What on earth made you make a feature film?
ML Not sure. Just really wanted to do it. When your friends stop listening to you saying “I’m going to make a film” It’s time to go and make a film.
Had you done anything before?
ML Not much, I’d worked on some shorts, done some small commercials and corporate videos. But whilst that’s good experience, nothing can prepare you for a feature!
How do you go about making a feature?
JM First you find a great story and an excellent script. Fortunately we had that. The script we developed just made people laugh and almost everyone who read it raved about it. That created momentum and it made it much easier to get people on board.
Then it’s about raising money and trying to set up a production within that budget. It’s hard on your first film, but because it was a youth-led production and a film about relationships, we knew the budget didn’t have to be huge.
Where did the idea of the story come from?
ML It’s based on a party I had when I was 17. My parents went away and surprise, surprise the place got absolutely trashed. The carpet was ruined, someone pulled a door off the hinges, there was a huge fight and the police were called. James Stapeley also heard someone running down the road shouting “We’ve got the toaster, let’s go!” I like to think it became part of local folklore. When people talk about it now it’s become really exaggerated. It’s like “do you remember that party where you house was burned down”.
JM And as we shot the film in Mike’s Mum and Step-Dad’s house so you’ve essentially got a Mother agreeing to her son shooting a film about him trashing her house, in her house. That’s brave.
ML That’s right. They went and lived in a caravan for a couple of weeks. Total dedication.
Ralph and Ian are hilarious. Where did they come from?
ML Ralph and Ian were Janey’s idea
JM We wanted to counterpoint the experiences of Lance and his mates by having these two young guys who spend the whole film trying to find the party. You’re not sure who’s having a worse time, Lance inside or Ralph and Ian outside. They also illustrate the teenage platonic marriage, where they’re like a sour married couple just taking all their stuff out on each other.
What format did you shoot on?
KL We shot on DV – mainly down to cost, but also because we wanted a grainy, indie feel to it, something more like 16mm.
How did you cast it?
JM Like ‘The Commitments’ used Dubliners, we wanted to use kids from the local area. We invited schools in the Kent and East Sussex to send along hopefuls and there was a massive response. Over two long weekends we found our cast and it was eerie how such a nucleus of talent fitted the key roles exactly.
Most of them hadn’t done film work before and they bought a real freshness with them. As we found out later, they virtually all had some partying experience so they didn’t have a hard time getting into character! It was a very intense and focused two weeks.
How did the shoot go?
ML It was nuts! It was a lot of people’s first film, so what we lacked in experience we made up for with enthusiasm and laughs. Everyone gelled (some people really gelled) and it was on the whole pretty slick thanks to Adam’s slick scheduling.
AC It was very hard to keep a teenage cast and crew quite during takes!
Any good on set stories?
AC A few! Jamie Ingley, who did camera, some lighting and played Ben, handcuffed Karla the DOP with the cuffs from the Policeman’s uniform, hired from the BBC. We found a note in the bag saying ‘CAUTION, THERE IS NO KEY’ so we spent 4 hours trying to saw her out of them. Eventually we called the fire brigade. The chief fireman turned out to be the Step-Dad of Jess Powell who plays Fran. The next morning he spoke to her concerned about the type of film we were making!
JM And the time Mike turned his Mum’s patio into a swimming pool
ML Yeah there’s still no concrete proof that it was me who left the hose on.
AC There was an interesting game of spin the bottle
ML They wouldn’t let me play. They said I was too old!
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