THE INTERACTIVE FILM MAGAZINE
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Writer Gary Morecambe has fulfilled his father’s dreams of making his own film – by funding and directing a production himself.
Eric Morecambe starred in several films including The Intelligence Men, That Riviera Touch and The Magnificent Two and always dreamed of making a film. Now Gary’s first short film, Ticking, will premiere on Sky in late Spring.
The dark and dangerous story of the daughter of a Special Forces operative and a mentally unstable mother who turns to killing her boyfriends for sport, is a far cry from the humour which surrounded Gary growing up.
“As a family, we loved films of all kinds,” he said. “I would watch the
There's been plenty of talk about the state of the British film industry lately – calls for more King's Speeches, more commercially viable movie product that will generate money and is worth investing in in the first place.
What the bigwigs fail to understand is how frail the infrastructure of the homegrown industry is.
Lots of movies are made here, sure, but they're mostly Hollywood flicks. And it continues to be true that unlike the States or our friends on the continent, there is a lack of interest on the part of cinemas, distributors, film companies and most of all audiences to watch independent British cinema.
But might that be changing and might it come courtesy of the kind of movie that is consistently smeared in the British newspapers? After all, Tinseltown churns out hundreds of horror pics, crime thrillers and romcoms and even the least Oscar-worthy still tend to be preferred over those made in Bromley.
Simon Phillips and his crew hope so. "I sat down with someone the other day," muses the 31-year-old actor/producer who decided to make his own movies rather than wait for the phone to ring.
"He described Harry Potter to me as a British film. I was like, Harry Potter is very, very American. It's Warner Brothers, the money all goes back to New York. It's an American film shot on location."
movies my father appeared in and was always fascinated by how they came together and what made some work more than others.
“I decided to shoot my first film on a mobile phone as like my father in the early days of comedy when he had to keep up with state of the art technology in the television studios, I see modern phone and digital technology as highly exciting.
“I used the Samsung Galaxy S11 as I knew of its reputation for incredible video image, and that with the technical assistance of my crew, I could enhance the image on computer to cinematic standards.
“As Brad Baraud, a friend of my son Arthur, uses a Samsung Galaxy S11, this triggered the whole idea of
making a film with him via Bucks New University.”
Brad, studying for a BA in Film and Television Studies at the university, worked as director of photography, and Ollie Kennedy, a friend and colleague, did the sound, stunt arranging, computer work, and composed an original soundtrack.
Gary’s son Arthur joined them in an executive producer’s role, making sure everything ran smoothly and that everyone was in the right place at the right time.
They worked alongside London-based actors Peter Halpin, James Capel and Karina Sugden who is currently on a nationwide tour of the
award-winning play Your Last Breath. The film scenes were acted out around Bath,Stourhead Gardens in Wiltshire, Semley in Dorset and in The Bull Inn at Bruton, Somerset.
“The experience was amazing, not least because it gave me the opportunity to work with young, talented people at the beginning of their creative journey,” said Gary.
“Making an action-drama with a phone has been a huge adventure. We are now finishing the edit and I’m putting together a script and cast for the next film, which will be much longer, will be filmed on digital cameras, and will be based on one of my own published short stories.”
TICKING OVER: Gary, second from left, with Brad Baraud, Ollie Kennedy, Karina Sugden, Peter Halpin and Arthur Morecambe
ACTION! Brad Baraugh filming Karina Sugden using a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, above, and right, Gary with his late father, the legendary
Eric Morecambe
Eric Morecambe
Gary makes his father’s dream come true
A solution for the British film industry?
Phillips is taking a different tack – sheer bloody volume. "If you make one film, it's easy to be ignored," he says.
"Even if you make two, it could be passed off as a fluke. But once you get to nine, 10, people have to pay attention otherwise they look a touch out of the loop."
His company Black & Blue Films, which he runs alongside Billy Murray (ex-
Yes, six. Their latest – at least in terms of release – is How To Stop Being A Loser, a romantic comedy about a nerd who turns to a pick-up artist to get the girl of his dreams ( Hollyoaks' Gemma Atkinson).
They have at least five in various stages of post-production, with a repertory company-style cast and regular crew.
It's a work rate similar to New York's Mumblecore movement, the micro-indie wave whose denizens now populate mainstream Hollywood like flies, but previously just made films with their friends on the Big Apple streets.
Phillips is hoping for similar recognition. "We make low-budget films," he says. "There's not much aspiration to make higher budget films than the ones we're working on at the moment. We'd rather we had a breakout at this budget level than raise ten million quid to make something. We're not really interested in sitting on our
hands for 12, 18 months for one film to get off the ground."
Their approach is intriguing – private investors who fund a slate of small films rather than one bigger one, as well as direct contact with distributors who are finally realising despite critical savaging, those swaggering gangster pics make money once they hit the shelves of Tesco and Asda.
"We reverse engineer a little bit", explains Phillips. "We ask the distribution company we sell to what sort of films they'd like. What works for them. What the market wants." The result is a football movie called The Rise & Fall of a White Collar Hooligan.
I'll be perfectly honest – these films aren't great, though there's enough technical skill and the acting's good enough (for the most part) to put it on a par with similar American low-budget output, even if the accent or locations aren't as sexy.
The scripts are written very fast: "I really want to be able to go back to that company in six months and say here's your hooligan film", reveals Phillips. "With a finished movie". And it shows. They could use a few more drafts.
But the Roger Corman-esque spirit is something to be celebrated for cinema fans and you've got to love a group of guys who phone up Mark Hamill or Robert Englund because they loved them as kids in Star Wars and Nightmare On Elm Street in order to ask them to star in their films.
They did – Hamill's in Airborne and Englund in Strippers vs. Werewolves, both due out later this year. They even got Jean-Claude Van Damme.
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