The After Film School Club: Recent Episodes
Above The Line
Hello everyone, welcome to The After Film School Club! Teaching you what film school doesn't! Our episodes will include film and festival reviews, filmmaker interviews and updates from the Above The Line team.
Join Maria, Jack and Simon as they discuss their creative highlights, their cinematic highlights and review their 2021!
As part of our on-going series highlighting the different roles in a film production, we're really excited to bring you all our interview with BAFTA winner and Academy Award nominated production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas.
Guy designed the sets for Inception, X-Men 2, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steve Jobs and the upcoming Spencer film. It was an absolute priviledge to hear him talk about his career, and his journey from working on a chicken farm to producing some of Hollywood's biggest films of the past two decades.
Philip Ilson is the London Film Festival’s Senior Short Film Advisor. He is also the Artistic Director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004, and has previously worked as a programmer at the East End, Cork and Branchage Film Festivals as well as Curzon Soho Cinema.
In this episode Simon, Jack and Maria ask Philip about the selection process for short film festivals, what films stand out to him and what mistakes new filmmakers make in their films.
In this episode of our podcast series, Simon and Maria interview Al Morrow and Jerry Rothwell, producer and director of The Reason I Jump, a documentary based on the book by Naoki Higashida. The film explores the experiences of non-speaking autistic people around the world. We spoke to Al and Jerry about the process of developing the documentary, the sound and visuals, as well as working with the protagonists featured in the film.
"My first thought was let's make a film about Naoki. I went to meet him, found him fascinating, he was very happy to do the project but absolutely didn't want it to be about him or his family. So that sent us off in this other, more lateral direction, which was how can we use the words of a 12 year old to shift an audience's perceptions and allow us to meet other autistic people from across the world and walk in their shoes a little bit." - Jerry Rothwell
In the latest installment of our podcast series, Simon and Kevin caught up with Tom Sullivan, the filmmaker behind ARRACHT (Monster). The film was supported by TG4, the Irish Film Board (IFB), and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) through the Cine4 scheme and was produced by Cúán Mac Conghail for Macalla.
Arracht won two awards at the IFTA's and was Ireland's entry for the 2021 Oscars’ best international feature film category. Lead actor Dónall Ó Héalaí was awarded the Aer Lingus Discovery Award for his role as Colmán Sharkey at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival, and the film won the Audience Award at the Glasgow Film Festival.
I think Irish people are starting to identify past trauma’s in our history and what has maybe shaped who we are now and so people are open to talking about it. I think there’s been enough time now between us realising just how rotten our religious institutions were for so long, that there has been enough time now that we can start dealing with it in our fiction and our storytelling. I feel as well that the famine was a corner stone and a jump off point that allowed all that institutional abuse to happen, because in a way it was during the famine that we learned how to stop talking and keep secrets because of the atrocities that went on during the famine, and the shameful things that we were forced to do to each other, as a people, has all been buried. And those buried scars, they go deep and they resurface whether you like it or not. I think in a weird way, even if it’s a subconscious thing, the people of Ireland are ready now to start to uncover the trauma and maybe to talk about it.
- Tom Sullivan, director of Arracht
Kevin has also written an article about Arracht which you can read here:
You may have heard us mention Vertigo A.I. during our podcast on the London Short Film Festival. In this episode we speak to filmmaker Chris Peters about his groundbreaking work, using A.I. to create films.
To create Vertigo A.I. an A.I. repeatedly watched the movie Vertigo over the course of two days. A 5 minute film was made from these recordings, not footage in the traditional sense of photographed scenes, but footage of the internal experience of a new intelligence learning about our world for the first time. To complete the experiment, a separate A.I. was used to write a narration for the recordings.
In creating 24,483 Dreams of Death, an A.I. spent six days watching the film La Maschera del Demonio. A separate A.I. was used to write the poetry heard in the narration. In a single eighteen hour period the machine wrote 1,623,811 words of poetry, nearly 100 books worth.
In this interview, Simon and Jack speak to Chris about his background in tech and his transition into experimental filmmaking. This fasacinating discussion delves into the process of using A.I. to create stories and what impact that might have on the future of filmmaking.
If you'd like to find out more about Chris and his work, you can visit his website.
The ATL team were lucky to chat with author Fiona Shaw - academic and author of Tell It To The Bees, which was adapted for screen in 2009. As filmmakers, almost every book we read turns into a movie in our head, but few of us actually know or understand the process of buying the rights to a novel and how to turn a book into a screenplay, and that screenplay into a film.
In this episode we thought we would look at things from the author's perspective, and asked Fiona about her experience of selling the film rights of her book and the journey from page to screen.
If you want to know more about Fiona's work you can find it here: http://www.fiona-shaw.com
In part two of our Slamdance film festival review, the ATL podcast team discuss their favourite films of the festival, including Oscar nominated short 'Opera' by Erick Oh, 'I Think It's Enough, Isn't It?' by Emily Shir Segal and 'Birdland' by Takeshi Kogahara.
Slamdance film festival went ahead online this year, which worked out well for us, as we could watch the films from the comfort of our homes. Slamdance is a film festival that takes place every year in Utah, United States, The festival started in 1995, and has since gained a reputation for screening bold films and launching careers.
In this episode, Simon, Jack (Davidson) and Jack (Keating) discuss the films that caught their eye, and the experience of attending an online film festival.
Trigger Warning: Some of the films we discuss involve themes of Suicide and Euthanasia.
Part 2 of Jack and Simon's review of the London Short Film Festival. Discover which films stood out and which up and coming filmmakers are making outstanding short films.
You can find the filmmakers we mention in the podcast here:
Mango – Scott Lazer - @scottlazer, www.scottlazer.com
Swivel – Lois Norman, @swiveldancefilm
A Home Truth – Rebecca King
Bulldog – Kieran Stringfellow, @made_of_string, @blockbfilms
Drifting – Hanxiong Bo, @bohanxiong, www.bohanxiong.com
Woodchild and Hidden Forest Mother – Stephen Irwin, www.smalltimeinc.com
Memoirs of a Freezer – Theo James Krekis, www.theojameskrekis.com
In the Air Tonight – Andrew Norman Wilson, www.andrewnormanwilson.com
A Place to Stay – Asham Kamboj, @ashamkamboj, www.ashamkamboj.co.uk
A Noble Truth - Tia Salisbury, @tiasalisbury, www.tiasalisbury.com
Black Goat – Tang Yi
Crumbs #3 (Cinema Trailer) – Jack Wormell, www.jackwormell.com/Crumbs-3-Cinema-Trailer
Hovering Between Us – Miles Blacket, www.milesblacket.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtJCMkTcdbc
Such Small Hands – Maria Martinez Bayona, www.mariambayona.com
Returning – Lucy Bridger, @lucyjeanbridger, www.lucybridger.com
No More Wings – Abraham Adeyemi, @abeislegend, http://omeleto.com/255165/
Home By 8.30 - Perry White, @perrywhiteart, www.homeby830.com
Princess – Edem Kelman, @ ebmk___
Just Me – Adam Tyler, www.irisprize.org/film/just-me/
Dustin - Naïla Guiguet, @naila_guiguet
Did you catch the films at this year's LSFF? Well, Simon and Jack watched them all so you didn't have to! In this episode of the ATL podcast, we take a look at the films selected for LSFF and which films and filmmakers stood out.
Want to know more?
Here are some of our favourite films from LSFF 2021:
Home by 8:30 - Perry White | @perrywhiteart | www.homeby830.com
Returning - Lucy Bridger | @lucyjeanbridger | www.lucybridger.com
Calladita - Miguel Faus | @miguelfaus | www.miguelfaus.com
Bulldog - Kieran Stringfellow | @made_of_string | @blockbfilms
Gym Patriot - Slobodan Karajlovic
The Devil’s Dice - Matt Brothers | @mattbrothers2
Survive Eldritch Anomalies - Christian Burnett | @cj_burnett
Bro - Juan Herrera Zuluaga | www.shortfilms.org.uk/films/bro!-
Seeds Of Love - Gideon Beresford
Burn The Witch - Matty Crawford | @mattystfu | www.mattycrawford.com
A Noble Truth - Tia Salisbury | @tiasalisbury | www.tiasalisbury.com
End Of Suffering (A Proposal) - Jacqueline Lentzou | www.squareeyesfilm.com
A Place To Stay - Asham Kamboj | ashamkamboj | www.ashamkamboj.co.uk
She Lives Alone - Lucy Rose | @lucyrosecreates | www.lucyrosecreative.co.uk
Which Is Witch? - Marie Losier | www.shortfilms.org.uk/films/which-is-witch%3f
This Means More - Nicolas Gourault |www.nicolasgourault.fr
Limbo - Lotje Sodderland | www.lief.london
Breadline - Carol Salter | @carolsalter_ | www.almost-heaven-film.com
Radio Silence - Louiza Ntourou
Dwelling - Ben Fox
Vertigo Ai - Chris Peters | | www.chrispeters.com
A Home Truth - Rebecca King | @rebeccajking_ | www.rebeccaking.uk
Theremin - Milo Garner
We are all about documentary filmmaking here at the After Film School Club, so we caught up with Niamh Fagan, producer of acclaimed documentary Shooting the Mafia. Niamh talks about the extraordinary journey of making the film, and telling the story of Scilian photographer and journalist Letizia Battaglia. Shooting the Mafia is currently available to watch on Amazon Prime UK and on ModernFilms.com
Welcome to our brand new podcast the After Film School Club! Hosted by Simon Ramshaw, episodes will include film and festival reviews, filmmaker interviews and updates from the ATL team. Our first episode features members of the ATL team, talking about films they've watched recently and upcoming releases they have their eyes on. We hope you have as much fun listening to this podcast as we had making it!