Wednesday, February 25th, 2015
We’re four weeks into the NFF/ UEA mentor programme, and our filmmakers are well on their way to producing a first class short, and are currently finalising their script ready for production throughout March. Our chosen team consists of the five most promising applicants: Holly Cook (director), Emily Walker (producer), Phoebe Heaton (writer/cinematographer), Thomas Rees (cinematographer/ editor), and Ben Boyd-Taylor (cinematographer).
Tasked with a loose brief: to produce a short film lasting no longer than ten minutes that highlights Norwich and East Anglia, helping to showcase it as s hub of creative talent.
These first stages of production can be some of the most challenging, especially coming together as a brand new crew, so we caught up with writer Phoebe Heaton to see how our filmmakers are getting along.
“After the first meeting with the NFF mentors, and the first time the five of us had officially met, we rushed to the pub to put our minds together and come up with ideas. The inspiration and excitement cocktail carried us on for over an hour of discussion. We put our minds together to imagine a scenario we had all come across before – a fleeting encounter. All of us have, at some point or another, had a conversation, or a brief encounter with a stranger which has (or has not) left an impression. When I’ve been travelling, I’ll spend a couple of days with someone from the other side of the world, we’ll share stories, share a meal, share a bunk, climb a mountain, often without stopping to ask their name. This transience is something we wish to capture in our short film. We all pictured the train station as an appropriate (and accessible) portal for the brief encounter – and the mode of transport offers a good metaphor for the ephemerality of the conversation. We then progressed to picturing an elusive platform in the middle of nowhere. After some research, we discovered a perfect location in Norwich, and one which can capture the beauty and naturalness of the scenery, and human contact. After compressing our excitement into concise ideas, Ben, Tom and I returned to the union pub to unify our thoughts. Now our vision involves nudity, an asthma attack, and a thin grasp of morality. We’re now in the process of conjuring dialogue, and a concise story to follow. The idea of improvised dialogue has been discussed, however, this is very dependent on the experience and confidence of the actors we employ. We’re meeting twice this week to continue our developments. I’m very excited.”
We can’t wait to see these ideas on the big screen and wish our team the best of luck as they prepare to shoot!
Posted in: NFF2015