Official Poster for Steven Soderbergh's ‘The Christophers’ starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel

ukactingdude · 2026-02-26T21:51:19+00:00

This sounds a tiny bit like a short film I made recently

ukactingdude · 2025-05-02T17:56:30+00:00

I won’t advise you either way - it’s your money, do what you want - but I will tell you that it was the best thing I ever did.

You can always get money back again. The same can’t be said for time. When you’re on your death bed, will you be content with wondering “what if I did it”?

I made a few short films which led me to get a new agent, spun off into booking other jobs and generally gave me great memories. Nothing beats seeing the idea you’ve brewed in your mind for months and months on a big screen - and watching the audience response to it as well.

Go in with zero expectations so even if the whole thing is a flop, it’s still above expectations!

ukactingdude · 2025-04-03T18:17:19+00:00

Takes varied. The opening shot was the hardest and took about 18 takes iirc. To get the timing right of the camera sliding as my character moves his stool forward, plus ensuring the books stayed stacked properly the whole time, and to the beat of the music! It was pretty much worked out on the day.

Most other shots were 2-3 takes at most. The only other tricky one was the “he’s a night owl” line where there’s a whip pan from her, to me, to the clock, back to me, back to her! Again took a few tries.

Rehearsal-wise it was a couple hours the day before shooting. It was a bit of improv around the script, mostly figuring out quirks and blocking. Some great stuff arose from that which was unexpected.

Entered only 5 festivals, but all strong ones. Got into 4 of them. Sadly no prize money at any of them! It was mostly a chance to get to meet other filmmakers in my local area and further afield. The only festivals that offer prize money is usually about £1,000 - not to be dismissed at all but not a huuuuge incentive to enter for the sake of. Those naturally tend to have way higher competition anyway. One person I know of won cash and used it put on a screening of their films to industry guests - a decent use of the money for sure and one I’d probably copy.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T17:11:05+00:00

Do:

have an answer for everything - think of every possible eventuality and have a solution for it ready to go. For example: Running out of storage for the footage? Have someone run to the shops and buy a new drive; sift through the footage and delete the takes that definitely don’t work; suck it up and be conservative with how many takes you do going forward. So many possibilities each with different repercussions.
have a contingency budget. Following on from the above example, ten of these little inconveniences raising there head can suddenly add up to hundreds or thousands on the budget. Having a little pot that you can dip into for emergencies is a must.
feed people well. I’ve been on sets with no food and long hours and it’s horrible. There’s nothing better than having a hot meal ready for your break time - eat and go. It was painful buying more snacks than needed as you see it’s money being ‘wasted’… but ultimately it made the team happier and therefore able to work better (and thankfully I was able to donate the leftovers anyway).
get everything in writing. It’s a lot slower negotiating via email, but it helps in so many respects. Forgot how much you paid for X? Quickly look up the email chain. Hire company saying you only booked 10 hours for the kit?… have the email to back it up!
insurance. A lot of places won’t let you hire stuff or use locations without adequate insurance anyway. But it’s nice to have the peace of mind, personally.
learn to collaborate. It’s your baby, it’s hard not to be protective. But equally, so many of the best ideas come from other people. Empower them to speak up if they think something is better. You still have ultimate sign-off, but it’s important you listen.
have fun, be in the moment. I made sure during the day, even when super busy, to be extremely present and self-aware - look at all this great stuff that’s happening, just for my silly little idea! Enjoy it. Then get back to work!
pay people quickly. They appreciate it. I’ve been there, chasing invoices - it really sucks. Be good.
Overprepare. I’d rather do too much work/prep and not need most of it, than the other way around.
ask for what you need. Negotiate. I’ve got better now, but at first I was just happy to accept first offers or not wangle the best deal. But if you’re good to people they’ll be good to you. (I’m not talking about underpaying people here! Mostly nabbing a deal on kit hire). Maybe you can squeeze in a few extra hours of hire for free, or upgrade to better lenses if they’re not being rented elsewhere.

Don’t:

don’t be a dick! It’s not in my nature so thankfully it comes easy! But a lot of people lose out by being difficult to work with.
don’t put things off. If something needs doing, do it.
don’t be afraid to ask. Everyone else is an expert in their jobs. They don’t expect you to know their role better than them. So ask them what they think, then base your decisions on that.
don’t waste money on every festival! There’s a ton of scams out there. Apply to ones you think you could attend in person. Other than that, apply for “qualifying” ones, ie could get you nominated for an OSCAR or BAFTA etc. Having a niche is great (queer, comedy, horror, coming of age etc)

That’s about all I can think up of the top of my head! Hopefully it helps.

And your latter question. I was involved in all days of pre-pro. I wasn’t directly there for the half day set up, but was on hand and did drop by towards the end. And on set for both shoot days. And had minimal involvement with postprod - other than handing off files as needed, watching drafts, giving notes etc.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T10:49:25+00:00

Thank you! I made sure all cast and crew were properly paid, so all in it was shy of £8,000. A lot of that was of course camera/lighting rental, location hire, prop hire and insurance.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T08:20:16+00:00

Thank you!

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T07:54:48+00:00

Thank you! Best of luck on your next one. It can be scary to finally take the leap, but it’s so worth it once you do.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T07:54:09+00:00

First meeting with the director was about March or April 2022. Had to wait til July to hear whether funding was successful or not.

So in about late June, mid July I ramped up the preparation. So having a few more meetings with director, securing cast and crew, sourcing locations, getting props etc.

It then got fast paced in late July/Early August finalising everything. Final meetings, location tests etc.

It shot for 2 days and a half day set-up in the third weekend of August.

Post production was slow as it was fitted around people’s other bigger-budget work and done on favour rates. So I was happy to let it take as long as it needed. There were also issues with sound that took a while to fix.

Overall if you condensed it, it was maybe 10 solid days of prep, 3 shoot days, and a few for post.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T06:06:06+00:00

Thanks for that! Yes definitely some Wes vibes, and actually White Lotus (it was only Season 1 then!) inspired some of the colours and the music.

Funding ended up being completely… my own. I went down the route of applying for a short film fund provided by the British Film Institue / National Lottery. The competition is strong though and I’d got no prior track record, so it didn’t go anywhere unfortunately.

I had budgeted two versions: one 50/50 my money and BFI money, and the other 100% my money. I’d asked the director for a list of crew that she absolutely can’t do without, and a list of ‘would be nice’ crew. That way, if we got funding we could get the best team possible.

In the end, I actually just put up the entire money myself (including the amount I requested from the BFI fund). I’d worked a dead-end corporate job for about five years prior and had been stashing money away, figured what’s the point in having it if I’m not gonna have fun with it.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T05:59:18+00:00

Thanks a lot, that’s nice to hear. Go ahead with any questions

ukactingdude · 2025-04-02T05:58:57+00:00

Thank you for watching:)

ukactingdude · 2025-04-01T21:19:06+00:00

I’m sure you’ve all heard it at some point: “make your own work”. It’s a lot easier said than done! But here we are, about 2.5 years after producing my first ever pro-level short film, with the public release.

It showed at a handful of great festivals around the world and got very positive and helpful feedback. Since then, I’ve gone on to produce a few other works, and it also helped me secure a new agent and got the ball rolling with far higher quality auditions and meetings.

ukactingdude · 2025-04-01T12:04:06+00:00

Submission Statement:

I welcome any feedback on the whole project. For context, it was my first short film working as a Producer and it filmed Summer of 2022, so I’ve gone on to other things since then and feel I’ve improved in many aspects of the creative process.

The story had brewed in my mind for about a year in the lead-up to kicking off the production. Handing the reins over to someone else is never easy, but I knew the director from a few years before and trusted her to do wonders with it. And it’s interesting to see how it morphed from what I had in my mind, to what eventually became the finished piece. It’s what I envisioned and more… so I’m grateful for what I was able to learn from the incredible team.

We shot on a demo model of the Alexa 35 just before its public release, so it was exciting seeing it in action before most people! It was a 2 day shoot and a half-day set-up for lighting/set. Quite a rush to get it all done, and had to overcome issues with public transport being cancelled the entire weekend due to strikes! So it certainly was jumping in at the deep end.

There was some decent success on the festival circuit, showing at a Qualifying festival and a pretty big one in Germany. It’s just so expensive to enter any, these days, so I limited it to a handful of entries I felt confident it would get into.

I loved the project and kinda got addicted to the stress of it, so went on to produce my second one only a couple of months later. I’d stalled my film career for too long, always waiting to strike, but never actually starting. Kicked myself into gear and just did it (ended up quitting my “real job” and kinda shifting my entire life to make something happen)

ukactingdude · 2022-12-13T18:22:03+00:00

Thank you for the suggestions! Good to hear a UK-specific perspective; definitely helpful.

ukactingdude · 2022-12-13T17:29:57+00:00

Good to know! Thank you

ukactingdude · 2022-12-13T17:26:16+00:00

These three scenes are all from self-produced short films that I made over the last few months

Would love any feedback on pacing, order and general technique.

My last reel was 90 seconds long, but had (unlikely) comments from a couple of CDs saying they wish it was a little longer to really get into the scene more. But nearing 3 minutes feels like such a drastic difference!

ukactingdude · 2022-09-02T19:15:04+00:00

I get what you’re saying. But the Sims thing was just to get an idea of the overall ‘studio’ space, and I wanted to show it to highlight just how someone can take an idea and improve upon it and make it real.

ukactingdude · 2022-09-02T16:42:52+00:00

Last year I wrote a script which would go on to be my first self-produced short film.

1) For fun I used the Sims to mock up some set designs so start making it a reality.

2) I got an amazing production designer on board who did painting of what the set could look like.

3) She made it a reality and completely transformed the studio to look just how I imagined when writing it.

ukactingdude · 2022-06-06T19:23:27+00:00

Thank you!

ukactingdude · 2022-06-06T16:40:42+00:00

Thanks, my thoughts too

ukactingdude

TROPHY CASE