Interview: Simon Ellis

Interview: Amir Bazrafshan

Tuesday 01 August 2006

reading time: min, words

Screen Interview

"I don’t like anything on the telly, so I thought I’d make my own stuff"

For ten years Simon Ellis has been making short films. He now has sixteen to his name and they have been screened over 200 times at various film festivals around the globe. Simon’s down to earth personality and sense of humour come through in his work, so much so that you can tell it is a Simon Ellis film before the credits roll. He’s recently finished shooting a £50k short film through the UK Film Council’s Cinema Extreme scheme and will shortly begin work on his first full feature, with another in the pipeline…

You’ve just finished shooting your short on the Cinema Extreme scheme...
The scheme is financed by the UK Film Council and Filmfour, primarily for filmmakers who are migrating from shorts to features. I wrote the script three years ago and was commissioned to make it for a different scheme at the time, but I withdrew it for various reasons. Having not looked at it for over a year, reading with fresh eyes led to a number of re-drafts before it was submitted for Cinema Extreme. It’s a story about a father and son who are both bullied by the same teenager, covering new ground for me as my first non-comedy drama.
(NB: The film in question - Soft - won Best of Festival at the Palm Springs International Festval a year later)

You’ll be making a couple of features in the not-so-distant future. What are they about?
One is a comedy called Dogging, shooting in Newcastle later this year and the other is a broader take on themes covered in the Cinema Extreme short. That one is still in development, locked behind a squishy grey door in the back of my skull until there’s room to let it out.

How does shooting on digital video compare to shooting on film? Do you have to alter your style and approach?
Approach yes, style no. DV is great and I love it. It’s also the ideal format to learn your craft, from shooting through to delivery. Shooting on 35mm film obviously requires a certain amount of discipline when it comes to your shooting ratio. It’s not a few quid for sixty minutes anymore, it’s five hundred quid for ten. If you shoot insane amounts of footage with DV, just because you can, then you’re likely to have trouble adapting to 35mm. I had to stick tape over the footage counter on the video monitor because the sight of money ticking away as the camera rolled was too freaky. When I got into things and eventually took the tape off it started to freak my producer out, so the tape went back on again.

What aspects of a film or story attract you to it?
Simple is best for me. I can’t stand twisty-turny shit where you can feel the writer trying to be a smart arse.

What is your opinion of the film scene in Nottingham and in the UK as a whole?
It’s not for me to speculate on the UK as a whole, but the scene in Nottingham and the East Midlands is very much alive. I still don’t think Nottingham realises the extent of it. Every city has their share of creative talent, but these people don’t always talk to each other and there’s definitely a good spirit here. As so many filmmakers here know each other and often work together in one way or another, it’s relatively easy to crew your film, but the real beauty is the knock-on effect. If one person working on a film becomes inspired enough to go home and finally start preparing the film they have been meaning to make for ages, then that’s a result.

It’s very important to preserve regional filmmaking and it’s encouraging to see so many filmmakers remaining in Nottingham as opposed to relocating to London, which at one time was considered the only path. Doing it this way, you can hone your skills quietly and eventually enter the industry as a filmmaker, as opposed to struggling your way up some shitty production ladder where you start out as some director’s fluffer and ascend to bigger departments that aren’t really teaching you much about the process of directing anyway. I’ve talked at length about this with directors from London and overseas and I can’t stress how thriving Nottingham’s filmmaking culture is.

What sparked your interest in films?

This is always a killer question, especially as I’m not that interested in them. I have a vivid childhood memory of being terribly distraught when my dad taped over his Jack Lemmon films, which is probably my earliest memory of appreciating movies (one particular sci-fi franchise goes without saying). More importantly, the summer after graduating from my Fine Art degree I started writing and making stuff. That same summer I was feasting on Asian cinema and wanted to run away with Maggie Cheung, so maybe it’s her fault.

What motivates you to make films?

I don’t like anything on the telly, so I thought I’d make my own stuff.

Any key influences on your career so far?

The twat in me, who neglected to mention that making films instead of getting a proper job wouldn’t make me rich. Oh and film festivals. I always say that film festivals have been my film school. Make films, get them into festivals, travel to as many of them as possible, see other films, meet other filmmakers, come home fired up for the next one, ad infinitum. It’s a cyclical process that’s similar to the one I mentioned earlier, getting kicked up the arse by inspiration each time you visit a festival with a new film. Those who don’t put themselves about, so to speak, are really missing out.

Are there any artists or filmmakers that you really admire?

I’m not into any one filmmaker, consistently speaking, but yes of course there are all sorts of people I admire. If I say anyone though, I’ll regret it later when I remember those I forgot, so I’m not saying anything.

What do you hope to achieve in film?

It would be nice to reap the benefits of having persevered so that the ten-year struggle hasn’t been for nothing. That satisfaction could come from any number of things, but I made a conscious decision after graduating that I was going to stick at it even if it meant scrimping and scraping. I sort of burned out in 2002 and stepped out of things for a year, then somehow sniffed my way back. So long as I’m satisfied that I’ve not settled for being an ant and I’ve achieved my own goals in my own way, free of debt, then I couldn’t ask for more than that. It’d also be cool to work in a chippy at some point.

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