Eye For Film caught up with Tom Wilton, actor turned director turned festival director, at the launch of his brand new event.
Jennie Kermode: Can you start by telling me a bit about yourself and what led you to take an interest in this kind of thing?
Tom Wilton: Ten years ago, at the age of 19, I was studying as an actor, and after a couple of useless auditions where I didn't get the job I decided to write a screen play. My plan was to try and sell the screenplay and get myself cast in it. It was a massively naïve thing to do. I spent two years writing the script and getting it ready, then got rejected by just about everybody all over again. So after that I decided I was going to make the film myself. Then I spent three or four years trying to do so, getting nowhere with it - it was the same old story, no-one can get any money to make films. So after lots of ups and downs, during which I ended up homeless and on the streets, eventually I managed to make the film - eight years after I'd set out to make a film. I ended up being fortunate enough to get the film into a festival where it won a big award, and then I got a sales agent who managed to sell the film. So that's basically where I've been: chasing my dreams.
JK: Can you tell me anything about that film?
TW: Yeah! It's called Icharus Broken and I made it for £1600 on a credit card. I wrote it, shot it and cut it in six months. It was, essentially, shot in my house and in and around the local area where I used to live, in Derby. I employed eight or nine actors and everybody was paid to scale for each day of work. I shot the film in eight days, and so, eventually, it worked...
JK: So what got you interested in film festivals?
TW: I sent my film to lots of film festivals and the one thing I noticed about all of them was that they were very similar to each other, and I realised that getting your film to a festival is one aspect of things but getting your film sold is a completely different scenario. You're paying X amount of money to enter these festivals and there's probably very little benefit in the long run. The important thing is getting the film to the sales agent. The idea behind this event was that I was going to put together a small film festival for a handful of films I really thought were good. Through selling my last film, my connections have grown massively. I'm planning work on my new film and the time it's taken to get that off the ground has been a fraction of what it took for the first one. So I realised that there were all these connections out there and no-one was sharing them, no-one was telling anyone that they should check particular pieces of work out. I decided that what I wanted to do was to set up a film festival where I would then pass on all the feature films to my sales agent. Hopefully, if he likes them, he'll take them on and try to get them distributed. So it's as much about what happens after the festival as it is about the festival itself.
JK: How did you go about selecting the films for the festival/
TW: I put out a call for entries on Withoutabox and ended up having absolutely hundreds of movies sent to me, and I've been sifting through them ever since. I chose the ones I thought were the best ones to screen - it didn't matter about what was in them or anything like that, so I've got films that were made for a few pounds running through to millions. It was really about getting the best told stories I could.
JK: So you focus is on new talent?
TW: Pretty much. I'm looking for people that are good. And these are people that I think my sales agent would be interested in, or the producer who I'm working with at the moment. I'm basically looking for films that I believe will work, that the audience will want to see. Rather than going for films that are really obscure and that nobody's going to be interested in, I've taken on all sorts of things from all over the world.
JK: I understand that you're planning to take the festival to different cities each year.
TW: That's the plan! This has really worn me out this year, but that's still what I'd like to do. I'd like to start by taking it to a few cities around the UK, and eventually I'd like to take it abroad. I've spent a bit of time in New York and L.A. over the years, so I'd like to take it everywhere I can - anywhere that'll take me. With things working out for me and my film, it's nice if I can keep up with this sort of grassroots filmmaking, because this is where the talent comes from - this low level stuff. I can't compete with things like Raindance and Sundance and Slamdance, I decided to go completely the other way and just say I'll have a real Nickelodeon kind of affair and pop it in a café where people would be upstairs eating who wouldn't normally go and see these kind of things. They can pop down and catch a couple of movies and there's no charge.
JK: So why did you choose Glasgow to begin with?
TW: Because this is where I've been living since February and I realised that there's a real integral film community here, but there's nothing to unify that community, there's nothing going on to really connect people. I've got some fantastic Scottish films that I'm screening, that will work internationally as well as on a local level, and I was really impressed by how much is going on here, but also disappointed by the sometimes - not always - but sometimes negative attitude towards the industry in Scotland. Everyone keeps claiming that they can't get money to make films and that there's nothing going on. And I thought, well, I'm a prime example: I had no money at all but I wanted to make films, and I went out and did it, and I had my film released in the US, and so now I want to showcase other films that I think could do quite well, to create opportunities for more people to get their work seen.
JK: Is there anything else you're planning to do with the festival in the future?
TW: Yes. I'd like to keep it as low-fi as possible and easy to put together as possible in terms of the equipment and getting things on the go, but I'd like it to be in completely unique venues, unusual spaces. When I found Offshore I thought 'This is perfect.' This is precisely the kind of thing I'm after. It ties into the kind of films I'm showing, and I think people will be really surprised by the quality of stuff. It's going to be a really low key affair.
JK: So, finally, a lot of our readers are going to be wondering if they should get in touch with you if they have films of their own that they're interested in getting seen...
TW: Yep! Send them along to me. We'll be opening up a call for entries in January next year. I need to get through this weekend before I decide where it's going to be next, but I would encourage anyone, no matter whether they made their film for £4.50 or four and a half million, if they believe it's good enough, to send it along to me. I'm going to be busy working on my feature film over the next few months. We're midway through filming at the moment but we should be good to go by the end of this year or the beginning of next; but after that I'll go straight back to getting the festival on the go again.
