Typical! Around 2009 my fourth feature film came looking for me.* Common sense suggested it should be a simple 3 or 4 hander. Tiny crew. One or two locations and a five day shoot. Instead my love of 1950s classic science-fiction took hold and I found myself embarked on near three-year odyssey of bringing “On The Shoulders Of Giants” (OTSOG) to the small screen. Put simply: OTSOG was a love letter to the 1956 classic Forbidden Planet and my childhood.

A significant driver in the production of OTSOG came when the partner of a neighbour mentioned he owned a large empty hall which was available for… I snapped his arm off! Securing an interior filming space, large enough to build the flight deck of a retro-starship, plus sections of its corridors and a sizeable green-screen was just AMAZING. My beloved Honda ST1300 Pan European motorbike was sold to provide additional production funds, (I often lament when watching ‘Giants that I can see walls and the odd console made with the cash from selling my bike). Around 200 cast, crew and sponsors collaborated on OTSOG. Over 700 visual effects shots were produced alongside a 5-week live action shoot. No visual effect technique was out of bounds; chromakey, digital environments, live action insertion into miniatures, CG creatures, prosthetics, puppets and digital set extensions all on the tiniest microbudget.

One of the greatest pleasures for me as a director-writer is casting actors. For OTSOG the audition process was quite conventional until I met the lead actor Sarah Wood. A mutual friend introduced us at a pre-arranged time in a spacious coffee shop. Sarah brought the studied gravitas, intelligence and credibility I required to play the lead character Commander Jane Altaire. We didn’t need to run lines; after a comprehensive 2-hour conversation I had found my lead actor. As with all my actors, I ask them to read the full screenplay and find what they can add, what will challenge them and what they will take away from the piece.

You think I would have learned about the wicked ways of film by now. Fortunately no. For my fifth filmic adventure I delved into schlock-comedy with “Bikini Girls vs Dinosaurs” (2014) The Most Fun Ever: possibly the ultimate “beer and pizza” movie to be enjoyed with a bunch of friends.

What I plan to be my sixth film as a writer, producer and director, is a project I originally wrote in 1995. “Air!” is a comedy-adventure feature film about a fictional international air-race set just after WWII. As a child of the 1970s/80s I fell in love with films such as “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” and “The Great Race” to name just two. Those films filled me with a continuing love of bravura film-making, outrageous adventure and both influenced the story DNA of Air! But as always, having no ‘real’ money to produce Air! creates challenges. These were not really an issue as I had developed a methodology to deliver this film with the ‘modest’ means available to me. Plus we all know modern technology allows film-makers to harness much more visual firepower without the attendant costs of 10, 15, 20 years ago. By chance someone reminded me to seek ‘soft-money’ which is the UK tax rebate for a qualifying British film’s production spend. That rebate can be an attractive selling point if you are lucky enough to pitch investors for the production money. To apply for the film tax credit the producer must satisfy certain criteria set out by the British Film Institute (BFI). The BFI also has a pot of production money… A fatal trap. One of the criteria to apply for BFI production funds is agreeing to pay the crew at BECTU rates. After wading through countless BECTU rate cards the budget for Air! had ballooned significantly. The only way to get that amount of production money was to attract an A-list actor (or two). Like them or not, A-list actors massively ehances a film’s market appeal because potential audiences generally recognise their marquee name value. This also makes the financiers happier; the producer has a commercial proposition which people will want to pay money to see. This is just one route for film financiers make a return on their investment.

Of course attaching an A-lister comes at a cost – mine and countless other film-makers very own Catch 22. No agent will allow their A-lister to be attached to an unfunded project (I tried) that is being touted for investment. I required an A-list actor to secure the growing production budget, but there is no money to attach an A-list actor…to secure the production budget! Is your head hurting yet? I had to stop mine from hurting.

My solution: I will strip all the costs and logistical complications back to the levels I had originally planned. Next, I’ll find some brilliant but unknown actors who fit more closely with my mind’s eye vision of the characters I have written. Then I will find a smaller budget and make my damn film! Please wish me luck.

*Didn’t yours?