Cast and crew of "Lost Weekend"
Ever dreamed about making your own movies? It doesn't need to cost a fortune. With just a few hundred pounds and a lot of determination, friends Dave Rattray and Matthew Mckenzie made a full length feature which is now attracting national attention.
Lost Weekend is a black comedy about a young man called Mark whose friends kidnap him and carry him off to the Scottish highlands on his 25th birthday. Having planned to spend the day with his girlfriend, Mark is determined to get home, but after he teams up with Emir, an Irish protestor also trying to return to civilisation, the two discover a dark secret with demands their immediate attention. Soon they have enough to contend with just trying to stay alive.
"The idea for Lost Weekend came about by thinking about what was feasible on a shoestring budget." explains director Dave Rattray. "At first we decided that having a guy walking around in the highlands would require only one actor and a small crew, so that would be fairly easy to produce. Obviously that scenario would become a little tedious, so we needed to shape a story around our simple idea. The idea of having our character lost in the highlands during a foot and mouth disease would add a bit of drama, but we wanted to make this a sort of surreal comedy and not a reflection of real life, so the foot and mouth quickly became a fictional cover story for a fictional conspiracy that was taking place in the highlands. The character of Mark is someone we feel all people in our general age group can relate to. He's under the thumb of his girlfriend and as a result he has become a complete push over. This character trait lent itself well to comedy scenarios in which Mark would meet an array of bizarre characters that give him a hard time in his attempts to get home."
Most film-makers in this position would have tried approaching studios to get their movie made, or would at least have sought funding from the government. What made Dave and Matthew go it alone? Why did they think they could pull it off?
"We've seen and hear of a lot of films being made in Aberdeen and Scotland as a whole, and the general theory seems to be that unless you make a film that promotes Scotland and Scottish things, then people like Scottish Screen are not going to give you money to make your film." Dave explains. " We decided quite early on that we could make a feature film with a few hundred pounds, and once we advertised for actors and realised that there are a lot of talented people willing to act for the experience rather than money, it became clear that undertaking a feature film with a small crew and little money could be done! We love independent movies and we felt that if we could make a feature film ourselves with no outside help, we'd be creating a film in the most independent way possible. We both want to make films for a living, and we thought that if we could make a good quality film with our own money, then it may give us a calling card and encourage people to possible help us in funding future projects."
Dave and Matthew were friends at school, where they both enjoyed their film studies classes, and Dave went on to continue the subject at Staffordshire University while Matthew studied law in Aberdeen. Meeting up in the summers, they ejoyed going out with a camera to film things for fun, and after he graduated Dave set up his own small production company, Digital Liberty. "We started making better short films - which can all be viewed on our youtube channel - but after a year or so we felt we needed to do something big in order to get noticed." he explains. But making a feature must have been a big step. "We quickly learnt a lot of lessons along the way." he acknowledges. "Working to deadlines, dealing with short notice scheduling changes and number of technical issues are just some of the things we discovered and had to deal with during the production. I personally learnt a lot in post-production when editing the film."
Undertaking such a risky project, it's best not to give up the day job, but continuing with their regular work at the same time as filming was tough on Dave and Matthew. "We were both living at home with our respective parents during the shooting of the film, and at the time we were both working as part-time night shift security guards. We chose security because of the flexible hours because we could never have made this film working 9-5 jobs which we both currently are doing now. A lot of our social life was sacrificed as a result of making this film, because we were only making enough money to get by and the combination of working on the film and making little money meant that we rarely had the opportunity to go for nights out and the like." Fortunately, they had plenty of support at home. "Our family and friends have been very supportive of our filming ambitions, although we feel that the majority of them may not quite understand what we're trying to do. Regardless, they have encouraged us to do what we want to do and to take risks and sacrifice a lot of things to pursue our goals. We couldn't have made this film without their support."
Making a film takes more than just two people, however. Dave and Matthew needed to find capable actors somewhere. How did they go about that?
"The main character in the film is a friend of ours, Alan Stewart. At the time of film he had just finished university and was working part-time, which meant that we could get him the majority of the time. This was really helpful and he was a great sport, always ready to go off shooting whenever we said the word.We had two teachers involved in the film. Richard Jack is an English teacher and Stewart Cassidy is a drama teacher. They play the roles of Jack and Angus respectively. The role of Emir was played by Lynsey-Anne Moffat, a very talent young actress with the Irish accent we were looking for. Chris Somerville is an Actor from Glasgow who is currently starring in a sci-fi web series called Night Is Day, which is directed by a young Glasgow film-maker. Many of the other actors and extras were made up of friends or people we knew."
So having completed the film (it's in the final stages of editing), what are their plans for it? How are they going to show it to the rest of the world?
"We hope to be able to show Lost Weekend at the Belmont cinema in Aberdeen and also the GFT in Glasgow. We will be entering the film into a number of film festivals, with no expectations of winning anything, but simply to get the film out there and try and get as many people as possible to see it. We've had emails from companies interested in distributing Lost Weekend on DVD, but we have yet to look into that in detail. We hope that Lost Weekend will be well received by audiences and possibly impress some funding bodies that may be interested in our future projects."
Having heard this impressive story, and knowing that there are a lot of you out there with similar ambitions, I ask Dave what advice he has for other would-be film-makers starting from scratch.
"You need a good idea for a start, and then you need a bit of money, the equipment, a dedicated crew and actors and an unconditional love and passion for the project. If you have all those things you can make a feature film no problem." he asserts. "Money is a big issue, but if your actors work for free and you write a story which makes use of free locations, props etc., then you only need a few hundred, but if you can get your hands on more then great! The story is the most important part. You need to write a good solid story which makes used of what you have at your disposal. In terms of crew, make sure they're as passionate about the project as you. You don't want them dropping out and leaving you high and dry. You're not paying them, remember, so you need to make sure all your actors and crew are 100% along for the ride... You have to be able to sacrifice a lot in order to achieve a goal such as this. It takes a lot of blood sweat and tears to make a feature film. It's not easy, but it's possible, and if you're really passionate about it then nothing can stop you."
So now that Lost Weekend is in the bag, what's next for Dave and Matthew?
"We are both currently writing individual feature length scripts and hope to gain some funding in order to make the films. We are still very young at this stage so the basic plans for the future are to continue to make films until we're old and grey."
Visit: http://www.digitalliberty.co.uk/ or watch the trailer on YouTube
