Written, Produced & directed by Samuel galloway
Harry & Tim just want to get on with their dinner, but when their trustafarian neighbour Debs turns up asking to steal their wifi password (again), it’s not quite as easy to get rid of her as they’d like.
ABOUT THE FILM
Bologna first caught our attention at our Short Film Open Mic night where it had our audience in stitches. It was shot entirely in one day, with a grand total of 3 actors and 2 crew members, at the director Sam Galloway’s flatshare in Brixton.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Samuel Galloway is a filmmaker from New Zealand, currently living in Australia. He made several films during the two years he lived in London, including feature film One, Another and Bologna - despite having absolutely no budget for either. His film Mutt recently won Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor at Capricorn Film Festival after premiering at Monster Film Fest. Other recent credits include: The Dying Art of Cat Burglary, Past The Second Stage, Gastro, Moo, A White Horse in the Switch Cane, After School and Paternoster Square.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH the filmmakers
Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your filmmaking background?
Sam’s approach to film is very much get it done. He is largely self taught, and will often write, direct, produce, art design and even cater his films before also editing, mixing, and grading them himself. There are so many hurdles stopping a film from going forward, so for him, the reason he does it all is more about actually getting to make stuff, rather than just because he’s being a total crazy control freak… (or, at least, that’s not the entire reason!)
Tell us about the genesis of Bologna and how the project came about?
Bologna, (originally titled “First Love, Favourite Food, Greatest Fear”) was shot entirely in one day, with a grand total of 3 actors and 2 crew members, at the director Sam Galloway’s flatshare in Brixton. Sam, as well as being the writer-director-producer, was also our sound guy. He'd already cast two of the aforementioned actors in the feature film he was writing at the time, (One, Another), and was using the same DOP too. So Bologna sort of came about as a warm up shoot. He figured if we were going to be embarking on the mission of making a no-budget feature film together, we might as well see how it went if we spend a day doing a short together first. It went well. Or, at least, we liked each other. So much so that we cracked straight on with filming One, Another, and the footage for Bologna was not touched for at least a year after it was shot!
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making of Bologna and how did you overcome them?
I suppose you’d say the main obstacle was the lack of hands on deck. The director isn’t exactly sat in a chair watching a monitor when he’s working the boom… I don’t entirely know how to say we overcame it though because we just sort of accepted it, trusted in everyone to do a good job, and made it work! It was also Flora’s first day ever acting for camera so she had no idea what she was doing with her face and was way too needy - we overcame that largely by ignoring her and saying “moving on". (As a result she now automatically looks to the sound guy for validation on her performance on any set, which is often unsettling for them.)
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
This has been an interesting one. Sam single handedly edited & graded the film and was doing it around several other films projects he was working on as well as paid work for production companies, so it took a while to complete. We submitted to a few festivals but the lack of budget we had for this meant submission fees were coming out of our pockets so we were at the mercy of our own pursestrings, and timing wise, this meant we quite often didn’t get it where we needed to get it in time. Covid was also a factor! So actually, other than screening this film at the Kino Short Film Open Mic (which was great, and we were chuffed by the response we got whilst there!), and sending it to some friends, it hasn’t really had an audience yet!
What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?
Just do it. We made this with no money and 5 people. You think you need all the fancy kit and a load of different people in different roles to shoot a short film, but you don’t. You just need a good script, good actors, a location and people like Adam & Sam who know what they’re doing. And in the spirit of “just do it”, I would also say, “just finish it”. Don’t leave it too long to edit your film. Chances are your film is not timeless - the sooner you complete it the better chance you have of it feeling relevant and original and therefore the better chance you have of getting into festivals or finding audiences who will enjoy it/relate to it/think it is good.
And try to figure out where your film actually fits in before you spend money you don’t have on submission fees for festivals you never had a chance at, or who aren’t looking for films of your style/genre.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
Any other films featuring or made by any of us!! Most importantly One, Another. Soon to be available on streaming.