Mobile Cinema

We're on the motorway heading for London. For quite some of the distance we'd been stuck behind a classic cadillac content to chug along at thirty five. A thoughtful silence had fallen over us and then Adam shook himself and grinned "Do you think there's any significance in us being stuck behind something slow moving, American and content to hog all of the road?"

I'll leave you to pick out of that what you will.

This has been an amazing experience. We've travelled over two thousand miles and screened to over four hundred people, which, incidentally, works out at about £3.50 a person. Every where we went we found people wanting us to come back, people wanting more notice, people wanting more films.

I remember a week ago we were sitting around Kath and Mike's dining table in Bourne End and talking about how if you see a man walking in woods on his own you think he's a sex pest, if he's got a dog with him you stop and have a chat. In many ways the mobile cinema has been our dog, a reason for strangers to let us into their lives and talk to us. I think Adam put it best when he was talking about 'extreme relief', that sense of incredible gratitude and warmth you get when strangers are kind to you for no reason other than that they are nice people. There's a tired cliche about the English being stand-offish and cold. We've not seen it, the number of complete strangers who have welcomed us with open arms, strangers who have become our friends, shows that it's as true as the idea that there is no audience for short film.

We'd like to thank all of you individually but there's not quite the space or the time, though I hope that, in someway, this blog has done that and that it'll stay up for a while as a big thank-you to all concerned. That said all three of us would like to say thanks to everyone who rang us, everyone who emailed us, everyone who posted to the blog or the Shooters site, everyone who cheered us up when we were down.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone at Shooting People who made this possible especially Cath, Jess, Simon, Shamir, George and Stu and we'd like to say a special thanks to Ash without whom none of this would have been online...

Most of all I would like to say thank you to Steven, James, Jo, Simon, Dictynna and Dishad who made the films. You made this trip worth doing.


As a filmmaker I've been heartened, amazed and inspired by the passion for British Film that exists in this country. Don't let anyone tell you different. There is an audience for short film. There is an audience for British film, real British film making that tells us something about who we are as a nation, that reaffirms what makes us tick, that inspires us to better things and most of all gives us something to take away the gloom of the everyday. Films are like dogs, they give us a reason to talk to strangers.

However I think the biggest thing that this trip has shown me, Chris and Adam as filmmakers is that if we are to live in the kind of vibrant and creative environment in which we want to work, we have to build it. I think Chris summed it up best in his one entry into the blog - rock bands (which we are not) tour the country to build an audience and the key thing is that in doing this they meet their audience and their audience meet them. If we, as filmmakers, want the general public to give a shit about the ideas in our heads then we have to go out and show them.

I don't mean that every time you make a film you should live in a van for two weeks, but for too long filmmakers have been divorced from their audience. For too long there has been the attitude that your job ends with the final cut or the premiere or the after show. We wake up hung-over after screening once to our friends and wonder why it is that no one in this country seems to care and beyond the bedroom curtains thousands flick through freeview TV channels complaining that nothing is on and wishing that they knew where good films were playing. This can change.



Bye bye.