Before I got into film producing, I worked in government as a civil servant, including in the press office at Number 10 Downing Street and then as a public relations consultant, including for various agencies and charities.
In 2008, I was on holiday in California, when I was randomly invited to a film festival launch party by its head of security, whom I met by accident in Santa Monica, LA. I told the film people I met at the party that I wasn’t in film, but worked instead in PR and was planning to write a novel. This was also true, as my work for a cancer charity at the time involved working a lot with dying patients, which was incredibly rewarding, but also very intense, so I was looking for some kind of outlet that would take my mind off it all. Several of the film folk I met at the party said: you’re in PR; script writing is much more interactive and PR friendly than writing a novel; so why not write a film script instead? This seemed like a good idea, so I bought a scriptwriting guide the next day and then turned the novel into a feature film script when I got back to the UK.
I then started to go to film festivals, such as the American Film Market in LA, and the Berlinale and Cannes, and realised pretty quickly that if you want to get a film made you need to produce it, so I became a producer as well as a scriptwriter. I also realised that my business background and experience of working with the visual media, including camera crews and film and TV production companies at Number 10, were useful training for film production, which involves many of the same skills.
I then met a UK based director in Cannes, who’d just signed actor Michelle Dockery to play the lead in her short film, and we agreed that I’d produce her short film, called Shades of Beige, if she would direct a short film version of my feature script, called Deathless, which I’d also produce. We shot both films back to back; Michelle Dockery then became a big star on account of her role in Downton Abbey; both films got into various film festivals and even won a few awards; and I was on my way in the film industry. As is often the case, one thing leads to another in this business.
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