After writing screenplays for 16 years, I finally got chance to shoot one.

I've loved writing since I was a teenager. I'd write shitty scripts on Wordpad when I was 13 about snipers attacking the world cup, or a slasher about a cannibal who sells the meat he harvests to a food manufacturing company. I've always had such burgeoning ideas and worlds in my head and I've written so many scripts that never lived beyond the page.

A few years ago I wrote one based on the true story of a friend who got trapped in a strange vestibule at a music studio. It was a 25 page screenplay and it was something that I felt really went into depth with the character and the themes. I've directed short films before, but always just little 2-3 minute numbers. We decided to tackle shooting the 25-page screenplay and just released the results online last week.

It was so immensely rewarding to actually see and translate the pages into something visual. It's making me salivate at the thought of all of my other screenplays, because bringing them to life is amazing. I also learnt a LOT - some traits of my writing that are consistent with earleir works just didn't work on screen - for example, I LOVE monologues and can get quite wordy, but the one I wrote for this film I cut entirely in the edit because it just didn't work. I realised that it was just reinforcing themes already well established in more subtle ways earlier in the film, so it didn't need to be verbalised quite as overtly as it was in the monologue. Things like this have been a real learning curve and it's very interesting to see the way films reshape and amalgamate through the process of screenplay > production > edit. Now I'm not a DP or gaffer or owt by trade and only know what I need to know. I'm keen on framing and visual storytelling but the technical aspects aren't overly deep (however I do have a good amount of experience).

If you want to watch the film, the link is here: https://youtu.be/BOAlpx6jgSA

I could also post the script for comparison.