This is the story of how I went from working in the biggest cinema in Europe to hiring it to show my zero-budget film; how I learned to back myself, “ignore the naysayers” and, without any industry help, turn my 30 year dream into reality: make a full length movie and get it seen in cinemas.

1. Every Story Starts With A Crisis

As anyone who’s studied screenwriting knows, every dramatic action is propelled by a dramatic need. Useful knowledge to craft a story, but also to understand how turning points in our lives arrive at our lowest and most challenging moments.

Having worked as a songwriter and composer, around 2007-8 few unfortunate events conspired to compel me to get a ‘real’ job for the first time in 20 years. First, Woolworths went bust. And Woolworths just so happened to own one of the biggest music distribution companies in the UK. CDs containing music me and my writing partner had spent the last 3 years writing were locked in a warehouse somewhere and the gatekeepers were asking for £30,000 to lend us the keys. Second, the guy who owned the publishing company died.

As composers we found ourselves unable to pay the previous year’s tax bill and, for the first time in 20 years, I needed an income from outside the music business. I saw an advert online for cinema VSAs (Visitor Services Assistant). Nothing more glamorous than selling tickets and popcorn. But I chose a cinema because my dream, since I was 8 years old, was to be a film director. I’d even done quite well writing some screenplays.

I went for the interview. The manager asked me a ‘health & safety in the workplace’ question and I gave them a blank look. I had no idea – I’d been working in my living room since my last job, working on a market stall 2 decades ago. But they must have been desperate because they gave me one of the 8 VSA roles on offer.

After a few months, something mysterious happened which would inspire me to pick up a camera and make a movie. All the staff at the cinema received an email from a set up identifying itself only as Film In The Make, asking all those interested to form into teams. A series of emails then instructed the teams to complete a set of short film projects.

But I was left out – no email for me. A message was sent to the mysterious organisation asking if I could join one of the teams. The cryptic reply was no, I couldn’t, as they had ‘other plans’ for me. Eventually, I got an email asking me to write a short 4 minute script, which must abide by the Dogme 95 rules.

As the deadline to turn in the script approached, I was sitting in the loft of my house (which I’d turned into a tiny office) at about 10pm, still trying to find inspiration. The deadline was midnight. I had two hours to come up with something. I remembered a true story I’d read, where homeless people collected the money to pay off a 13 year old girl’s pimp, so she could have a chance at a life off the streets – an inspirational crowdfunding story before I’d even heard of Kickstarter.

Problem was, I knew I couldn’t fit that into 4 pages. So instead I wrote a script about this homeless man who’d lost his mind and was re-living the moment where at some point in the past he had tried to pay off the pimp. I typed in a frenzy and mailed off the screenplay at 5 minutes to midnight.

A few days later, cinema staff received their final project: to make my short.

Unfortunately, this email arrived at Christmas and a lot of the people involved were away. It looked like the short wasn’t going to get made. So I decided I would make my own version, with anyone who wanted to get involved. In a few days, word got around and I had an enthusiastic crew of 15 volunteers. One of us had an HD camera and another a mic , so we shot the film, which turned out to be a decent effort.

Anyway, I realised it was possible – I could make a feature the same way, I just had to extend the process to 90 or so pages.

2. How Not To Make A Movie

A previous experience taught me the possibilities of shooting digital with a very small (well, none, really) crew. In 2005, I’d been involved in a short film production where I learned how NOT to make a movie.

A director friend, Justin, sent me a short script about an obsessively jealous husband who goes stalking his wife while she’s a night out with a friend. It was a dark, comic tale of misunderstanding and miscommunication, but the script only showed one side of the story. I suggested the audience should see both sides, so they would be aware of the misunderstandings and therefore drawn into the plot’s tragicomic twists and turns.

Justin asked me to write the other side and we ended up with a cool short film script. We applied to the Enfield Film Fund, but they rejected our application for being “too professional” (honestly). However, when one of the selected team’s projects collapsed due to their inability to get it together, we were asked to step in.

The deal was: £1000 up front, and £1000 on delivery. The original idea was to shoot the film on DV (there was no low budget HD at that time) and keep everything scaled down. But the DoP persuaded the director to shoot on 16mm, offering to supply the film stock. The DoP called in a crew of about 7 or 8 volunteers. I was going to be sound recordist and generally assisting the production.

Justin scheduled a long 4 day weekend, shooting through the night and sleeping during the day. Much of this noirish thriller was to be filmed at night in the woods, far from any power sources. So how to light it? They decided we would use a Leelium Balloon. Day of the shoot and Justin was in the queue at the bank, trying to withdraw the funds to pay for all the equipment. There was an issue and he called the whole shoot off. It wasn’t going to happen.

Half an hour later I get another call – he’s got the money; the shoot is on! We arrive at the location and the DoP has gone a bit crazy with the equipment and lights, which need to be transported in a box truck (for a £2000 film?). Already the whole production had spiralled out of control – well over £2000 had already been spent.

We have a dolly track and a thing called a ‘Universal Car Mount’ which allows you to mount the 16mm film camera to a car. You can only hire a UCM if you also hire a qualified grip. So we hired one – £500/day. I think we haggled him down to £250/day.

One day in, the generator broke down. But at 3am on a Saturday night, the generator hire company was closed. No generator, no lights, no movie.

While the rest of us huddled inside cars to keep warm, the director set off in the truck to seek a new generator. Several hours passed. Finally he returned, but the new generator was no good. By the end of the shoot, we had acquired four different generators and lost a quarter of our shoot time.

Then we came to shoot the car shots with the UCM.

“When’s the road going to be closed off?” asked our trained grip, not unreasonably.

“Close the road off?” said Justin.

“That’s a £30,000 camera. The mount will be 4 feet from the side of the car. You have to close the road.”

He dug his heels in – it’s not happening. But Justin’s powers of persuasion saved the day (night) and the crew and cast set off down a pitch-black, narrow country road, with an expensive lump of metal hanging 2.5 feet from the passenger window… at decapitation level.

However, this was at 3am, there was no traffic and no one was around. The car never drove above 15mph. Also, another car drove ahead and relayed info to Justin (lying on the backseat of the filmed car monitoring) via a 2-way radio to tell him if there was anyone coming. The UCM guy was now assured the shot would be safe and was even calling the actor to put his foot down!

On the morning of the final day, the troubles with the generator meant we were some way from getting all the shots we needed. The DoP had quit and gone home. Justin, operating the camera himself, was frantically trying to get the last shots like a man possessed.

But we were past ‘the sun’s nearly up’ phase. The sun was well and truly up. It was day. There was no two ways about it, the shoot was over. I suggested to Justin we wrap, send the film off to be processed and see what we’ve got. After 4 nights without sleep, we crashed out for the rest of the day.

I was woken at 7pm by a call from Justin: we had to get all the equipment back to Arriflex, but it was covered in mud after the shoot. We’d have to somehow clean it all before. And as the crew had all abandoned us, we’d have to do it alone.

Clearly, we weren’t going to make it and after a hopeful call to Arriflex, we were told if we didn’t get their equipment back by midnight we would be blacklisted. Which meant we wouldn’t be able to hire the equipment to shoot the rest of the film. With a couple of old rags and a hosepipe, Justin and I threw ourselves at the task. The sun was setting and the midnight deadline was fast approaching. We had to clean everything, load it back into the truck then drive it across town. It just didn’t seem possible, but we had to try, we had to keep going…

By 11.30pm, we had everything loaded back into the truck. We gunned across town as fast as we could and missed the deadline by 20 minutes. But Justin’s powers of persuasion worked again and we unloaded everything into the warehouse. Next day, we got a message – stuff had gone missing. Expensive stuff. We went back to the shoot location and dug around in the leaves and dirt, to no avail. Another few hundred added to the overspend we couldn’t afford.

We took the exposed film to the lab where they would process it and transfer it to digital tape for us to view. The cost was about £600. Remember, our budget had been a total of £2000, with £1000 up front. In other words, we only had £1000 to spend, in total. We’d already run up a bill for about £5000. The DoP had walked away and Justin had used up his overdraft, with many bills still to pay.

A couple of days later, we got the tape back from the lab and slid it into the digibeta deck, banking on this footage being beautiful to behold. Considering the money and effort spent.

The footage was underexposed. We went through the whole tape six times. Almost none of it was usable. We’d gone £3000 over budget and had nothing to show for it. We only had £1000 of the funding, the other half would be paid on delivery of the film. A film we couldn’t deliver. Neither me nor Justin had that extra £1000 to pay the people we owed money to. We were both now broke.

But we needed to somehow re-shoot this film, so we had something to deliver in two month’s time, so we would get the 2nd part of the £2000 funding, so we could pay for the equipment we had hired to shoot a load of useless footage.

But how? We literally had nothing to spend. Our overdrafts and credit cards were maxed-out. Then, Justin came up with another crazy idea…

We would re-shoot the entire film. But this time with no money. We formed a crew of 2. He would operate the camera and direct. I would record sound. He borrowed a Sony PD150 DVCAM from work and a sound recording kit from a friend.

One problem: almost the whole film was exterior shots at night and we had no lighting rig. He had a small photolamp he’d got free with a stills camera a few years before. It was tiny but better than nothing. We bought some battery powered mini strip-lights from Homebase for £4.99 each. We bought a 10,000-candle flashlight from the same store. Very powerful, but would only last about 12 minutes.

In the town scenes, we found a small car park with just about enough lighting and filmed late at night when it was empty. But most of the film was set in country lanes and woods. My car became our lighting rig. We would set up the scene by pointing my car in the right direction and turning on the headlights. A 3-pin socket converter was used to power anything which required mains from the lighter socket of my car. We could also charge batteries from it.

Rather than shooting the whole film in one go, we broke the film into scenes, shooting each one as and when we were all available. There was only four of us (me, Justin and the two actors) so it wasn’t too hard to arrange.

However, we found the scaled down nature of the production very liberating. Without any crew and equipment to worry about, we spent almost the entire time being creative. All we had to focus on was making the film.

A lot of improvisation went on. In some scenes, I became a human light-stand – holding the lamp above my head like a less-inspiring version of the Statue of Liberty. Between shoots, Justin would edit what we had, so we’d get an idea of how it was looking. The whole experience was far more rewarding than the previous disaster. The only issue – the deadline to deliver the completed film was approaching a little faster than we would have liked.

Justin 3D modelled a close-up of a dying man’s hand to put into a great shot we’d got by sticking the camera to the bonnet of my car and driving in reverse. Then we had to polish up the edit and the sound design and finish the music.

But the days had ticked past and there was now no way we could make the deadline. We wouldn’t get the second part of the funding and the film wouldn’t be shown at the Enfield Short Film Festival, with the other team’s films. We’d now shot the film twice over, and through a huge amount of effort had come so close to delivering the film. But it wasn’t quite enough.

We sat silently staring at the monitor in the edit suite – we’d failed. We may as well go and get a beer and drown our sorrows. With one last throw of the dice, he called the funding body to ask if we could extend the deadline. They’d been insistent there could be no extensions, so we didn’t have much hope.

He explained everything to them – how the first shoot had been a disaster and how we’d re-shot the entire film again. With his powers of persuasion coming to the rescue once more, they agreed to give us a couple more days. If we pulled out all the stops, maybe… just maybe… we could get this thing delivered for the festival screening…

On the day of the Enfield Short Film Festival screening, the film still wasn’t finished. Justin worked through the night. Finally, the film was complete. We rushed to the screening and handed the DVD to the projectionist, with minutes to go. We then sat back and watched the film up on the big screen. It looked fantastic.

We’d done it. We’d finished the film, despite all the adversity. We were paid the second part of the funding and could settle our debts. I learned how to shoot in a very scaled-down way and the experience was not only creatively liberating, but also freed you from the necessity of asking for finance.

When I approached shooting Third Contact with an HD camcorder, the lessons I’d learned from this experience left me in no doubt it could be done. I would follow the same scaled-down production strategy, but this time extend the production over many months, slowly picking up the required footage as we went. With improvisation and flexibility, I knew we could do it.

Most importantly, I knew we should approach the process not as filmmakers with big ideas compromised through lack of funds. Micro-budget filmmaking is not a compromise, it’s a method of making films as valid as any other. Shooting Third Contact would not be about trying to make a low budget film look like a big budget film. It would be about making a film with a camcorder and we would find our own aesthetic.

3. The Screenplay

In 2009, I wrote the screenplay for Third Contact and was very strict with myself about locations and cast. I had to write a script that was possible to shoot without a budget. So, no fancy locations, no crowd scenes, no spectacular car chases.

The idea for this screenplay was hatched back in 2005. One idea I had started with a simple scene:

An editor is going through old archive film footage of historic events and notices a mysterious figure in the background of different events – events far enough apart in time and space to make this physically impossible. This haunts the editor to the point of obsession. Perhaps this mysterious person is a “time tourist”, visiting big events in history. When he turns up in the present we discover there is some epic event about to happen and the tourist has come to watch…

I eventually dropped this time-tourist plot, but I loved the idea of time-travel being an illegal activity, performed in some nasty backstreet dive by dubious characters – a cash only service. In a few months I had come up with a screenplay titled The Man With The Bullet In His Brain, a time-travelling revenge thriller.

We submitted the screenplay to the UK Film Council (before it was absorbed into the BFI). They rejected it, saying it was “not commercial”. But we took up the offer of a 6 page script analysis offered on any rejected screenplay. In couple of weeks, an email came through. Whilst offering some advice on how to develop the screenplay, the reviewer said:

This is undoubtedly a killer movie idea, somewhere between BACK TO THE FUTURE and THE USUAL SUSPECTS… You have an excellent central conceit and a strong story… This script rivals BLADE RUNNER for its nihilistic worldview, complex characters and subjective moral viewpoint. You balance some of these bigger questions with a constantly-moving plot and a couple of impressive twists in the tail, which are of vital importance to fans of this genre… This project has every chance of finding a sizeable audience and, if the budget is kept tight, to be a good money earner. Comparable projects are MEMENTO or MULHOLLAND DRIVE, which mixed thriller elements with more intellectually challenging ideas.

Clearly, this reviewer had a completely different opinion of the screenplay to whoever rejected it from the UK Film Council. We re-submitted it with the notes and this time I was called in for a meeting.

I met the head of script development and from the start got the feeling I was only there so they could feign interest. He held the screenplay in his hands, like a Victorian workhouse master holding a scruffy orphan by the ear, “It’s quite lively.”

The standard call came a couple of weeks later: “We’ve decided not to take it further.” And the classic brush off, “But please send us any further scripts you have.”

Did I feel hard done by? Yes. I was angry and frustrated. The analysis said “a killer movie idea”. Their own people said this. And yet this still wasn’t enough. I know this business is tough and there are thousands of wannabe screenwriters out there, struggling to get a break. But I’d been writing screenplays for many years. I’d learned the craft. I wasn’t expecting them just to throw me a pot of cash. However, I felt I deserved an invitation of some kind. A bit of British encouragement?

“Instinct. I’m starting to use it again. Feels good.” Dr David Wright, Third Contact.

Originally, I wrote Third Contact as a prequel to The Man With The Bullet In His Brain, both centred on the “Quantum Suicide” thought experiment. However, with Third Contact the story would be more of a mystery. The powerful forces at work frustratingly out of sight of our hero, Dr Wright. Like humankind trying to understand the universe, our limited minds just too feeble to comprehend what’s really going on.

There’s a section of dialogue in the script which I cut from the final edit (the scene was just too clumsy) where Erika talks about a wasp trying to fly through a pane of glass. No matter how much the wasp struggles, the wasp will never be able to comprehend the concept of glass. And that sums up the feeling I wanted for the film.

So I did what screenwriters are not supposed to do. I worked out exactly what was going on, then hid almost everything from view. No screenplay analyst will recommend you do this. Screenwriting craft is about giving the audience the required information so they can follow without too much effort. But to create this feeling of madness-inducing frustration, I deliberately left things out.

In its simple form, Third Contact is a murder-mystery. A disillusioned therapist reaches a low point in his life. He’s about to kill himself when the mystery begins. Tragedy, however, motivates him to remain alive. He now has something to live for – to solve the mystery. And he becomes obsessed with solving it. Such is the hunger of the desperate soul.

If we find a reason to live, we will surely grip it with both hands.

Traditionally, the hero detective is a genius. His brilliant mind cuts through the layers of lies and deceit until he uncovers the truth and catches the murderer. Not so Dr Wright. Every clue he follows leads him to the end of a cul-de-sac. He pretty much sucks as a detective.

Of course, an audience watching a murder mystery are detectives themselves, who live out their fantasy through the detective-hero of the film. If the hero is a genius, we almost feel like we are too. We’re following all the clues, trying to put the pieces together. And a detective story is cleverly crafted to give the audience the feeling they’re getting closer to the truth, step by step.

I decided to go against this trope. My hero-detective, although not stupid, is constantly frustrated by his investigation. He’s like a wasp banging into a pane of glass. Indeed, the final shot is of David standing behind a glass window, trapped, unable to reach his ‘destination’.

With Third Contact I was liberated from worrying about writing something to raise funding. Knowing I was going to film this myself meant I could write whatever I wanted. And I took the opportunity to be free; to use my instincts.

However, I did submit the script to the BBC Writersroom. No harm in getting some feedback, I thought. This is what they said:

18-February-2010 Dear Simon Thank you for sending us your script Third Contact, which we really enjoyed reading. I include below our script reader’s comments, which I hope you find useful. Third Contact is an atmospheric psychological thriller exploring madness and depression and achieving a fresh take on the topical issue of euthanasia. The way science is applied to memory, the examination of fractured consciousness and the shifts between timeframes is reminiscent of Charlie Kaufman, although this is a much darker world than Kaufman’s and without his playfulness. The story is well crafted and demonstrates a strong sense of the genre. Visual grammar is a major strength – the storytelling is assured, restrained and impressively concise with commendable attention to detail. There are several strong images and intriguing moments. The dialogue is intelligent and appropriately terse with occasional flashes of dark humour, although the characters all tend to sound very similar. The dialogue also arguably feels more American than British. The central figure of David, a psychiatrist on the cusp of mental breakdown, is convincing and sympathetic whilst the supporting characters are credibly individualised and intriguing. Karl and Dr Moser work particularly well. David’s investigation into his patients’ suicides is neatly employed to structure the narrative and keeps the story moving forward. Tension is maintained throughout, there is a strong twist at the climax and some genuine surprises along the way (although David makes the connection between Karl and the mysterious ‘Destinations’ rather too easily). My main quibble is that there is insufficient sense of place, arguably a missed opportunity, especially in a story that examines perception, memory, reality and fantasy. I’m afraid that despite its strengths, we have decided not to take things further with you on the basis of this script and are unable to discuss it in any more detail.

A week later, we started filming.

4. The Making of Third Contact

I set the first shoot date for February 2010 and set about bringing in some cast and crew, prepared to work for nothing more than a share of any potential profit (I made the point of stressing there most likely wouldn’t be any). To play depressed physicist Karl, I had my IMAX friend Oliver Browne, who had never acted before. I put an ad in Casting Call Pro. And cast Kristina Erderly to play Dr Wright’s patient, Helen. She would also help with further casting.

In February, 2010, we started shooting. The dates would be spread out over the following months, going through the script location by location, in manageable pieces. The first section was Dr Wright’s office scenes, which contained the most pages – 20% of the script.

I struggled with the lighting challenges and learning to use the Canon HV30 camcorder. This involved getting familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the camera, plus learning how to shoot a scene. I decided not to use storyboards. I’m not a trained camera operator so a storyboard seemed like something which would get in the way. I needed the freedom to experiment.

We shot all the footage for the offices, but when me and my friend Scott (who ended up as sound recordist, having never done this before, either) went through the footage, we found we were disappointed with the lighting. Also, the actor playing the lead was not working for the character – I’d miscast him quite badly. He came across more as a slightly psycho-gangster than a psychotherapist.

We had no choice but to look for another actor and we parted company. However, this would also give me a chance to re-shoot and get the lighting better, next time.

With Kristina’s help, we cast Tim Scott-Walker as Dr Wright and in March 2010, we started shooting, again. We filmed over the next 11 months or so and, although I had many kind and wonderful friends helping, I tried to take on as many roles as I could. I knew I had to rely on others as little as possible to get this done.

Sarah found the head of a photographer’s light in the back of a BBC cupboard and asked if I wanted it. I bought a stand for it for about £20 and this would be my only professional lighting equipment for the shoot. Bit by bit, we worked our way through the 85 page screenplay.

As we were shooting over a long period, I only cast the roles as required. Sometimes the casting happened by chance. One character, called Enigmatic Woman in the screenplay, had been cast with the help of Kristina. In the screenplay, she was a woman in her 50s, slender with long grey hair. However, the night of her shoot we had a disaster with the grey hair colour. The poor actor had a nightmare experience, spending hours first getting the colour into her hair then washing it out again when it didn’t work. I had to send her home without filming any of her scenes. Understandably, she was ‘busy’ for the next shoot – we’d have to re-cast.

We were shooting a scene where Dr David is talking to the Enigmatic Woman on the phone. I asked our makeup artist, Virginia, to stand in and read the other side of the conversation, so Tim could space his dialogue correctly. Watching the footage later, I began to get interested in Virginia’s performance. There was something different about her, otherworldly. And combined with her soft Bulgarian accent, I found the idea began to grow on me.

Virginia was in her 20s, with long dark hair. While the character was supposed to be in her 50s with long grey hair. But I became convinced. Although this casting would move the character in an unexpected direction – it would work.

I asked Virginia and she simply said she would do whatever was needed to get the film made. Then, while watching a movie about a brother and sister, set in the cloistered world of London’s Orthodox Jewish community (Song of Songs by Josh Appignanesi), we were inspired by the look of the sister character (played by Natalie Press). Long hair brushed straight, very conservative and austere dress. So the character really evolved while we were filming.

After months of developing the screenplay, shooting was flexible, spontaneous, inspired. I let the production float on life’s ocean. I trusted myself to navigate the ship to the best of my ability. If it turned out I wasn’t a good enough sailor, or we encountered a storm no ship could survive, so be it. These are the risks of adventure. You can either choose to stay in the harbour-side pub, sipping beer and grumbling about those foolish folk risking their lives discovering new lands, or you can climb aboard the ship.

I was the captain of this ship. We didn’t have the money for a huge cruise liner. We’d have to take our chances in this old wooden sailboat. I decided our best chance of making it to the new world was to stay flexible and improvise. To trust my instincts. And this is why I say microbudget filmmaking is in no way a lesser form. All filmmaking, all creativity, involves compromise. But there are opportunities you will get making your film for nothing you’d never get with a budget and a big crew.

I’m a sound recordist myself. I have my own basic kit. A Zoom H4n, a Sennheiser 416, boom pole, headphones. That’s really all you need. I’ve recorded sound this way many times. Last time was on a feature. Yes, it means you have to work round certain situations. You can’t really get more than one actor’s dialogue in a take. But it’s ok, you get it in the reverse take. Or ADR. You’ll find a way.

One scene in Third Contact was to be shot at Maryon Park at night. We had no permission. We just turned up when the park was closed and jumped over the fence. When we scouted the location, I got goosebumps – it hadn’t changed from when they used it in Blow Up. Scott was there to record sound, but stupidly I’d left the boom at home.

So we improvised.

Jannica (who played the character of Erika) held the 416 in her hand below her chin, like a news reporter. I’d frame the shot so the mic was just below. The shot involved the actors walking and talking – a tricky thing to boom, as the movement can cause wind distortion on the mic. But the sound was perfect. In fact, we got some of the best sound quality in that scene and it made the shoot faster – Jannica was being her own boom operator.

Imagine if you had 15 crew for this scene. Would they all jump over the fence? No, so we’d have to get permission. We’d be charged £100s or £1000s. The whole scene would take hours to organise. Parking, catering, electricity supply, insurance. As soon as you hire crew, the whole scale of the production explodes.

But we filmed with 4 people. One car. One camera. One mic and recorder. No lights. I think we had the scene done in one hour, from arriving to the final shot. In a professional shoot, it would take you an hour just to make sure everyone was there and had coffee and bacon rolls.

I’ve never used rehearsals for filmmaking. We work things out on set. I find it keeps things more creative as you’re filming. You hope the actor learns the lines, well enough, and then we play with it until I see things working.

You can’t keep filming a shot forever and, if the actor isn’t getting any better, sometimes you have to accept it’s the best you’re going to get. With Third Contact we were filming in stages, so we were able to return and re-shoot some scenes. You can also work on performances during the editing process.

So many London-set films seem to be shot in places no ordinary Londoner would every go. Either luxurious modern apartments or grim estates. I wanted Third Contact look like the London I know. Finding good locations for your zero-budget production can be a make-or-break issue. For this reason, it’s essential to create a story with realistic settings; locations you are confident you can get for free, very cheaply or improvise around.

A friend had offered his flat in Swiss Cottage for the office scenes. His living room had a big window and long white net curtains, which would add an eerie, ghostly feel to these scenes. The flat had an unusual architecture (inside and out) – the kitchen was overlooking the living room. This meant I could film many shots from a high angle. This not only gave me extra creative choices, it allowed me to film as if the living room was a set.

This flat was nice and quiet too, so we could get good sound. Another thing you should consider as a micro-budget filmmaker – the sound quality of the location.

After the office scenes, other locations were more challenging. But as I was shooting each section (or sections) of the script based on location (in other words, when a location came available, we shot everything in one go), there was time between shoots to hunt for the next one.

We were creating the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and hoped they’d all fit together at the end to make a movie. Of course, most films are shot out of sequence, but in this case there was over a year between the first and last takes.

There’s a story about the making David Lynch’s Eraserhead, which took 6 years to shoot on a tiny budget. In one scene, the lead actor Jack Nance walks through a door. The shot of him stepping out of the other side was filmed one year later. This is a great example of the unseen dedication which goes into filmmaking. How much is David Lynch’s film career in debt to Jack Nance maintaining that hair over the 6 years of filming?

Another good chunk of filming took place in the [character] Rene’s flat, which I needed to be almost empty. In the story, Rene’s sister Erika finds his flat in this state when she arrives. My brother and his flatmate allowed me to use their place for a few days while they were away. I had a day to move everything into one room. Tip – take pics of everything so you know where to put things back (sorry, guys!).

The bar scene with David and Erika was shot in the bar/café at the BFI IMAX, after midnight. With just a couple of off-duty staff as extras, we had to keep it to close shots. The crew+extras stood behind whichever actor was in shot. 2 people crossed back and forth to give the impression of a live environment.

Other locations included: outside the BFI, using the lightbox entrance to put the actors in silhouette (something I’d used in a previous short film), Maryon Park (because it was in the film Blow Up), Waterloo Station (we didn’t get permission but with just a camcorder, nobody noticed or cared), friend’s flats (luckily, when we came to shoot Helen’s empty flat, I had just moved into a new unfurnished place so no need to empty it).

One difficult location was a scene in what I imaged to be a big futuristic, circular chamber. Although I’d been realistic about everything else, I hoped I’d maybe find this one location somehow, to add a touch of ‘out of the ordinary’. But it couldn’t be done and in the end I had to re-think.

In the end, we found an abandoned garage assigned for demolition. The area we filmed in was a long way from any power supply and had water flowing from a broken pipe flowing down one wall. I bought the longest extension cable I could find to power my redhead lamp. Although there was a busy road nearby, the sound turned out mostly ok and gave a really nice echo-effect, which complimented the surreal dreamlike nature of the scene perfectly.

One strategy I learned when you have no location budget – just turn up and ask if you can film right away. I know this is risky, but here’s why. We needed another café location. We had an idea of a potential café to use, but if we had gone in and asked to shoot at a later date, things probably would have got complicated. And, more importantly, expensive. Someone has to ask the owner, who then has time to think about how much money he wants to charge.

Instead, we just asked if we could pop in and film a quick scene. What tends to happen is people just go with it – it’s fun! In the moment, you catch people’s spontaneous side. If they get 2 weeks to think about it, you might get a different answer.

They gave us 30 minutes, so we didn’t have ages to set up. We had to jump in and start filming. Luckily there wasn’t too much dialogue. In terms of getting the shots, I had to think quickly. I think it turned out well and because there’s people around, no need for extras. In fact, something about filming smash-and-grab style adds to the performance – the scene is supposed to be tense, so no need for method acting!

Then, in January 2011, Tim said he was leaving to work in India and we had to rush get the last scenes done quickly, or who knows if we’d ever have finished the film.

A big problem was some ageing makeup hadn’t worked. But the location – an underground cellar – where we shot the original scene was no longer available. I had to re-build a wall of the cellar in my dining room and re-do the makeup. We shot it in close-up and then Justin used his CGI skills to place Tim’s head with the new makeup on Tim’s body.

With everything we needed finally on tape, it was left to me to spend the next year or more hunched over my power mac, putting all the pieces to this huge jigsaw together. At the end of 2012, Third Contact was selected for the 46 Hofer Filmtage, in Germany, where it played alongside films made with much bigger budgets.

I arrived in Hof to see people queuing for tickets and thought – Wow, they could be buying tickets for my film! Right now saying, “Two tickets for Third Contact, please.” I found this thought to be a great thrill. I’d set out to make a feature film armed only with a camcorder and a few quid. 3 years later, here I was watching people buying tickets to watch it. Regardless of what people thought of it, nobody could take this away. We had defied the odds and made a feature film which would be shown in cinemas.

When I returned to London, some reviews came through from Germany. Here’s one. But they were all complimentary.

5. Global Premiere

In 2013, I raised £15,000 on kickstarter to distribute the film to cinemas in the UK. One reward was a seat at the “global premiere” of the film at the London’s highly prestigious BFI IMAX cinema. Using only social media to advertise the event, 300 people showed up on the night and a further 600 watched the film and following Q&Q via our live-stream broadcast. We had a twitter wall up on the biggest cinema screen in Europe so everyone could join in the event.

The event was an incredible success. I would go on to tour the film around the UK, USA and Europe. In Zurich, in January 2014, I met Andrea for the Swiss screening – another huge success and sold out show – which would sow the seed for the beginning of our Mobile Motion Film Festival project.

Third Contact is available on Amazon and YouTube.

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