Where
are you from Tim?
I grew up in a little town in Wiltshire,
picturesque place with about 10 tea rooms and no shops and everyone was
white. Not much in the way of film going on there but the first film event
I can remember - it's a bit geeky - they showed all the Star Trek films
back to back in Swindon. I suppose I was about 13 at that point but I hadn't
really seen many films.
After that I found myself getting
into Westerns, it's an easy route really because it has it's own language
and strong symbolism to pick up on. No clever dialogue because its all
about shots and it's quite good for studying montage, but the cinema was
still a bit of a trek, I had to take 2 buses over an hour.
What style of Western?
Mainly Leone but larger than life
stuff like High Noon, apart from that I remember really enjoying
The Marx brothers oddly enough.
At what point did you become attracted
to the possibility of making films?
Well I saw a film by Kevin Reynolds
called Fandango with Kevin Costner. I don't know why it was that
film because its not that great but it had a good pace to it and something
to do with the characters made me feel that I could do just as well. Here's
a film about a group of 20 somethings that are trying to dodge the Vietnam
draft so they run, they end up in a mini bus together and go on this journey.
I thought I could do something like that so we did. We got hold of a VHS
camera and shot this 40 minute thing of absolutely the worst editing imaginable.
It was called The X Files, they stole my idea!
How old were you?
I was about 16 when I made that, its
still the longest film I've ever made and it took about four weeks off
and on, you know how it is. That film sort of settled me into the idea
of filmmaking a little bit. My school in those days was very academic,
they encouraged you to do something sensible in life that you could fall
back on later. After A levels I got a place on a business studies course
at Huddersfield uni or poly or whatever it was and it was quite difficult
to get in but when I got back home or just thought, 'well that's boring.'
Anyway I wrote them a letter saying that I didn't want to do that anymore
and started applying for all the film courses - even harder to get in -
and Bournemouth was the only place that would have me.
How did you find the film course?
Well for the first two years you couldn't
tackle anything artistic because it was all practical training, it wasn't
until the third year that you could start really expressing yourself. Oddly,
once you'd got to grips with all the processes and were starting to find
a way to express yourself, they took it all away and you found yourself
back outside without any money or equipment. There were some good people
there but many that didn't know why they were there - they liked the thought
of it but not the work, or the fear. It had more to do with what you couldn't
achieve, you can learn a lot from that but most people weren't interested
as soon as they found that out.
What did you work on after you graduated?
Well I wrote the script for a Sony
prize that had to be shot on miniDV, it was dead new at that point, you
had to write a script to use the camera in a new way. I decided on a documentary
feel with a young lad tearing around, be free and easy with the camera
and really jerk it around. Give it to the kid to run about with, it wasn't
going to be high tech but it was really open with a lot of action and movement.
Anyway, I never heard back from them
so then somebody emailed me about this Jerwood prize but the entry date
was in 5 days time so I dug that script back out again. Trouble was that
the Sony prize was 10 minutes maximum and this was only 5 minutes long.
I posted it off anyway and it came in at the top 20, they mentioned that
it was too short so I agreed to lengthen it.
The good part about this top 20 thing
was that we were brought down into a room where there was a group of guests
talking about writing and directing, including Guy Ritchie. This was before
Lock, Stock and after he'd shown us a few clips from it I took the piss
a little bit. He'd showed us a bit from the start when we are introduced
to the characters, I asked him if the voice over was a little bit cliché,
it goes back to Alfie with the whole geezer thing. I can't remember
what he said but he thought that it moved it along quicker and rather than
it being a bad thing it could really be a good thing. Of course the film
went on to be a massive success so it shows what I know! It was an interesting
day and I could instantly see what the trouble was with a lot of scripts,
or rather writers. I was really the only person willing to mingle and talk
about films, I'd introduce my self to others and suggest that we have a
read of each other's scripts to see what we both thought. Most of them
didn't want to show there's and that seems to be a big problem.
Anyway, they were looking for that
sort of enthusiasm, I brought out a storyboard which no one else had, they
weren't just looking for a good script - it got through. |
