‘Bear’ One Year On/ WINNING AN AWARD!

In September last year, I completed my most ambitious solo project to date: my eleven minute short film ‘Bear’, which I wrote, directed, animated and I guess produced (by default) as well. To be brutally honest, it hasn’t had the most successful festival run thus far (though still waiting to hear back from a few), which kind of went against my hopes and expectations for the film- I thought it might have done a little better on that side of things. That’s not to say it hasn’t had any success- it has been selected for several screenings, all of which have had extremely positive feedback.

And to my surprise at the films' most recent outing, it won the ‘Northern Spirit’ award at The Spirit of Independence Film Festival (in a packed out screening)! This was a complete surprise to me and I’m so honoured that the Screen Yorkshire judges selected ‘Bear’ to win the prize. The films it was playing alongside were all absolutely fantastic, so to win felt even more special. And also to have an animated film picked as the winner amongst live action films was quite something. Animation is often seen as something ‘lesser’ than live action and often not taken as seriously, or just as a format exclusive to children’s media. I mean you only need to look as far as the Academy Awards as evidence…

Not embarrassing at all! Photo credit Jacob Flannery.

I feel winning this award has given me a fair amount of well needed validation in the ‘industry’. I feel my route to the ‘industry’ was slow and meandering, with not a lot of connections and not attending any of the typical universities (i.e. CSM, NFTS, RCA) which often get you a leg up in this field. I have really just done my own thing, kept plugging away and it feels like everything I have been doing to this point is finally paying off. And in my opinion, deservedly so. It makes me want to keep chasing my dreams of becoming a feature film director and has given me the extra bit of motivation to do so. More on that towards the end of this post…

I hadn’t actually watched ‘Bear’ since it’s Manchester screening prior to this in December 2022, because often when finishing a project, I need time away from it to really let what I’ve created sink in and be able to form a realistic opinion on my work. Something I find hard to do so close after finishing a project- if I’m honest I usually dislike it and can only see the negatives/ mistakes and my ability to see the film as a whole is often distorted.

The Saturday morning of the festival I was a little apprehensive about seeing my film again on a big screen with a good sound system. For some reason, I had (wrongly) built up an image in my head that the film was really ‘bad’ (probably because of the amount of festival rejections). Since my completion of the film, I feel I have grown as both a filmmaker and a person and I wasn’t sure if it would really represent me very well. But maybe some of that growth was down to having made this film anyway. Looking back, it was an extremely ambitious project, though I do feel I pulled it off- or at least to a certain extent. When it was playing at SOIFF, I was actually thinking ‘you know what, this is actually quite alright’ and there are some parts of it which I am especially proud of. I’ll go through a few of those now:

Firstly, the fact that I wrote and directed such an ambitious project, with no outside forces like funding etc to keep me going. It wasn’t a totally smooth ride either and there were bumps along the way, with my metal health and other things which kept it from not going as smoothly. Though I persisted and finished it. Which, we all know, is a hard thing to do. Abandoning projects midway is so common in creative people (myself included).

Secondly, I’m really impressed with the animation and a few techniques I used (no spoilers, sorry)! I really liked how I kept it on the experimental side and true to my style/ background, whilst keeping a cohesive look and feel throughout, with focus on story. I always think, if this is what I can do alone, then what I could produce with a team would be amazing!

As a concept piece, I also found myself impressed. I say ‘concept piece’, because the film was made to showcase who I am as a filmmaker/ director, and illustrate what I can make on an extremely limited budget with time constraints. It definitely shows the type of film I want to be making in the future, both thematically and stylistically. But with a larger team and a budget behind I could take things much further. One of my goals for this film was to have it as a so called ‘calling card’ with hope of making a feature film next. But because of it’s lack of festival run, I felt I hadn’t really achieved this or I would need to make another, 'better' short next year. Though on this most recent viewing of the film, I felt this was actually achieved and it’s something I think I can show to someone (a higher up) and say ‘I want to make this kind of thing, but bigger and better’!

Yes, there are many mistakes too and a lot I feel I have learnt from it which I can take in to my next project. One, is the sound design- it wasn’t as bad as I imagined or had built up in my head, but I know it could be improved with the right people behind it. I also feel the edit could have been a lot tighter and less ‘baggy’. Though at the time I felt all of it was needed. Yes, I could potentially do a recut now and rebuild the sound design, but there would be little point in doing that as I’ll never move on to my next project if I keep striving for an unattainable ‘perfection’ in this project. So leave it, learn from it and go again!

…So what next?

I’ve a few months left on my current work contract, but after that, I still haven’t given up on the idea that I would like to make a feature film. Over the last few months in my free time I’ve been slowly developing my idea and exploring what I want to make. So once this contract is up, I think I’m going to go full force into writing the treatment for it and aim to attach a producer in order to get BFI development funding to aid me to write the script. That’s pretty much the plan! Though because it’s such a big challenge (and therefore quite scary), I sometimes feel that maybe I’ll make another short instead as it’s more attainable etc and feels ‘safer’. But if I ask myself what I truly want to do in life, to make a feature film has always been one of my goals. So yeah, there’s never going to be the right or ‘perfect’ time to do it- so I should just go for it.

I would like to make another short alongside developing the feature (as I do have a lot of ideas for those too), but probably a music video, because it’s a been a while (2016) since my last one and I find it such a fun format to work in. I like the idea of creating something which is more heavy on the visuals than narrative (yes I’m aware narrative music videos do exist!), whilst working on my feature which will be narrative based.