Directed and Produced by Alix Austin
Written by Keir Siewert
A university student with an unusual part-time job collides with her tightly wound client in this beautifully dark crime thriller.
Winner of the Bruce Millar Graduate Fellowship in 2015, the film was funded and shot in January 2016 by a talented crew in Scotland, comprising of award-winning Director/Producer Alix Austin and shot by Scottish New Talent BAFTA winning Director of Photography Alan McLaughlin. Starring Red Madrell (Kidulthood, Skins) and Stephen McCole (Barney Thompson, Rushmore).
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH ALIX
Welcome back to our Short of the Week series. What have you been up to since we featured your film Retch last fall?
It’s great to be back and thank you for shining a light on True Value, it’s great to get the opportunity to show it to a wider audience!
Since last fall, I’ve wrapped post-production on my most recent horror short Sucker, which is about to celebrate its UK premiere at FrightFest.
I’m very pleased to say that Keir (Writer/Editor of True Value and Writer/Director of Retch) and I have started production on our first horror feature film called KILL YOUR LOVER, which we are co-directing!
Tell us about the genesis of True Value. How did the project come about?
I studied at RCS in Glasgow and upon graduating the Alumni are given the opportunity to apply for the Bruce Millar Graduate Fellowship.
I had made some 48hr film projects previously, but wanted to take my filmmaking to the next level and submitted my pitch. My filmmaking partner Keir had already written me an incredible short film script, so I onboarded a great team and packaged True Value as best I knew how.
To my delight we made it to the second round before winning a grant worth £5k to help us make the film and we were off to the races.
What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
This is a while back (2016), so I can definitely see how I’ve learned from this project. Casting was one obstacle I think I could have avoided. I decided I could handle it myself due to having done an internship by this point and it ended up taking A LOT of time - and I didn’t end up with my original choices.
I’m happy enough with how it turned out in the end, but I do wish I hadn’t put so much pressure on myself to cast ‘names’ in my project and think it can be a bit of a fallacy. I wish I’d spent more time on directing the project than casting it.
The other obstacle was actually after the film was finished. I knew how to make films, but not how to market them - and I hadn’t asked for support for this stage either. I just did my best and did what most filmmakers do when you don’t know as much: only submitted to BAFTA qualifying festivals.
I would recommend every filmmaker attends at least one film festival and watches a short film programme before submitting to festivals. It will teach you lots of things I learned the hard way (i.e. lots of rejections):
- Don’t make your end credits a minute long
- A running time of under 10 minutes is advisable, if you’re new (easier to programme. True Value was originally 13:32, which is a tough sell from someone no-one had heard of)
- Submit to a range of festivals, good spread of mid tier to BAFTA-qualifying.Your competition is going to be SO much higher at BAFTA-qualifying festivals and it's good to find festivals that champion independent filmmakers in particular - like Kino London of course and also Beeston Film Festival.
Tell us about the journey of getting this film to audiences.
As hinted at in my previous answer, True Value’s festival run didn’t go as well as we hoped. We were fortunate to be nominated at Underwire Film Festival in its 5th year, which led us to being a part of the Women of the World Festival at the BFI the next year.
Apart from that we were an Official Selection at the London Independent Film Festival and that was about it.
We were approached by an online platform (whom I shall not name out of politeness) to licence the film and distribute it online non-exclusively for 3 years - but they didn’t inform me of the release date and it went out without much fanfare.
So needless to say I learned *a lot* from the experience and could have done with asking more people for help and advice once post-production was completed to create a festival plan.Simply put: I was pretty burnt out by the time the film was finished and didn’t give myself enough time to recover or consider next steps with a clear head.
Now that you're working on a feature, in your experience what's been the biggest or most surprising difference about making a feature vs a short. Is it just the difference between a sprint and a marathon, or how much does the craft change?
I think depending on the scope of the short, they can be marathons just as much as feature films are to be honest. So much of the process feels similar from that front so far. Though the feature is fast becoming a triathlon, as Keir and I are taking on so many of the roles: Co-directing, co-writing and having had a big hand in the pre-production.
The main difference for me personally has been a shift in awareness - I know we’re looking to sell KILL YOUR LOVER, whereas short films are more low stakes. So - clearance has become a big word for us on this, crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s, because the likelihood of the film going to streaming is very high and there are a lot more eyes out there than we can fathom.
We’re also benefiting from our choice to shoot the film in two blocks, as we want the actors' hair to grow out and help them change up their looks, to show the passage of time - which is only possible because we’re indie enough and working off our own schedule.
That being said, Line Producing and Directing at the same time (which I’ve been doing so far) is quite the Tightrope walk.It's the drama of 'Blue Valentine' meets body horror of 'The Fly'! You can check out and support our ongoing crowdfunding campaign here:
https://greenlit.com/project/kill-your-lover
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
I would have said the cost-prohibitive nature of it all, but more than that I think it's a lack of support and community that can get to you way before that.
There are institutions in place that would have you believe that you shouldn’t be making films without full financing, but that’s just not the reality that most of us live in.
I think a lot more could be done by gatekeeping funding bodies to support the growth and development of talent, rather than funding short films and hoping for the best. There should be more shadowing opportunities to connect and open the industry up more on a whole.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
If you haven’t already: I personally adore ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’
Lynne Ramsay’s ‘You Were Never Really Here’
Tony Scott’s ‘Man on Fire’
Rob Reiner’s ‘Misery’ (based on the Stephen King novel)
and John Fawcett’s ‘Ginger Snaps’
As you can probably tell, I like Thrillers, Action and Horror, haha.