- I'm of that generation that saw 'Star Wars' when it first came out and it's my most vivid memory from childhood. Not just of the film but the whole experience; queuing with my parents round the block at the Odeon in Brighton through two screenings until we finally got in. Could you imagine that now? TWO screenings? And I had the best seat in the house. Literally. About two-thirds back and right in the centre. Lights go down, you get the little BBFC title card with the name of the film on it and then you're in to the Twentieth Century Fox fanfare. Silence for a heartbeat then, I think, the best opening title in the history of cinema - 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...' Anyway, that's what made me want to become a film director. That and watching 'Citizen Kane' when I was 17. George Lucas and Orson Welles - how unoriginal!
- Not that my opinion counts for anything but I'd say the best thing you can do is scrape together everything you need to shoot a movie and just get out there and do it, especially these days when you can shoot a movie on a 5D. If you have access to some professional equipment then great, but if not, do it anyway. Shoot it on an iPhone if you have to but just keep shooting, cutting and practicing. I think Elliot Grove at Raindance had it just right when he said something along the lines of: 'Your first feature is the one you can fund in three months'. Spot on. Don't wait. Oh, and get some decent mics - you can get away with some slightly dodgy camera work as an 'artistic choice' but bad sound is bad sound.
- I'm a big Sam Peckinpah fan. 'The Wild Bunch', 'Cross Of Iron' and 'Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid' - those films had such an influence on me growing up and as a film-maker now both in terms of my writing and visual style. I love all the late seventies/early eighties stuff too; 'The Thing', 'Alien', 'Blade Runner', 'Southern Comfort', 'The Last House On The Left', 'Poltergeist' - everything I wasn't technically old enough to watch at the time but I still managed to get my hands on it. Thank God for independent video rental stores. Our local one didn't give a monkeys - they'd let you have anything.
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