The opportunity to work in a team with Drew to make two short films with my good friend John McGee was a real joy. When children are young, they don’t have a lot of choice about whether or not they play or go on adventures with you. They’re sort of drug along, and there aren’t a lot of alternatives for a five year old. However, as adults, kids have plenty of choices about how they spend their time.
When Drew was between undergraduate and graduate school at Leeds, he spent a year at home to work and save same money. During that year, we took the opportunity to spend time and work together as adults, as Drew joined with John and me to make two short films.
The catalyst for this was the BBC’s “Well Done U” film competition. The rules were simple. Entrants had to be amateurs, the film could be no more than two minutes long, and it had to be capable of receiving a U certification, so no violence, sex or improper language.
Our team had Drew as the screenwriter, John as the director, and me as the producer and all around dog’s body. Drew’s creative mind came up with a few story ideas, so we had multiple discussions about the practicality of filming different stories and finding a story with a beginning, middle and end that could fit within two minutes.
We settled on “The Guru Tour” as our screenplay, and John set about story boarding it, so we could select the locations, contents of each scene, etc. We drafted in our friends to be actors, including one proper actor, who was a fiend of Sarah’s. The son of another friend agreed to do an original score, and the plan came together.
The whole process took months, and we spend a great deal of our spare time on the project. It was great for me to be able work in a team as a peer with Drew, and to see first hand how he had developed during his time away from home at Royal Holloway and Leeds.
He had been writing short stories for years, so I knew he had a creative spark, but he seemed full of ideas. He was open to criticism and developing his themes, and he had plenty of suggestions for John and I as well. It was a true collaboration, and that was, by some measure, the most fulfilling part of the whole adventure.
Drew, John and I all share a love of film, and Drew and I never stopped going to films together. Visits to Leeds would nearly always include a night out at the cinema, including the classic Hyde Park Picture House, and the Leeds International Film Festival.
Making our own film turned into a massive learning process. Things we’d taken for granted or thought would be simple, turned out to be anything but. For example, when filming, extraneous noise from the environment was picked up by our distinctly non-professional microphone. That required editing and voice over work we had not anticipated.
When we were finally done and submitted the film to the competition, we were all proud of our work. Interestingly, no one else has ever seen the merit in our film, and we didn’t win the competition:-)
With the constructive (and fair) feedback from our friends and family fresh in our minds, we decided to make a second film. This time we would not allow the two minute limit to constrain us. We found through Google searching that there are many short film competitions in the UK, so we decided to make our “ideal” film and then find a competition into which it would fit.
Drew again wrote an interesting and slightly surreal screenplay, John story boarded, we selected our cast, and we got down to work. After we completed all of the filming and starting the editing process, we discovered one of our key scenes did not work. A special effect was not very special at all, and the scene would have to be re-shot. Unfortunately, that scene was outdoors, and we shot it in unusual weather conditions (it was sunny), and the season was changing as well, so we missed our filming window. It then it came time for Drew to go back to Leeds, and we lost momentum on that project.
Drew and I, John and I, and the three of us continued to see films together, and conversation often returned to the lessons we learned through our own process of making films. It enhanced our enjoyment of proper films, but, most importantly, it gave me the opportunity to work in a team with Drew and experience first hand the man he had become.
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