evil powerful anybody was interested enough to be involved. In this context the most powerful voice stopping a woman progressing is an internal one.

Our visual culture has for centuries been defined by the male gaze. This is often thought of merely as disempowering and bad. However it means not that a woman grows used to passively being defined by men, but to actively defining herself through the eyes of others. There is an enforced fluidity to most female identities that is not dissimilar to good writing, to the inhabiting of multiple characters. Women are taught early the need to think like men, to be bilingual in her dealings with the world but writing as a man is cultural English. We are all so steeped in it that for writers of any gender it remains the instinctive first response.

Our screens now are full of women. Some of them even written by women. But it’s fascinating how so many still struggle to truly be protagonist in their own story. How often men have flaws that feel universal but women have failings that are relentlessly personal. How male characters act but women react. If women usually write men as well as men do, the bigger surprise is that they can also write women as badly. Because writing isn’t a genetic act, but a cultural one.

In our culture she is still expected to be constantly alert to other’s thoughts whilst her brother is supposed to shape them. This is the force behind the statistics. Why were only 16% of UK screenwriting debuts from women? Because men are taught not to take no for an answer, even when that’s the right answer. (A theme our industry has played out in very dark ways).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad news.

BIFA, which handed out all its trophies last Sunday night, is now the first awards organisation in the world to insist its membership undergo cognitive bias training before voting. Considering some of the numbers I discussed last week, that seems entirely laudable. Nevertheless in the session I attended the mood ranged from nervousness to outright cynicism, and that was just me.

The BIFA effort is not just around the much campaigned against wrongs of sexism, racism, homophobia, religious discrimination or blunt gender binaries. The concern extends to the favouring of big studios, higher budgets, famous faces and all the other quiet ways our industry unlevels its playing field. All the things no one admits to doing but that everyone can see are being done.

Prejudice in this form is an uncomfortable subject because the essence of an unconscious bias is that the owner is necessarily unaware of it. Like appalling body odour you cannot smell, even when painfully aware of everyone else’s.

Patriarchy is another term that causes both buttocks and teeth to clench. As with your unconscious bias, your relationship to the patriarchy, positive or negative, is something you are born into. It wraps around you invisibly from your first interactions. Many men I know feel stung by accusations of bad behaviour, bad thought or unearned advantage based purely on their entirely unwitting possession of one set of genitals. I’ll assume you’ve pegged the irony of that and move on.

I’ve been on a break from this blog and in my absence our industry has been struck by a long over due realisation of a deep running stink. The dust has settled, the scapegoats safely tethered and it’s easy now for us all to sink back into the comforting knowledge that however bad the smell still is, it’s definitely someone else creating it. However the appalling behaviour of a few men within our industry depended upon the quiescence of a far greater number of people who were in turn supported in their silence by a culture that each of us has played a part in propagating.

Cinema remains one of popular culture’s essential compost heaps, but whilst most films trumpet self-respect or the care of a community, these are not the values that fertilise our industry. Rather it is the onscreen gangsters and cowboys who best reflect the culture behind the camera.

www.cognitiveBiasParade.com

Forget the colourful monsters of Hollywood legend or the despicable hate figures of yesterday’s tweets. The everyday art and craft of moving pictures remains riddled with practices, beliefs and bad habits that when challenged get explained just as “that’s how proper films do it”. Much of this pervasive culture of manipulation, condescension and bullying is rooted in the Patriarchy but I don’t want to give a free pass to the 18% of us who aren’t dicks biologically. So I prefer the term my brother coined for the various unthinking systems that govern our creative industry – “The Machine”.

Where better to start a conversation about The Machine and how to dismantle it then here on Shooting People, the shouty, contradictory but brilliant beating heart of the truly independent cinema maker? Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at a few of the areas where I think The Machine operates and I hope you’re going to argue with me about all of them. This isn’t a manifesto, it’s a conversation.

Before we start that though, I wanted to underline the most important and heartening lesson I learnt when BIFA made me dissect my own dark heart: we all have unconscious bias. Our expectations for ourselves and of others are all framed by the society we are a part of. But though we are the products of our history we are not its prisoners. Simply by being aware you have a bias, by consciously allowing for it, you will find your actions change. A moments’ self awareness is deodorant for your soul.

If you are reading on Shooting People the chances are you are currently writing your debut feature film. Let’s face it, everyone is, so no matter if you’re reading this in the front of your cab or on a break before serving more flat whites, you’re still probably writing your debut feature film (or hope you are).

You are not alone. Or to make the same point less comfortingly, you are not unique. So how do you make your first script stand out from the crowd? Well, it helps if you know where the crowd is standing… (or sitting staring at a laptop).

Isn’t it just fucking awful what happens when type “writer” into google image search? When did “writer” become a synonym for “prick”?

I recently had the privilege of voting in the British Independent Film Awards’ Debut Screenwriting category. The BIFAs are committed to diversity and championing new talent; the entrants vary wildly in budget, ambition and quality and so offer a fantastic snap shot of our industry. Between us, my brother and I watched all of the 44 films from first time writers that came out in the last year (and that someone involved thought might be worthy of a prize…) So before you return to your unfinished draft you should be aware of some fascinating trends both on the debut writer’s page and beyond it…

Of those writers whose first full feature scripts became films in the past year, 95% were white, 84% were men and 78% were both. 25% wrote in partnerships (55 writers were credited), 73% were writer directors and perhaps more surprisingly 18% were writer actors. If this year was notable for anything it was the number of name-actors making their writer/director debuts.

With such a homogeneity of author, it’s no surprise that creative trends emerge. Just under a third of the films focussed on a young man, nearly two thirds of those a young man pursuing an artistic ambition. “Write what you know” was surely never meant to be taken quite so literally.

30% were set in London. More surprisingly 14% were set by the seaside, though I suspect that’s a quirk, like last year’s spike of films set on farms.

23% made the lead character question their sanity. 20% featured troubled violent men. 18% involved suicide. 11% involved women who are unexpectedly violent and an almost non-contingent 11% feature child abuse (mainly historic). 9% revolved around some sort of revenge for war crimes.

Lumping films together like this always sounds critical. To be clear, many tackle these themes with subtlety, eloquence and power. If you have to choose between originality and quality, always pick quality. However even truth sounds tired when repeated. The more a theme is worked the harder it becomes to make the material evoke a response and the easier it becomes to slip into cliché. This was especially clear in the 41% of films to feature terrible parenting. For every three-dimensional adult struggling to come good on their responsibilities, there were many more monstrous caricatures only there to justify the lead character’s own failings.

If the preponderance of bad parents felt lazy, what felt shocking was that of those there were two dads, two uncles and then 14 films about some truly awful mothers. This goes alongside 11 films (25%) where a father was shown in a positive light, either solving problems or quietly understanding in a way no one else did. All versus a single film that went out of its way to give us a positive view of a mum.

In the wake of #metoo it is notable that just under a quarter of debuting screenwriters are men writing about the negative influence of a mother (half of those in a run down British costal resort). And before we all throw up our hands and say how broken our system is, it’s worth repeating that the I in BIFA stands for Independent and only 30% of these films were made with any support from the British film industry establishment (broadcasters, state, mini-studios etc).

It is also worth realising that because of the turnaround time for most projects, I expect we have yet to see the impact of #metoo on the screen. These scripts are likely to have been amongst the last green lit before that tide burst. Even so, as you settle down to crack your difficult third act this morning, take a look at your own first screenplay. Does it have to be set by the sea? Is she really to blame?

Much to the delight of many local residents who have campaigned tirelessly for over nine years, Everyman Cinemas will reopen the fully refurbished venue in South London’s Crystal Palace, fifty years after the previous cinema closed its doors.

After the tireless efforts by the Picture Palace Campaign to have the building returned to its former use, Everyman Cinemas exchanged contracts on the building earlier this year and are soon to complete the restoration and refurbishment of the venue.

“The response from the community in Crystal Palace has been incredible”, says Crispin Lilly from Everyman. “We know it’s something that they’ve campaigned for and it’s such a storied building so we can’t wait to do it justice.”

Annabel Sidney, Chair of Picture Palace Campaign said: “When I organised the first meeting of what became the Picture Palace Campaign back in June 2009, I never dreamt it would take so long to get our cinema back. The first meeting attracted 45 people. A public meeting we held in the Queens hotel, Crystal Palace just a few months later would attract over 1,000.”

“Lots of lasting friendships have been formed. The Campaign would like to thank everyone who supported us – people who signed petitions, put campaign cards through people’s doors, attended Bromley council planning committee meetings etc etc – and, last but not least, a huge thank you to Everyman, who prove that dreams can come true.”

The new Crystal Palace Everyman Cinema will open to the public on 15 November. To find out more about their upcoming programme, click here.

As The 62nd BFI London Film Festival enters full swing, our SHORT CUTS venue partner Rich Mix London invites you to enjoy the glitz, glamour and great stories of one of the world’s most wide-reaching film festivals. But the fun won’t stop with the end of LFF, because Rich Mix has a whole season of festivals that will take you right through November.

Next up will be Film Africa 2018, opening on Friday 2 November. With up to 10 days of screenings, Q&As, debate, live music and parties, discover incredible new African new waves like Wanuri Kahiu’s incredible, Kenyan LGBT drama Rafiki.

Then Doc’n Roll Film Festival will be making a two night stop on its UK-wide tour, and giving you the chance to enjoy two incredible music documentaries as they were intended – loud!

As part of Rich Mix’s growing commitment to female filmmakers, they’ll also be welcoming in Underwire Film Festival, the UK’s largest film festival celebrating women working across the film crafts, from Saturday 17 November. Particularly exciting will be standout events co-hosted by Bechdel Test Fest and Short of the Week…

Plus, if you’re involved in the film education in Tower Hamlets, Rich Mix is also hosting Into Film Festival, which is running lots of free screenings to help with the education and personal development of people under the age of 19.

So whether you’re looking to see the latest life-changing blockbuster months before it’s out, share formative film experiences, or discover and support world perspectives you wouldn’t normally see, Rich Mix has got everything you could possibly want to see this autumn.

richmix.org.uk

“Having a strict budget and short notice period is something many filmmakers face, so our account managers are prepared to find the best solutions within budget and time restraints.” 

A really valuable sponsor to us for this year’s inaugural SHORT CUTS Film Competition has been Zipcar. They were a company we were really keen to work with because their focus of using technology to solve a problem (decrease congestion in big cities by increasing car sharing) really spoke to us and the values of Shooting People. We’re big believers in connecting people, facilitating collaboration and keeping things affordable for creatives, and Zipcar encapsulates all of this for us. SHORT CUTS is about helping filmmakers develop their career, and we feel that offering affordable and flexible transport solutions is invaluable.

Some of you will already be Zipcar users. Some just have a sense of what the service offers. Some will be complete newbies and want to know more. So, we sat down and talked with Zipcar Partnership Executive, Norbert Toth, and asked him to give our members more insight into why Zipcar offers great opportunities for filmmakers, and in particular, how it can make your shoots more sustainable.

SP: We have a lot of jobs posted to Shooting People that require those applying to have access to a car – and as we know, a lot of people living in cities don’t own a car because of the expense. How do you think Zipcar’s short-term vehicle rental could change the landscape for indie film productions?

NT: London is exploding with opportunities for emerging filmmakers. Communities like Shooting People are a great place to find these in increasing numbers. But as opportunities have grown, so has competition. This means that having access to a vehicle has become essential to get a competitive edge when applying for these roles. But for someone just starting out in this field, owning a car – let alone a van – is simply not an option. We found that filmmakers love to use solutions like car sharing because they get the flexibility of car ownership (booking last minute, proximity, taking and returning it at any time) and the benefit of not having to worry about overhead costs. Having business insurance built into the rates has also had an overwhelmingly positive response from filmmakers in particular.

SP: Why should filmmakers and actors use Zipcar to get to their shoot or casting session rather than using a rival service such as Uber?

NT: Zipcar is working with thousands of filmmakers in London alone. This gives us a great insight into how this segment uses transport. In most cases, Zipcar simply fits their needs better then alternative solutions. Like when they are returning a van in the middle of the night after a long shoot or need a van for only 2 hours to get some equipment to a site. Sometimes, hopping into an Uber or doing a classic van hire for a whole week is the best option, but for filmmakers, often these solutions don’t tick all the boxes.

SP: Often filmmakers need equipment at short notice but within a very specific budget. How can Zipcar best facilitate these needs?

NT: The good thing about having a business account – which all Shooting People members have access to – is that it also comes with an industry specialist account manager, who themselves have worked with hundreds of filmmakers. Having a strict budget and short notice period is something many filmmakers face, so our account managers are prepared to find the best solutions within budget and time restraints. This is something we probably don’t talk enough about, but when our service is so flexible, having a helping hand in planning transportation budget for a project is super important.

SP: You have an ever-growing base of production companies signed up for a Zipcar business account. What do you think the value is for a production company? Do you have any examples you can share?

NT: Other than having a ton of freelancers and solo filmmakers, we also support some of the biggest production companies in London. Endemol have used Zipcar for years for their Big Brother productions where having drivers added on in a moments notice has been critical. Having access to a dedicated account manager who enables this smooth sailing, while drivers are seamlessly added to the account and granted easy access to the vans through their mobile app, has been a key part of why they have stayed with us for years.

SP: And do you have a sense of how many individual creative freelancers are signed up? Some of our members aren’t part of a larger production company, so what would be the advantage to them?

NT: Interestingly a lot of drivers who get a job at the big production companies, like Endemol, have their account with us as a freelancer already. It’s a great way to be mobile in terms of moving from one production to another. There is also the benefit of being able to get added on to the production company’s account without any fuss or delay and bill the company for those reservations while still be able to use the service for anything else that comes up.

SP: We know a priority for Zipcar is to move towards a greener transport system. How would filmmakers be increasing their “green credentials” for shoots by using Zipcar?

NT: Zipcar’s overall goal is to positively impact congestion and emissions in big cities like London. We do this by reducing the number of cars on the roads by allowing members to share our vehicles. Imagine you use a van for a shoot in the evening, but in the morning a brewery delivered their beer to the restaurants and in the afternoon someone moved to a new house. All with the same van and within the space of less than 24 hours. That’s the magic of a sharing economy. This allows filmmakers to help us reduce the number of cars on London’s busy roads, while they can also chose from hybrid and full electric cars to make their production even more environmentally friendly.

As part of our collaboration with Zipcar, they’re offering all SP members the chance to join for free, get £60 in driving credit and get 29% off ongoing rates. You can sign up for a business account as an individual freelancer or as a production company. It’s something our team have used and found super useful. You can claim this offer, here. 

Drug Runner is an exciting, unorthodox new short from SP member Charlotte Regan. A melancholy reflection of a childhood gone wrong, Drug Runner explores the world of “The Kid”, a 15-year-old living in a housing estate in East London that eventually falls into the drug world by becoming a dealer.

Charlotte began shooting music videos at the young age of 14. She made over 200 of these before she made her first narrative short. She has won multiple awards, including the BFI Future Film Award, the BFI New Talent Award, a Cannes Lions YDA Award, and now her second Vimeo Staff Pick with Drug Runner.

We were really interested to hear that the origins for Drug Runner came about after production company Bold Content reached out to Charlotte through SP after watching some of her work. After discovering their shared creative interests they teamed up to make the short film. We love to chat with members about their work and get more insight into their creative process, so below, you can hear what Charlotte had to say about about her new film, what inspired it, and how the collaboration worked.

How did you come up with the idea for Drug Runner?

I love watching documentaries, but I wanted to make something that merged doc and fiction. Drug Runner was a story that came naturally over time. The person it’s based on is a friend, and I always felt like it was a story that was never told, but needed to be told. I wanted to explore the reasons behind people getting involved with things like dealing drugs without making the protagonist a villain.

We see in the supers that the voice-over was performed by an actor. Did you record the real-life “Kid” and then play that to the actor?

I didn’t let my voice-over actor, Alfie Stewart, listen to the recordings at all. I never wanted him to re-create my friend’s speech pattern.

I interviewed my friend a few times, and as he knew we weren’t going to use his voice, he was happy to openly discuss his story. From there, I had to make the decision of what segments to use. Whilst it is a documentary, we didn’t quite have the budget for a 6+ hour film!

Does that blur the line between documentary and fiction? Re-creating the narration rather than using the original interviews?

Of course. I’m not putting this piece out there saying it’s 100% literal. My friend and I are close enough for him to be honest, but who knows what he was and wasn’t exaggerating. Even in our own minds, stories grow and change over time, so my intention was more to show his world as accurately as possible.

How did the actor take the original testimony and make it his own?

Alfie and the visual actor, Mitchell Brown, were both sent the transcribed script/interview responses beforehand. They are both incredibly natural actors who put their own spin on things. They were both perfect for this, as they know how to be subtle yet impactful.

Mitchell was great. You’ve worked with him before, but where did you find him, and how did you know he could act?

Mitchell was cast in a short I directed previously. We found him through ET Casting. He came in and just had a great way about him, he wasn’t trying too hard to act. He was naturally reading lines and running through scenarios. He is also great at trying things another way; he’s always interested in learning more, so he really tries to understand and take onboard notes.

The lighting and colour was amazing. What was your process planning the lighting? How much of it was done during the colour grade?

We lit the sets in production exactly how we wanted it to look in the final version. We used an Alexa Mini for primary filming, and a Black Magic for B-cam, so we knew there would be colour grading needed in post.

The intention was always to make it a very colourful piece. My friend always spoke about his housing estate as if it was a big community, and that’s something I wanted to replicate. Lots of people who come from and grow up in those backgrounds feel that way, I think. If you have lived in one from a young age they are filled with fun and your mates and people you know. Now that I live somewhere different, I massively miss it, and this is something me and him always agreed on.

There are some beautiful cutaway shots around the estate. Did you have a second unit, or did you direct every last shot?

No second unit. Me, Arran, and the camera team shot those a day before primary production. We were a super small crew and used as little kit as we could afford to have.

It seems you used a steadicam – how did you manage to do it on such a small budget?

It was something me and Arran always knew we needed, so from the start we got in touch with a great steadicam operator, Charlie Rizek. Arran had worked with him before.

You did your own editing, which is usually a big no-no, to both conduct the filming and do post. What was your process? Did you have a clear vision beforehand, or did you play with different techniques before you found what you liked? How do you maintain a fresh perspective?

Usually I would say no, that post-production completely changes the film. But with Drug Runner, because it was very literal and based around the voice-over script, it was cut almost exactly as it was storyboarded. I had always wanted this to blend documentary and fiction, so the film was very visual-essay in style.

Who knows how to keep it fresh! I’ve yet to figure this out. I like to watch the edit with other people and see how the audience reacts to it. Even if it’s just your mate or nan, if more than one person has a note on a section, it’s clearly an obvious enough thing that it needs to be re-visited. You have to not be precious about things. My DOP, Arran Green, helped out massively with the edit, as with Adam from Bold.

Was there anything in your original concept that didn’t make it to the final edit?

There were one or two things left out that I wish we had achieved in a different way during production. There always is. This is why shooting as much as you can is crucial, because it helps you learn from your experiences and avoid that same mess-up in the future.

Sound Design plays a big part in the film. How did you achieve the balance between enhancing viewer experience vs. pulling the viewer out of the narrative?

My sound designer, Michael Ling, is amazing. We have worked on every single narrative project together. We have gotten to know each other’s style, and we know how to recognize what we want to achieve with an edit. We chat a lot about different film references, so that helps with communication. Michael takes care to understand the story and only add things that assist the narrative.

So sound isn’t something I have necessarily done at all – just like with every element of a film, it’s about finding a great team, as they’ll be able to give you a better opinion than you ever could give yourself.

Drug Runner is such a well-written, concise short film. Would you ever consider expanding it into a feature? If so, how do you think that would change the film?

I don’t think so. I think some things play well with short content, but might not hold for a longer length of time. If it was a different story or a different world, maybe that could work, who knows!