How important is the creative collaboration between you and your team when working on a short like The Birdwatcher?

 

Collaboration is huge for me.  a film is a collaboration between everyone involved, with the director as the tastemaker at the top. Of course there’s a lot of the director in the film, especially if they’re written and developed the idea, but a film needs an army to make it happen, especially if it’s a high concept. I’ve got an amazing group of people around me who are joining me in my first steps into feature filmmaking. A few of them I met through the music industry, some are in bands and others were crew working other areas of the creative visual process or the music production side. I think it’s important to bring people up the ladder with you as you progress. You gain a lot because everyone is familiar with the way the team works which makes it a bit smoother. The Birdwatcher had a lot of amazing people working on it, including around 40 trainees.  A special mention to my production designer Lee Evans who shaped the look of the film - he’s worked with me on a lot of my music videos and has been a key factor in my development, acting as a mentor through many difficult moments. I just feel so grateful and privileged to have a team like I have. I’m really excited for the future and see who else comes into the mix!

 

Where did your passion for filmmaking come from?

 

I’m the first person in my family to work in a creative profession, but I’ve grown up around amazing and passionate people who made their ideas a reality. My parents are run their own business and I watching them do their own thing planted seeds in me from an early age. Filmmaking was something that I was drawn to even before I knew it was a profession. I had access to a family VHS camcorder as a kid and began messing around with it at a young age (even breaking one of them, sorry mum and dad!). I would make stop motion short films with toy figurines, and then began shooting short comedy sketches with my brother and sister. Directing was something I always ‘knew’ how to do in its most basic form. In junior school I directed a couple of comedy sketches for the school talent show and people laughed and enjoyed them - it just felt natural.

 

I made skate films in my teens and 20s, and got inspired by a lot of the skate videos of the time, along with films from people like Tony Scott and Tim Burton. I was interested in sci-fi and fantasy but didn’t have anyone older to guide me so it was a slow natural process of finding what I liked as I got older. Eventually I chose to study media at college, and then enrolled in the film degree at Falmouth University. After graduating I started my own production company ‘Crashburn’, and started to film hardcore, metal and punk gigs. At the time social media was just starting so I’d put the videos on YouTube or Myspace. Many people thought it was a fad and wouldn’t work, but flash forward and I’ve directed shoots all around the world, in the last year or so shooting Green Day at Wembley Stadium, and more recently directed a Nicole Scherzinger show at the Royal Albert Hall. The music industry has been a good training ground for me, but my dream has always been feature films. I feel like I’m entering a part of my life where I’m ready for that task. My film education is ongoing, and I’ve gone from looking up to legends like Tony Scott, to being inspired by Berlin’s beloved Wim Wenders or filmmakers like Jonathan Glazer. I’m feeling more passionate than ever about the craft, especially when my film makes it into a festival like British Shorts.

 

What would you say have been the most valuable lessons you’ve taken away so far from your films?

 

I live by the premise of ‘work hard and be nice to people’. That doesn’t mean being a doormat, it means having good intentions, respecting others, and being dedicated to your craft. Overall though here are some of the things I’ve taken away from my time as a filmmaker:

 

When you start out you’ve got to try to not think about the money, just think about the ideas. Remove as many limits in your mind as you can. Work with people who have a similar mindset and make things happen with what’s around you. Don’t consider your location as a ‘factor’. When I began many people said that because I was from Cornwall it wouldn’t be possible to be a filmmaker. This was a falsehood. You can do anything from anywhere. You just need to believe in it and DO IT!

 

My other recommendation for filmmakers is to look towards David Lynch. Through Lynch I began meditating, doing breath work and changing my outlook to life. It changed EVERYTHING and has been hugely beneficial to not just my creative process but my overall life.

 

How much does your background in music videos helped inform your approach to your short film?

 

I pretty much have the same team in music videos at Crashburn as I do in drama shorts at Myskatonic. In fact, my proactive approach since 2020 has been to approach music videos in the same way I approach short films. We’ve done some amazing stuff for various different artists. From this I’ve sort of got the reputation as ‘one of the people to go to’ if a band want a short film style music video in the UK. I’m happy to take that because for me they are the most enjoyable type of music video. Stylistically I’m influenced by the rock and metal music video channels of the early 2000s where music video ideas were still quite broad and interesting. I’ve been on a mission to try and emulate that period and revive the value of short film style music videos, but they aren’t always what people want. I’m lucky for the most part though to collaborate with a number of commissioners who care deeply about the videos their bands put out - they think about making something memorable more often than the money. It’s a joy. 

 

Music videos have also been extremely instrumental when it comes to the cutting process in the edit. The process I follow with a music video is very similar to that which happens with my short films. The reduction process is very specific and you always know when you’ve gone too far or not taken enough. My overarching principal with my work is ‘this is a film’ and that mindset is incredibly helpful in developing skills next to your own voice. Each opportunity to create and learn is embraced and seen as a step on the road to making a feature. 

"Resisting the lessons of life leads to a dangerous place and the universe loops situations in a desperate hope that the person will rethink the moment."

What filmmakers inspire you, and if you could spend the day on set with one filmmaker who would it be, and why?

There’s a large list! The filmmakers who inspire me most are Jonathon Glazer, David Lynch, David Fincher, Frederico Fellini, Liv Ullmann, Andrei Tarkovsky, Wim Wenders, Ingmar Bergman, Kathryn Bigelow, Carol Reed, John Huston, Alexander Mackendrick, Michael Balcon, Basil Dearden, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Orson Welles, Tony Scott, Steven Spielberg and Denis Villeneuve. 

What themes are you hoping to explore with future films?

We’re raising finance for my first feature as a writer/director – ‘C-H-A-I-N’ - and I’m working on a second feature screenplay with the working title ‘Analogue’, which is a post-AI ghost story. With Lach we have our adaptation of the HP Lovecraft short story ‘The Whisperer In Darkness’ and we have a film that Kingsley is writing with Lucy Grace, adapted from her short story There Were Nine Children Left. Many of our films discuss and meditate on the nature of people resisting/fearing uncomfortable human situations; only to learn that we have to go through those uncomfortable moments in order to grow and become better people. I feel like the world is obsessed with nostalgia and looking back which is a huge problem in society. In one respect I can’t blame anyone, because the world is in a very unstable place. Most of the issues can be linked back to one simple thing - poor mental health. Resisting the lessons of life leads to a dangerous place and the universe loops situations in a desperate hope that the person will rethink the moment. It creates situations of extreme pressure and sometimes danger - I think I’m interested in these places… I know that most of my shorts are about displacement and going to forbidden places and The Birdwatcher is the final part in a displacement trilogy, which includes Backwoods (a HP Lovecraft adaptation), and South of Here (a Neo-western noir written by Tim Seyfert). 

Are you able to share anything about your upcoming feature debut, which is going to be produced by Kingsley Marshall?

Of course. C-H-A-I-N is a supernatural eco-folk horror that fuses time travel with the catastrophe of climate change and biodiversity loss. It’s a whodunnit mystery wrapped across timelines in the life of moorland ranger Agnes who is taken from her home in the UK all the way to the jungles of Peru to find the answers behind a recent loss. We’ve developed it over the two years and we’re now looking for production finance, and have had some interest.It’s a story that, although is entirely fictional, speaks quite deeply to my own experiences with grief and loss. It’s largely a female fronted story and I’ve got a strong most favoured cast in mind for it, with the main lead already expressing interest in reading the screenplay after a brief conversation about the story. It’s likely to be the first feature film that production company Myskatonic will produce. Right now, we’re in post-production on documentary commission from Hammer Films, and have a number of other projects that are in development with some wonderful writers on a ghost story series for TV, and working with a US production company on a Fact-Ent TV show from Canada. It’s an exciting time!

Best piece of advice you give first year film students?

Be punctual, be kind, be curious, get excited and make the effort to ‘do’ as often as possible. Most importantly of all believe in yourself even if no-one else does, because you need to be your biggest supporter in this game. 

And finally, what message do you how your audiences will take away from The Birdwatcher?

Beware of ordering books that come with powerful gifts.