I can pinpoint the exact moment my writing career went from an ‘if’ to a ‘when’. I’d been writing full-time for only a couple of years and was just finishing my 3rd screenplay when in 2011 I went to the London Screenwriters’ Festival for the first time.
Made to talk to the person next to me by Chris, one of the first people I met (and then again at the Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass in 2012), was director Alex Lightman. We exchanged scripts and quickly decided we wanted to work on something together. That opportunity came when a producer approached us looking for a creative team for a short… a producer we met at the Guerrilla Filmmakers Masterclass. It was on that set we met cinematographer Ernesto Herrmann and the three of us have been working together ever since.
In May 2013, we decided that enough was enough and made the somewhat snap decision to take the plunge and make a feature. None of us had produced a feature film before, but with a heady mixture of confidence, arrogance and a dash of blind optimism we decided that between the three of us pooling our resources and applying everything we’d learned at LSWF and GFilm, we must amount to at least one competent producer!
And it turns out we weren’t entirely wrong… 9 months raising finance, 3 months in pre-production and 5 weeks of principal photography in Cornwall later and somehow we have a movie in the can. And the scary thing is that, although it is an unbelievable amount of hard work, it’s certainly not rocket science.
It’s never a good time to invest in film, it’s probably not going to make you a star, and we won’t all make millions, so telling people that it will won’t get you anywhere. For us it therefore started with that mentality. We were going to make this film no matter what and we were going to do it with our hearts on our sleeves. The only question anyone had to answer – whether it be potential investors, cast, crew, landowners, anyone – was “are you coming with us or not?” People invest – be it time, money, heart or soul – in people, not in products. If they believe in you, they’ll believe in the product.
And remember that you cannot work alone. Because people also invest in teams, in collaborations, in people who not only believe in themselves but believe in their business partners. And we had the most incredible cast and crew. I’m still not sure how we managed to get the amount of talent and experience on set that we did, but I suspect it’s because we didn’t bullshit anyone, we just pitched it for what it was – an opportunity – and it was up to them to decide if it was for them or not.
At every hurdle we were told that making this film was not possible; from finding finance, to the scale of the production, to the quality of the cast and the crew we wanted. But taking one step at a time and simply bludgeoning on, we ticked off our to-do list and made a movie. It is doable.
We’ve learnt so much in this last year, too much for one blog, but the most important thing to impress on anyone who wants to make a feature film is that with the right attitude and the right people around you, the impossible really is possible.
The speakers are certainly amazing and the pitching opportunities are second to none, but the true power of the London Screenwriters’ Festival and the Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass lies in the community itself.
A career in the film industry is always going to be an uphill battle, but together, Everest suddenly isn’t so scary.
Tom Kerevan is a writer and producer. His feature Tear Me Apart produced with Alex Lightman and Ernesto Herrmann is in post-production.
www.tomkerevan.com
www.TearMeApartMovie.com
Posted by a member of the London Screenwriters’ Festival team.
