SCREENWRITING
http://www.writers-online.co.uk APRIL 2020^27He stresses that it is important
to write your screenplay keeping
practical limitations in mind. ‘I
knew there was no electric at the
location, which would mean that
I’d need a generator to power
everything, and generators are of
course really noisy, so I wrote the
film to have a voice over – we hear
the lone man’s internal thoughts –
and that enabled me to shoot outside
using the generator and not have to
worry about sound. I put that on in
post-production.’
Knowing that everyone wants
to be involved in a film, Andrew
explains that, ‘We got students
from Derby University to act as
our crew and we shot in the middle
of January for two weeks. About
three days into the shoot, the snow
came. It turned out to be one of
the worst winters in England for
years. But that was another thing
I’d planned when writing – my
structure was fairly loose. I left room
for a lot of improvising, so we could
accommodate the weather.’
Because the budget was so tiny
the film was edited in the editor’s
bedroom. This doesn’t need to be
a problem though. With almost
all filmmaking being digital now
any film can be edited on a home
computer. Most special effects can be
done in software. As Andrew points
out, ‘you can make films on your
phone. The camera on my iPhone
is better than the camera we shot A
Reckoning on ten years ago, so it’s all
about using the equipment you can
get hold of and utilising it the best
way you can.’ As an example of this,
Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven)
shot his 2018 feature film Unsane
entirely on an iPhone.
Andrew is frank about one hard
lesson he learned. ‘There was a stupid
falling out with the folks that put up
the money for the shoot. That was
where I made the biggest mistake.
There were no contracts. I was so
thrilled to be finally making a film
that it never even occurred to me
- we were just all friends together
going to do this thing. It got into
a messy legal dispute about who
actually owned the film, but because
neither party had any money we
couldn’t settle it properly – no one
was in a position to take anyone to
court – and so the film was cast into
limbo. I had film festivals around the
world wanting to take it and a small
distribution company in LA looking
at it, but it all fell apart.’
In the aftermath Andrew walked
away from filmmaking for a while
but says, ‘films themselves never
left me. All my novels have films
as a backdrop in some way. The
Electric, and my new novel, Mick
& Sarah At The Pictures, are pretty
much just set within the walls of old
picture houses.’ Andrew clearly has
a romantic nostalgia for the age of
cinema before the multiplex.
After writing Dead Leaves, ‘the itch
started to return, but again I couldn’t
figure out how to make something
on no money. Those ideas – the ideas
that are simple enough to shoot, yet
strong enough to elevate them above
their budgetary constraints – are
really hard to find.’ This is one of
the key differences to writing a short
story or novel as a spectacular action
scene costs a lot more on film than
on paper.
In 2017 Andrew got a job as a
standby prop guy at the BBC in
Birmingham, working on the daytime
show Doctors. ‘It was my first time
ever officially working in the industry.
I was on set all day, with the actors,
the crew, and it was there that the
fire to start making films again really
came back.’
It’s at this point that the
writer-director explains how luck
sometimes help out. ‘A mate of
mine, Mick Walker, runs his own
production company, mainly doing
corporate stuff, and so he has pretty
much got everything – cameras,
lens, lights, editing software – and
he wanted to make a narrative film
as well. A drama...
‘I was thinking about older men
I see in pubs – day drinkers – and
thought I’d try and put two of these
guys sitting over a pint and have them
talk and see what happens. I sat down
to write and this little film, and Two
Old Boys took shape. I kept it short
because really it has no story – it’s a
snapshot of two working class blokes
talking about a world they feel is
getting away from them, and them
yearning for the past.
‘So with Mick on board to shoot it,
I asked an actor friend of mine, Mark