Directed by Ross McGowan
Written & Produced by Craig McDonald-Kelly, David Hepburn, & Ross McGowan
After a heavy night out, Bruce want's to get back on it but has a hard time convincing Lee, who feels like death; figuratively and literally.
Hangover Food was the first short film by Deadline Films UK. Costing £500 all in. Written, cast, shot and edited within 5 months. Hangover Food went onto 15 film festivals round the world winning 4 awards.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH CRAIG
Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.
Hi! I’m Craig, I’m one of the writers, producers and cast of Hangover Food. I’m an actor first, writer/producer second. We started Deadline Films UK in 2017 to create our own work, get off our bums and start the films we want to make. Hangover Food was our first, we shot it in a bedroom in our flat for £500 in 1 day in September. We had it finished and hitting festivals by January next year.
Tell us about the genesis of Hangover Food. What inspired you to make/get involved with this film?
The idea came from our director Ross McGowan. Two very hungover friends, but one isn’t actually hungover, he’s turning into a Vampire. We heard that and thought we could make a fun comedy with some horror elements. We wrote the script with our other Deadline Films UK founder David Hepburn and got to work.
What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
On such a low budget we had to figure out the best way to do what we wanted to do within our means. We had an amazing team of friends on board helping us out.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
We found that Hangover Food went down really well with American audiences. It’s very American style humour. In big theatres people would always laugh at completely different parts of the film. It hit different for some people and we loved seeing that. It’s still one of our most successful films to date. People loved these characters.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
Waiting around for something before they start making films. Money, the right script, the perfect location, the right actor. We met people who’d been working on a short for 7 years! That’s insane. We made 8 shorts from 2017 - 2020. Admittedly, some are much better than others. But we learned from our mistakes and went onto the next one with all that new information.
What are you working on now?
Over this summer I wrote a mini series based in the same world as Hangover Food. These 5 x 5min episodes should be out next year and we’d like to use that to get the Hangover Food feature film funded!
We wrote the feature during lockdown, reworked it a bunch and now have it ready to go. Unfortunately you can’t make a feature film for £500. We’re hoping the web series will show off what we can do with a minimal budget and the team we have. We want to focus on a great story, directing, acting and cinematography to bring it to life.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
My favourite film this year so far is Everything Everywhere All At Once. Absolutely batshit amazing. The bigger the screen you can watch it on the better. I also just finished Season 2 of an anime called Demon Slayer and it’s one of the most beautifully animated things I’ve ever seen for TV. Season 2 was brilliant.