Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Filmmaking With Dan McGee | The Christian Reeve Podcast #252

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Filmmaking With Dan McGee | The Christian Reeve Podcast #252 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of the Christian Reeve Podcast.
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  How about that? OK, I've had my fun.
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  But seriously, if you want to support the show, it really,
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  really helps us out. So thank you so much and thanks
• 0:50
  again for listening. Hello, and welcome to another
• 0:52
  episode of the Christian Reef Podcast.
• 0:54
  Today's guest is an actor, filmmaker, director, writer and
• 0:58
  more. And he's also my friend.
• 0:59
  Welcome to the show, Dan McGee. How you doing?
• 1:02
  Very good man. Thank you for having me.
• 1:03
  Oh. It's a good pleasure.
• 1:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06
  Yeah. Happy New Year.
• 1:07
  Yeah. I haven't seen you since last
• 1:09
  year. So how you doing?
• 1:11
  How you doing? Very good man, Very good.
• 1:13
  It's fairly quiet this time of year, especially with acting
• 1:16
  jobs, filming jobs. Yeah, I've noticed this, I mean,
• 1:21
  because I've been pursuing this about four or five years, but I
• 1:24
  know you've been in the industry a lot longer.
• 1:26
  So like I'll tell you what first question, seasonal, what does it
• 1:31
  look like? So an actor's journey, I know
• 1:33
  that there's a lot of work in summer and I know there can be
• 1:36
  towards the end of the year, but everything is always you're
• 1:40
  you're working in advance. That's kind of what I learned
• 1:43
  about the industry so far, but your experience over the last
• 1:45
  sort of it's 8 or 9 coming up on nine years, it must be now, is
• 1:50
  that right? Yeah, 2016 was.
• 1:53
  I was making films before that, but 2016 was when I kind of went
• 1:58
  fully into it. Interesting.
• 2:01
  OK, so. Yes.
• 2:05
  So basically I was working when I first moved to Manchester.
• 2:09
  I was working in Wetherspoons and because it was a job and
• 2:13
  then I left that to carry on work on the Christmas markets in
• 2:17
  Manchester. And then when it came to January
• 2:21
  all of a sudden I don't have a job because I left Wetherspoons
• 2:25
  to go on to the Christmas market which is obviously seasonal.
• 2:29
  So when it came to January, it was just the case of being
• 2:32
  pretty much self-employed and going fully into acting, whether
• 2:35
  it be student films, just saying yes to any project that was out
• 2:39
  there. You want to be an extra in a
• 2:41
  student job? Yeah, I'll do it.
• 2:42
  I'll do it just because it's networking and that's how you
• 2:45
  build a friendship. And then when it comes to making
• 2:48
  films yourself, you have almost a database of actors that you
• 2:51
  would work with or who you wouldn't work with again and
• 2:55
  carry on from that. Since then, my career in the
• 2:59
  industry is I'm doing a lot more projects as the years go on,
• 3:04
  until obviously a couple of years ago when it stopped for
• 3:07
  every everyone. And now I mainly do through the
• 3:11
  summer, I do a lot of music festivals, which is my normal
• 3:15
  job, and then I will do the Christmas markets again.
• 3:19
  But because the markets don't start until May, I have 5 months
• 3:24
  where I can just make films, whether it be saying yes to a
• 3:28
  friend's film, doing any extras work and anything I can do
• 3:32
  really. And then towards the end of the
• 3:34
  year, I also have about two months before the Christmas
• 3:37
  market starts where I can try and fill my calendar with any
• 3:41
  jobs I can. But obviously because it's so
• 3:44
  quiet in January, there's not much going on.
• 3:46
  I had an essay job yesterday for ATV series and then I have a
• 3:51
  production next week, but then there's nothing in the
• 3:55
  foreseeable future of what I'll be doing.
• 3:59
  You're you're a person that really confuses me, and I'll
• 4:02
  tell you why. So Dan doesn't know this, but me
• 4:07
  and the people in our kind of circle, because every every kind
• 4:11
  of actor, filmmaker has like their immediate circle And then
• 4:14
  people you meet on jobs through other, you know what I'm saying?
• 4:16
  Like it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, but there's
• 4:19
  people that you work with. Like I think we've worked
• 4:21
  together. Oh my God, we've worked together
• 4:24
  on. I met you Valentine's Day.
• 4:28
  That was when. I met.
• 4:30
  Oh my God, it was Valentine's Day.
• 4:32
  Yeah, shit. It was a corporate shooter in
• 4:34
  Media City, wasn't it? Oh, yeah.
• 4:37
  Let's tell that story real quick.
• 4:38
  So that was one of my first. Oh, yeah, Is it?
• 4:44
  Yeah. I suppose there would be like an
• 4:45
  NDA on it, wouldn't there? Maybe, maybe not.
• 4:47
  I don't. Know it's out now.
• 4:48
  It's all out now. Yeah, it was.
• 4:50
  It's in the news. Oh my God.
• 4:52
  Yeah. So we we did this, a series of
• 4:57
  SA jobs for a company. I won't say their name.
• 5:02
  Well, to be fair, it wasn't even the the this, this company, I
• 5:06
  don't know if it's a legit company or not.
• 5:08
  I don't know if it's real or not.
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  But they came to the production company that we were employed
• 5:12
  by. So hands up that has nothing to
• 5:14
  do with us and we essentially just took on these jobs.
• 5:20
  We'd show up, we'd have different roles every single
• 5:22
  time. And this one I remember was
• 5:25
  strange in that like we're all dressed in corporate attire and
• 5:30
  we're just sitting in a in a in a board meeting style room.
• 5:34
  But it's like a press conference.
• 5:36
  And I remember that there was two guys doing the the speech,
• 5:42
  the speech. But the speech was ah, it's so
• 5:44
  weird. So I've seen people do like
• 5:47
  improvised speeches before or or scripted speeches that are just
• 5:50
  a bit weird and it you can tell that they were trying to just to
• 5:54
  B roll. Essentially they just want
• 5:56
  someone speaking, but they prepared a whole speech and it
• 6:02
  felt like it was a text to speech document, like someone's
• 6:05
  just done Google Translate into another language and then that's
• 6:09
  what the end result is. So all I remember from that
• 6:14
  speech was just little things like the company will do XY and
• 6:21
  Z in the year 2020 and the company has had tremendous
• 6:25
  results. It just felt like a really bad
• 6:28
  fever dream. I don't know.
• 6:30
  Yes, I remember because I think I was a cameraman for this
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  corporate, this big corporate event and during the filming
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  process, the behind the scenes people would come over saying,
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  would you like to be interviewed for this?
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  And I remember saying absolutely not.
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  I don't want any part of this if it comes out.
• 6:52
  I'm just a photographer with this project in a project, if
• 6:56
  you know what I mean. We dodged a bullet there.
• 6:58
  I'll get to that in a second. I just want to mention Mike,
• 7:00
  because while you had just like a camera and you look like a
• 7:03
  legitimate part of this, they gave me what I can only describe
• 7:07
  as the world's oldest video account.
• 7:09
  It was straight out of the 1980s, and I had to.
• 7:13
  It wasn't plugged in or anything.
• 7:14
  I had to pretend like I was filming, which I can do that, no
• 7:17
  worries. But it's like if you're looking
• 7:19
  in the background and you see a guy in the year 2020-2021,
• 7:24
  wherever it was with a 80s camera, you're going to be like,
• 7:27
  why has he got a 1980s camera not plugged in?
• 7:29
  That's a bit weird. Is it like a vintage shoot?
• 7:33
  Like, I don't know. It was a very strange experience
• 7:36
  and all of them seemed to be like that each and every time.
• 7:41
  And yeah, those those interviews, because as you, as
• 7:45
  you mentioned earlier, it was on the news.
• 7:47
  And from what I understand, I don't know, this is, yeah, just
• 7:53
  legal disclaimer, I don't know. But from what I understand,
• 7:57
  maybe that company was involved with some shady dealings, maybe
• 8:01
  not, I don't know. But apparently it was on BBC
• 8:03
  News, so that was funny. So technically, we've been on
• 8:06
  the news, OK? We we worked with them again a a
• 8:09
  few weeks after. I think I was playing like an MP
• 8:13
  or something. Oh.
• 8:14
  Oh, cool. Wow.
• 8:15
  No, you were there. You were there.
• 8:17
  The MP. It was.
• 8:19
  We were filming in the city centre of Manchester.
• 8:23
  It was. It was the same people hired us
• 8:26
  and it was where we were talking with Mark the essay, and I think
• 8:31
  you were giving him advice about social media presence.
• 8:35
  Oh yeah, do you know what? Because I remember we went for a
• 8:40
  pint. We went for a drink afterwards.
• 8:42
  Yes. And then they called me back
• 8:43
  saying we need to get like a stock picture of the corporate
• 8:49
  people. So I remember we had to drink up
• 8:51
  Christian, we'll need to go back.
• 8:54
  So yeah, that was the second time we worked with them.
• 8:57
  And then I think I met you in Liverpool on one of the Indian.
• 9:04
  It's not Bollywood, is it? Is it called Nollywood films
• 9:07
  that are? No, you're right.
• 9:09
  Bollywood. I found this out recently.
• 9:10
  Bollywood is a apparently an umbrella term, so it doesn't
• 9:13
  have to specifically refer to Bollywood movies.
• 9:16
  It could just be any movie that's kind of that part of the
• 9:18
  world. Nollywood is Nigeria, I think.
• 9:21
  I think. Really.
• 9:23
  I I thought it was films that are made outside of anyway,
• 9:26
  regardless. I might be wrong but I think, I
• 9:29
  think that's true. I don't know.
• 9:30
  But yeah, that was, that was the one in the Liverpool, yeah, And
• 9:34
  then there was another one in 3rd.
• 9:36
  Time. And then we did another that was
• 9:40
  with the same guys, wasn't it? Yeah.
• 9:41
  Yeah, at the car wash. The car wash, Yeah.
• 9:45
  Yeah, yeah, that's right. And they dressed you up as a cop
• 9:48
  and then you didn't get used. Get paid to drink, try tea and
• 9:54
  eat Curry all day. That's not it's not the worst
• 9:56
  job. Ever.
• 9:57
  Is it? No.
• 9:57
  I'll take. It the thing with those with
• 9:58
  those jobs, the catering is unbelievable or the Bollywood
• 10:03
  shoots. That's true.
• 10:05
  Can't. Can't fault that.
• 10:06
  The catering's good anyway because I've done catering on
• 10:08
  Brassic, so the catering is always good, but especially on
• 10:11
  my shoots. You've done brassic as well.
• 10:13
  I did brassic for like 5 minutes.
• 10:15
  I. Can't say what I was shooting
• 10:18
  yesterday, but I've been on set of Brassic but just working
• 10:22
  catering so the hospitality departs.
• 10:25
  So actually not as an essay, just, you know, the guys who
• 10:29
  served the food for breakfast. Yeah, I was basically doing that
• 10:33
  for about 5 times I think, but I've never actually been on it,
• 10:36
  so. I I was on there for an hour.
• 10:40
  An hour. An hour just passing by.
• 10:45
  No, like they I guess I can't say much.
• 10:48
  So basically like I was, there's an essay job for Brassic and we
• 10:55
  waited for hours. You know, like when they bring
• 10:58
  you to like a location where there's the set up and then you
• 11:01
  drive to the where it's actually being filmed?
• 11:04
  Every time. Every time, Yeah.
• 11:05
  So they did that. And the actual filming, I kid
• 11:08
  you not, it was, it was like half an hour, an hour maybe, And
• 11:11
  we're done. I was like, really?
• 11:12
  That's it. And they're like, yeah.
• 11:14
  All right, cool. Go home.
• 11:16
  Brilliant. That's the source, isn't it?
• 11:18
  If if you go on Emmerdale, EastEnders, Coronation Street,
• 11:22
  Hollyoaks, it's always the same because the turn around is so
• 11:26
  quick. The key thing about it is you
• 11:29
  get. That's the thing.
• 11:30
  If it works out like that, you get paid for a full day's work
• 11:33
  despite having only been there in an hour or two.
• 11:36
  That's when it's really good. Yeah.
• 11:39
  And then when it gets in overtime, that's when everyone
• 11:41
  claps in, Just a quick D2. We did a job in Huddersfield and
• 11:51
  it was for an agency. I think it was the first agency
• 11:55
  I signed up with and they had managed to talk the extras down
• 11:58
  in terms of wage by going to the production saying we will have
• 12:03
  maybe 30% more essays if you go with our agency, but we'll
• 12:07
  charge you the same. I think now there's a disclaimer
• 12:11
  when you sign up for a job not to discuss pay on set.
• 12:15
  This was in 2016 I believe and we worked out that we were
• 12:20
  getting paid 60 LB flat fee a day, 60 LB for 10 hours.
• 12:27
  But then because of this company it was the first job of the
• 12:30
  year. They take 40 lbs off every
• 12:33
  person for the first job and they're taking 20% and you have
• 12:38
  to pay your own way to Huddersfield.
• 12:40
  And back when we worked out we were earning about £10 a day for
• 12:45
  four days, £10 a day. So we just every time that the
• 12:50
  cameras would, OK guys, stand off for 10 minutes, we're just
• 12:53
  going to flip the cameras and you know what they do.
• 12:55
  I just went to the pub with my friend who was on set and we'd
• 12:59
  just neck a point and run back. So by the end of the show,
• 13:02
  because we figured we're not doing it for the money because
• 13:04
  there's no money involved, we'll just try and have as good a time
• 13:08
  as possible. What's the worst essay job you
• 13:11
  ever did? I've I've fell out with so many
• 13:19
  people, but it's never normally the production or the job.
• 13:22
  It's always there's just a bad assistant director there or
• 13:27
  there's someone who's just not communicating well with the
• 13:33
  essays. There was a two day job.
• 13:36
  It's not the worst one, but it's one that just comes to mind.
• 13:39
  We were filming it old Granada Studios in Manchester and it was
• 13:44
  a music video and it was a. Like.
• 13:48
  A festival scene. It was a festival scene and we
• 13:52
  were all make believing that we're having a good time and
• 13:55
  we're drinking water in wine but in wine glasses.
• 13:59
  But then they needed a load of guys who do the cocktails and
• 14:04
  the white, the whatever they do and they're doing all the flips
• 14:08
  with the bottles and stuff like that.
• 14:09
  They needed basically empty bottles.
• 14:11
  So they bought cases of wine and we're tipping it down the sink.
• 14:15
  I walked in the bathroom and they're just pouring 50 bottles
• 14:20
  of wine down the sink because they need empty bottles.
• 14:23
  So I was going over. I was going, Why don't you just
• 14:25
  give us drinks? Not everyone here is driving.
• 14:27
  I wasn't driving at the time. We can have a good time.
• 14:30
  At least You're not meant to obviously drink on set.
• 14:34
  But we're not the crew. We can have a good time.
• 14:39
  No, no, no, not at all. So the first day, that kind of
• 14:42
  rubbed me the wrong way. For the second day, we were in
• 14:45
  the green room for 5-6 hours. It was an unpaid job as well,
• 14:50
  run by student film makers. So I don't know how they got
• 14:54
  that location to shoot in. And we were there.
• 14:57
  And you know, these essay jobs, there's a lot of small talk that
• 15:00
  you do. I call it extra talk.
• 15:02
  What have you done before? Who have you met?
• 15:04
  And it's OK for the first three hours on the first day, but when
• 15:09
  it gets to Day 2, you kind of run out of talking with people.
• 15:13
  And everyone's on the phone. Everyone's just playing whatever
• 15:17
  game they can have. We're in a green room, there's
• 15:20
  no Wi-Fi, we're everyone's done talking with everyone else.
• 15:25
  Everyone's in a bad mood, and the A DS just aren't telling us
• 15:28
  what's happening at all. My phone's on about 10%, so I'm
• 15:32
  already in a bad mood because I didn't decide to charge my phone
• 15:35
  before getting there. I've been on it for four or five
• 15:37
  hours. Well, they didn't have plug
• 15:38
  sockets or anything. They had minimal plug plug
• 15:42
  sockets, but when there's about 60 people, everything, and we
• 15:48
  were all there just as a favour for these film makers, but two
• 15:52
  days unpaid, I've done worse, you know?
• 15:55
  But I went over to the AD saying do you know when we'll be
• 15:58
  filming? Because we've had no
• 15:59
  correspondence from anyone and he just kind of ignored us and
• 16:04
  blew us off. I said, OK, I'm leaving, and he
• 16:06
  pulled me aside saying you can't leave.
• 16:08
  I went, of course, and I picked a few people who aren't sort of
• 16:11
  befriended there saying we just don't have like an exodus.
• 16:14
  We're going to leave. You can't leave, I said.
• 16:17
  I've not signed any contract to say that I'm even here.
• 16:20
  I haven't signed anything. So if there's a fire and you're
• 16:24
  having to do a checklist of who's there, technically I'm not
• 16:26
  here, so I'm leaving. So about five of us left walked
• 16:30
  out. You see that?
• 16:31
  You see the I watched it the other day on YouTube.
• 16:34
  You know when you go have like a retrospective of what you've
• 16:37
  done. I just went through because
• 16:39
  there's so many projects that I've done.
• 16:42
  I've not got links, I've not got screenshots.
• 16:44
  I don't know. So I just searched it.
• 16:46
  It's on YouTube and you don't see anyone.
• 16:48
  Anyone who is there. They're not, you see like
• 16:50
  glimpses of faces and it's because they put all these
• 16:54
  transitions and stuff and you don't see anything.
• 16:57
  This is not the worst essay job because every the worst essay
• 17:00
  job is probably the next one. I do.
• 17:02
  And then the next one, I won't do an essay job for five months.
• 17:06
  And then I'll go back to it because I'll start to miss it.
• 17:09
  And within an hour of being there.
• 17:10
  Yeah. And I hear that essay come over
• 17:13
  and start bragging about who he's met.
• 17:15
  That's when I check out and go. Why am I here?
• 17:17
  This this is what drives me nuts.
• 17:18
  I just want to have a quick rant about essay work for a second to
• 17:20
  you, because I know you'll understand.
• 17:22
  And for those listening, I, you know, I've spoken about it on
• 17:25
  live streams before. OK.
• 17:27
  I'll quickly say the good things and then we'll get all into the
• 17:30
  bad things. So the good things are, look,
• 17:31
  you're getting paid money to pretty much stand around and the
• 17:37
  setting is the key thing. You know, if you're in a
• 17:40
  restaurant or if you're in a pub or you know, like a sitting with
• 17:44
  like chairs and it's fairly warm, you're going to have a
• 17:46
  pretty good time, right? It's going to be all right.
• 17:48
  Like you, maybe you're on the phone, maybe you're chatting to
• 17:50
  people. I normally chat.
• 17:52
  I like to do that, you know, whatever, like past the time
• 17:55
  you're getting paid to do that. That's great.
• 17:58
  Now when it comes to the bad stuff, it's like I I I feel like
• 18:05
  the the biggest problem with extras work well.
• 18:07
  There's two problems. One is for whatever reason, it's
• 18:12
  not respected and you don't get treated very well.
• 18:14
  Now I understand if you've got like 100 people in a crowd
• 18:17
  scene, you're not really. Your job is, yeah, to just kind
• 18:22
  of fill the background. But that doesn't mean that it's
• 18:24
  not important because you need people to do that.
• 18:28
  If I have like a busy city scene, I need people to do that.
• 18:32
  And you can't have the general public, You just can't.
• 18:35
  There's legal issues. And also just like people are
• 18:37
  just too busy staring at the camera.
• 18:38
  You need actors who know what's like, know not to look at the
• 18:41
  camera, know what to do and how to interact.
• 18:44
  And you know, whether it's like fake interaction where, you
• 18:46
  know, miming or whether it's actual conversation, you're
• 18:49
  keeping your breath down. Like you need actors to do that,
• 18:52
  film makers, people that are in the industry.
• 18:54
  And I feel that that gets really overlooked sometimes.
• 18:57
  And it kind of irritates me because sometimes you'll get
• 19:00
  extras work where like, take me. When I was doing Hollyoaks
• 19:04
  recently or last year, whatever it was, there was only like 5 of
• 19:08
  us. We were on screen.
• 19:10
  We had to act. You know, it's not like, yeah, I
• 19:12
  might not have had dialogue, but I had to act.
• 19:14
  I, you know, they were like, listen, we need you to look, you
• 19:17
  know, intense. Like this is a serious moment.
• 19:20
  Some fucking while acting, you know, and that doesn't get
• 19:24
  respected and that irritates me. And another thing that irritates
• 19:27
  me about it is that you know, much like any other job, if you
• 19:31
  do a good job, you keep getting booked, you know, you get like
• 19:33
  they recognise you're doing a good job and you get more jobs
• 19:36
  because you're reliable. So there's like how can I put
• 19:41
  there's like a professionalism within that like any other job
• 19:45
  and then. These agencies have the
• 19:47
  favourites as well. Oh, of course.
• 19:49
  Yeah, no, I understand. That not annoying, but like I
• 19:53
  say it's some agencies. There's a one strike policy
• 19:56
  where if you if you don't turn up that day, that's it, you're
• 19:58
  off the books. And often times with those
• 20:01
  agencies they're exclusive, so you can only be with them.
• 20:05
  Well, get me more work then. Well, that's the thing, isn't
• 20:08
  it? Yeah, I think the exclusivity
• 20:09
  thing is a little bit cheeky, like some of them.
• 20:11
  I don't, I don't. I'm not signed up to him anymore
• 20:14
  because when I signed with my agent last N1 of the providers
• 20:18
  always you can't be with which makes sense but but like I'll
• 20:23
  still like do it on the side then now and again when I can
• 20:25
  find work and what not. But like that always used to
• 20:28
  bother me when they would say like, oh, you have to be
• 20:30
  exclusive to us, but then they're not finding you any
• 20:32
  work. And then and then it's like, one
• 20:37
  thing I found really cheeky is they would be like, you've been
• 20:39
  released from this job, you're free to go and do what you want.
• 20:42
  I'm thinking I was always free, mate, I all I said was I was
• 20:45
  available. I didn't say I'm.
• 20:46
  The day before. The day before shooting.
• 20:48
  When you've not even wrote it in your diary because you say yes
• 20:51
  to everything that comes. Yeah.
• 20:52
  You can do what you want with your Friday now.
• 20:55
  Oh, brilliant. Thank you.
• 20:56
  Thank you for that. Yeah, I was.
• 20:57
  Literally hanging, waiting on the phone for you like this, You
• 21:00
  know, like that's it. Like just sitting there, like
• 21:02
  looking at the phone going. Come on, man, come on.
• 21:04
  Please, please, please 8. O'clock.
• 21:07
  I did an essay job yesterday the day before the agency get in
• 21:12
  touch saying will you, could you provide images of your clothing
• 21:16
  options? I just.
• 21:18
  I just put. Yes.
• 21:19
  Yeah. And then I get a message at 8:00
• 21:22
  on the night. Could you send the images over?
• 21:27
  OK. So now everything that I buy in,
• 21:29
  that's in my bag, I need to take it out late on the floor, take
• 21:32
  pictures knowing full well that when the agent gets them, they
• 21:37
  are not going to send them to the costume department whose job
• 21:40
  it is to get in touch with me. But this is another thing that
• 21:44
  irritates me. You get OK, they're big
• 21:47
  productions. They have a costume department,
• 21:49
  right? They might not have sizes for
• 21:51
  everyone, but chances are they've got a big budget.
• 21:53
  They've got money for that, right?
• 21:54
  Why are we the extras having to bring our own costume in the
• 21:58
  bags? We have to carry this shit
• 21:59
  around. We bring it there and I
• 22:01
  guarantee they won't fucking use it.
• 22:04
  I've seen people bring like full three piece suits and everything
• 22:07
  and it's like, yeah, no, we're not going to use that.
• 22:09
  We're just going to have you in your T-shirt.
• 22:10
  That's fine. Often times what you go with,
• 22:14
  what you turn up with is what they'll Yeah, you're fine like
• 22:18
  that. Especially as a guy, if
• 22:22
  yesterday all all the women that were being used, they go in,
• 22:25
  they get all the make up done, they'll just look at you and go,
• 22:28
  yeah, you're fine, we'll take you off, Which is good for me.
• 22:31
  Yeah, yeah, I'm. Happy that that that's fine, but
• 22:35
  now I have to carry this bag around all day, which is
• 22:39
  annoying. Oftentimes I find that it's not
• 22:41
  the costume department, it's the agent who is, yes, trying to
• 22:45
  get, perhaps too involved. It's not rocket science.
• 22:48
  Your job is to get me on set and then I will do my work and the
• 22:53
  costume department will do their work and the make up department
• 22:56
  will do their work. Everyone's there to work.
• 23:00
  Your job is just to get me there and then if they approach me
• 23:04
  same which are you free? I did a job years ago for five
• 23:07
  days and then the AD came over saying would we would like to
• 23:10
  use you for the next 5 days, next week, Absolutely fine.
• 23:14
  That was not them getting in touch with the agent to ask me.
• 23:17
  That was coming direct to me, which is what I like.
• 23:21
  There's no no with it. There's so many things that
• 23:25
  irritate me about it, though, like with the costume, just for
• 23:28
  a second. Like, I remember one film I did,
• 23:31
  I bought my bag. I've got all this stuff and
• 23:33
  they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 23:35
  Didn't you bring this? And I'm thinking you're the
• 23:37
  costume department. That's literally your job is to
• 23:40
  provide costumes. Why do I have to bring a fuck it
• 23:42
  like, I'm not the costume director, Why do I have to bring
• 23:45
  like like how many fucking coloured church do you think I
• 23:48
  own? Like sorry, I just I just this
• 23:50
  irritates. Unbranded.
• 23:51
  Unbranded. As well.
• 23:53
  Well, yeah, because it will be like, OK, no patterns, they have
• 23:56
  to be this particular colours, this, that.
• 23:58
  Sometimes I've I've had to go out and buy the stuff because I
• 24:01
  just don't own it. I just don't like, I don't own
• 24:04
  that colour of a shirt and I had to buy it and like that will
• 24:07
  obviously still be useful but it's like what the hell?
• 24:10
  And they're like what? You don't own a colour or shirt
• 24:12
  or this. It's like no I don't, I don't
• 24:14
  own AI don't know red, bright red shirt with this on it
• 24:18
  because I just don't wear bright red shirts with.
• 24:21
  I tend to wear like more darker colours.
• 24:23
  That's just me. I don't know.
• 24:24
  Shoot me, but like. You're you're shooting an advert
• 24:27
  for Manchester City. Could you bring your favorite
• 24:29
  football top? No, I wouldn't actually.
• 24:35
  Know that's just common sense, though.
• 24:36
  Come on, City, and you turn up in a red shirt.
• 24:39
  It's like, well. Yeah, I've got so many
• 24:42
  unbranding because because I I don't follow football.
• 24:45
  Partly because as you can tell with the accent, I'm from
• 24:48
  Middlesbrough, so I don't think we're doing too well.
• 24:51
  But when you move to Manchester, everyone that appears to follow
• 24:55
  football because there's strong divide with City and United.
• 24:58
  I live in Salford so they're very much one way.
• 25:02
  But I've got so much blue in my wardrobe because I've done so
• 25:05
  many adverts with Man City or teams like that where it's all
• 25:13
  blue, I've never had to wear red.
• 25:15
  For a football team whose primary colour is red, it's
• 25:18
  always blue. So when they go, is it United or
• 25:21
  City? City.
• 25:22
  Because I've done about 3 adverts with them.
• 25:23
  That's the only reason. Not because of the football, but
• 25:26
  because they paid me 3 * 3 separate occasions for different
• 25:30
  adverts over the years. We'll put like a bow on the
• 25:33
  whole extra stuff for a second as far as like the bad
• 25:37
  experiences one. Maybe you'll find this as well
• 25:41
  is like, I feel like the way that you get treated sometimes
• 25:47
  makes you feel kind of, I don't know, it kind.
• 25:52
  Of there's a pecking order. We always say it as a joke that
• 25:57
  the supporting actors, not the supporting artists, the
• 26:00
  supporting actors, shoelace is more important than we are on
• 26:04
  the set. In terms of the colour of that
• 26:07
  shoelace continuity. We're kind of expendable.
• 26:12
  It can be changed around. If it's certainly for one day
• 26:14
  shoot, they can just swap because no one's going to know.
• 26:18
  Yeah, I think I just feel like it it shouldn't be that way.
• 26:23
  Like I understand that like as you say we are expendable, but
• 26:26
  that that that's still you're still part of the production,
• 26:30
  you're still part of everything. Like you still have to be
• 26:32
  professional. Like you still have to compose
• 26:34
  yourself in a certain way and. Absolutely, but not to.
• 26:37
  Not to interrupt you, but I some I like doing essay work because
• 26:42
  it's paid and also a lot of the times I like to have very little
• 26:46
  responsibility on a set. I get that it's not my
• 26:49
  production, it's not my money that's being spent, which when
• 26:53
  it comes to the short films that I make, it is my.
• 26:56
  So I like to be on set where I see the crew members getting
• 26:59
  stressed because I know that's not it's nothing to do with me.
• 27:02
  You have to watch the chaos. Well, no, but.
• 27:05
  It's it's quite refreshing knowing that how a film sets,
• 27:09
  like it's like a brick wall, right?
• 27:11
  And if there's a if there's a, you know, it all has to work.
• 27:16
  Everyone has to be there to work, regardless of if you're
• 27:18
  the essays at the bottom, everything else is built on top
• 27:21
  of that, right? Or maybe the other way around.
• 27:24
  In terms of this analogy, I don't know where it's going, but
• 27:26
  I like to be on set because there's no pretensions.
• 27:30
  As an essay, yes, you have to be professional, But if it all goes
• 27:34
  wrong, I just get to go home and not worry about how I'm going to
• 27:39
  edit around this problem that we had.
• 27:42
  I like to just be there, drink coffee, talk to people, network,
• 27:47
  go home and then get paid 3 months after I've done that job.
• 27:51
  Speaking of which, like sometimes you get lucky and like
• 27:56
  for instance, we'll meet each other and you know, you make
• 27:59
  good connections and you make films to go, which we're going
• 28:01
  to get into a bit later. But like a lot of the time you
• 28:05
  meet people and as you mentioned earlier, there'll be the usual
• 28:10
  essay talk. Now I'm happy to say that, like,
• 28:14
  things have sort of progressed to for me, to a stage where I'm
• 28:17
  not only doing that work now. And listen, I I don't care.
• 28:20
  Like, it's not an ego thing. Like I'll do, I say, well, I
• 28:23
  don't care, give me the money. Great.
• 28:24
  That gets me out of having to do like kiosk work.
• 28:26
  Like, yeah, I'm happy with that. It's it's, I see it as money
• 28:29
  that I look at it for what it is.
• 28:31
  It's money. It is what it is.
• 28:33
  But the one thing I've realized is if you're trying to get
• 28:37
  somewhere in the industry as let's say as an actor,
• 28:40
  filmmaker, director, whatever, doing extras work, talking about
• 28:47
  this, it's it's not going to advance it like in in like the
• 28:52
  traditional, you know, cola, real Ladder style.
• 28:55
  Like, I mean, it depends how you look at it, like are you going
• 28:59
  to meet people? Yes.
• 29:00
  And if you're proactive and you talk to people, that's how
• 29:03
  you're going to make the connections and and really start
• 29:05
  making moves in the industry, you know, potentially.
• 29:09
  But actually just doing those gigs like 1 by 1 is not really
• 29:16
  going to move it. Like I've heard of stories here
• 29:18
  and there. I've had people on the podcast
• 29:19
  that have said otherwise and they've been like, Oh, well,
• 29:21
  actually I got bumped up to feature or I got, I got, you
• 29:25
  know, some dialogue or whatever. And that's great.
• 29:27
  I'm really happy to hear that when that happens for people.
• 29:30
  But that's like one in a blue moon because I think I think
• 29:35
  people forget a lot of the time that, like, your job is to be in
• 29:38
  the background and not be seen or unheard.
• 29:39
  That's kind of the whole point. And if you get bumped up, it
• 29:43
  will be because something big has changed because everything
• 29:46
  has already been cast in the film, the TV series, whatever.
• 29:49
  So if they like randomly give someone a line it will be
• 29:53
  because they need it to work for something else.
• 29:56
  Yeah. It's not like you're not like
• 29:57
  suddenly like, oh, now you're the star of the movie.
• 29:59
  Like, it's not going to happen. No, no, I remember not.
• 30:04
  Again, Not to cut you off, but I told this story yesterday on
• 30:08
  set, I think 2016 or 17. I was hired for a day on Peaky
• 30:15
  Blinders, which, but over those years it seemed that everyone
• 30:19
  was involved in Peaky blindness in some way.
• 30:24
  I remember being on there on season four, and the AD came
• 30:29
  over to all of us saying there's a few of you that we would like
• 30:33
  to give a couple of lines of dialogue to.
• 30:37
  Brilliant. Why?
• 30:39
  There's the bartender who? There's an actor who was
• 30:42
  supposed to turn up and play a bartender and he had some lines
• 30:46
  of dialogue opposite the one of the main actresses in the show.
• 30:52
  I think he had three lines of dialogue and they gave it to me
• 30:56
  and I was like, brilliant. And then everyone keeps coming.
• 30:59
  They'll go, can you do a Birmingham accent?
• 31:01
  Yes, I can. Have you done acting, training?
• 31:05
  Yes. Yeah, of course I'll do the
• 31:06
  line. So all of a sudden I'm just
• 31:09
  there with no responsibility. Now I've been given one of the
• 31:13
  main roles in this scene, at least 3 lines of dialogue
• 31:16
  opposite this actress. My heart's going, people are
• 31:19
  coming over, pumping me up. You've got to be great.
• 31:21
  You're going to be on TV. There's no way they're going to
• 31:24
  cut you out. You know that's a.
• 31:26
  Jinx. I'm reverting the lines.
• 31:28
  I'm in the toilets, I'm trying not to drink as much coffee so
• 31:31
  I'm not shaking and then we're getting ready to go on.
• 31:36
  Brilliant. I'm going to wait for someone to
• 31:38
  come and get me one of the ADS. OK, Coming to set is the barman
• 31:43
  da da da 5 minutes before the cameras started rolling on that
• 31:48
  scene, the original actor who was playing the bartender who
• 31:52
  had got the role through the audition process turned up.
• 31:56
  Obviously he was late, but he turned up and then they go, all
• 31:59
  right then we don't need you now actually you can just sit out
• 32:01
  and then OK, so now I'm in video village where all the ADS and
• 32:07
  the make up department are watching and writing notes.
• 32:10
  There's maybe 8-8 screens from all the different cameras
• 32:14
  watching this actor recite the lines of dialogue that I have
• 32:20
  been practising for 3-4 hours. Oh, of course.
• 32:22
  Yeah, Fuck. And I'm going, oh, no, Like, not
• 32:25
  that I would have done a better job, because I don't think I
• 32:27
  would have. But part of you is you're so
• 32:29
  pumped for that. Why would you, this poor essay,
• 32:33
  who's here for whatever I'm here for?
• 32:35
  You know, why would you try and make it seem like this job was
• 32:38
  going to entail more than it is? And then I remember a few weeks
• 32:43
  later being on another job, but it was the same assistant
• 32:47
  directors. Because often when you do so
• 32:49
  many essay jobs, you will see the same camera guys, the same,
• 32:54
  the same grips, the same lighting guys.
• 32:56
  Because to them it's just a job, not just with those essays.
• 32:59
  To them it is just a job. There might not be as much
• 33:01
  passion as, oh, I want to do the cameras this way or the lighting
• 33:05
  this way. No, it's just a job for them.
• 33:07
  Often times, unless you've got a visionary director often time
• 33:11
  just there to do the job and we'll do it well.
• 33:15
  And I remember the ADS coming. You look familiar.
• 33:18
  Great. Thank you.
• 33:18
  Often it's oh, you're the guy off Avatar, right?
• 33:23
  You look like him. You look familiar.
• 33:27
  And then they'll go, you were the bartender in Peaky Blinders.
• 33:30
  And then it brings it up again. It's like it's like a wound
• 33:34
  that's healed and then you just rip it off.
• 33:38
  I mean it's I think, I think at the end of the day we're going
• 33:42
  to have those moments where it's like disappointing.
• 33:44
  Like I've been in similar situations on on the set and
• 33:47
  it's kind of crazy how they just push you away like you're
• 33:51
  nothing, you know, which makes the when you get to do like a
• 33:55
  featured thing all the more special.
• 33:57
  Do you know what I mean? Like, I remember I can't talk
• 33:59
  about it right now, but there was a music video I did, Yes,
• 34:02
  last year and I felt that way. I felt like, wow, this is a
• 34:06
  really big deal and I can't believe I'm doing this.
• 34:09
  And I I couldn't help but think about all those times when I've
• 34:12
  been on set when you know they just don't because it feels like
• 34:16
  they just don't care about you. To be honest, it feels like
• 34:18
  you're just you're sitting there, watch every watching
• 34:20
  everyone else do your dream. And you know, the best way I can
• 34:25
  explain it for, for for maybe people who might not know what
• 34:28
  what the hell I'm talking about is, have you ever been a
• 34:31
  musician and been watching, you know, artists play on stage and
• 34:36
  you haven't played in a long time and you're ready and you
• 34:38
  want to perform but you can't. Or have you ever been a football
• 34:42
  player who's sitting on the reserve bench and watching
• 34:45
  everyone else play and you're ready and you're, you know,
• 34:47
  you're, you've been training, whatever, and you don't get
• 34:49
  picked. It's like that, you know, it's
• 34:52
  just you're ready. You know you can do it, but you
• 34:56
  just for whatever reason, you just haven't been there just
• 34:59
  yet. Haven't given the opportunities.
• 35:02
  Right. That's the way I look at it.
• 35:03
  And but then I think there's an important lesson there.
• 35:06
  I think what it is, is to be ready to receive it when you do
• 35:10
  get it because you will get it. And when you do get it, be ready
• 35:13
  and knock it out of the park and show everyone why you deserve
• 35:17
  that opportunity. I think that's the key.
• 35:20
  But I will say that I think sometimes there are people who
• 35:25
  I've noticed. I won't name names, but there
• 35:27
  are people and I'm really proud of them because they keep
• 35:29
  getting stuff all the time. But it's always essay stuff and
• 35:36
  I'm a bit puzzled by what the goal is.
• 35:39
  Like, OK, if the goal is I just want to do film and TV work and
• 35:44
  I want to do this as a career, like, as in like, essay work.
• 35:47
  Nothing wrong with that. Great, brilliant.
• 35:49
  As long as you're happy and you're enjoying it, fantastic.
• 35:52
  But I I feel like that's not what it is like.
• 35:55
  I feel like just like us, they're trying to get somewhere
• 35:57
  with it, but they're not doing because it's it's the efforts
• 36:01
  outside of that that do something.
• 36:04
  I would. I would love that to be my
• 36:05
  dream. It's not my dream, but I would
• 36:09
  love to have that level of just being OK with that.
• 36:14
  Oh yeah, yeah. That would mean any contention
• 36:16
  of trying to be more in the industry, just to have that as a
• 36:20
  job different set, because I think I know who we're talking
• 36:23
  about. There's a there's a few people
• 36:26
  and and and like again they're smashing it and they're really
• 36:30
  good and I I think back to like conversations I've had with them
• 36:34
  where they're really enthusiastic about it and I'm
• 36:37
  happy for them. Times as well.
• 36:38
  They are slightly older than us as well.
• 36:41
  Yeah, but there's nothing wrong with that.
• 36:43
  That's it's. What I mean is we maybe because
• 36:46
  we're both 30, right? Yeah.
• 36:49
  Yeah. So we predict in 10 years time
• 36:53
  we will be doing more than what we're doing.
• 36:55
  Yeah, if you're doing this at closer to retirement age, even
• 37:00
  at 4550, they're happy with that because it's not the normal job.
• 37:06
  Let's just say that maybe they've been doing for 20 years
• 37:11
  and maybe that maybe that's good enough for them.
• 37:14
  I'm just trying to devil's advocate here.
• 37:16
  Yeah. No, no, absolutely.
• 37:18
  Aspirations beyond. That what I think you put the
• 37:22
  nail on the head there. Like I like yourself would love
• 37:27
  to just be like, Oh yeah, this is good enough for me, but for
• 37:30
  whatever reason I just can't. Like I I need to keep pushing
• 37:33
  and pushing and pushing and anything less than that is going
• 37:36
  not good enough for me. And maybe I'm just a big old
• 37:38
  fuss pot, I don't know. But The thing is, I always will
• 37:40
  give it my absolute best in everything I do, whether it's
• 37:44
  work in the kiosks at a football club or being on set and and
• 37:47
  acting like I'm going to put everything into it.
• 37:50
  It's just that I feel like I can do so much more.
• 37:55
  And I feel like a lot of the time when you're on set and and
• 37:57
  you're doing these roles and it's not quite what you want to
• 38:00
  be doing, you know you can do more.
• 38:03
  You can do, you know what I'm saying?
• 38:04
  Like, look, you've been doing this nearly 10 years, nearly 10
• 38:09
  years, right? You've done many, many, many
• 38:11
  projects over the years. I've worked with you and seen
• 38:14
  how you work and I'm like, this guy deserves a shot.
• 38:18
  This guy deserves to go far with this.
• 38:21
  You know, like I believe in you. Everyone that you believe in
• 38:25
  yourself, I believe in you. And I know everyone else that
• 38:27
  works with you believes in you. And I think.
• 38:32
  I just love compliments. Christian.
• 38:35
  Comfortable when you talk. Like this?
• 38:39
  No, no, I mean, I I mean it, man.
• 38:40
  I think that the the things that I always pay attention to is how
• 38:45
  someone composes themself, how they work.
• 38:48
  And that's kind of what I meant before about the whole essay
• 38:51
  stuff because like it look, it gets you on set.
• 38:56
  You're meeting people, you're you're doing stuff.
• 38:59
  You're do. You know what I mean?
• 39:00
  That's better than doing nothing.
• 39:01
  But I do think, like, if you're trying to become like a
• 39:04
  professional actor, director, writer, whatever, it's more
• 39:07
  about like, OK, who are the connections I'm making here?
• 39:10
  What work am I setting up for myself or what work am I doing
• 39:13
  outside? Like, I'll give you a really
• 39:15
  quick example that's been on the show before.
• 39:18
  Aziz Kamal, he's an actor. He was on the show and he
• 39:21
  mentioned that he'd spoken to a fellow actor about what they're
• 39:25
  doing and they just said that, oh, I'm just doing this.
• 39:29
  I'm just doing like the extra stuff.
• 39:30
  And he's like, yeah, yeah, but like what are you doing that's,
• 39:32
  are you auditioning for stuff? Are you doing like, you know,
• 39:35
  setting up your reels, etcetera, etcetera.
• 39:38
  And they were like, no, I'm just doing this.
• 39:40
  And that's what I mean. It's like just doing that is not
• 39:43
  enough. And I'm, I'm looking at the
• 39:47
  stuff that these these people are doing, these friends of
• 39:49
  ours, professional friends. And I'm like, you need to be
• 39:52
  doing more of the other stuff. But this stuff's great, but you
• 39:55
  need to be doing more of the other stuff so that you can bump
• 39:57
  it up because you're good. It's just, you know, like or
• 40:01
  it'll be like they're they're saying like, hey, check me out.
• 40:03
  I was in this scene and I'm like, yeah, but like.
• 40:07
  What is this like? I want to see more of you acting
• 40:10
  on screen your face. I would that's that's what is
• 40:13
  going to push you and get you and elevate you.
• 40:15
  You know it. For me, it's frustrating.
• 40:17
  I I feel like I want to shake them and be like come on man,
• 40:19
  come on, like refocus. We've got this.
• 40:22
  It's not. It's what it is.
• 40:23
  It's not it's not jealousy. It's just feeling that if you
• 40:26
  had the opportunities that they're getting, you would be
• 40:30
  able to do it so much more in terms of what they've been
• 40:35
  given. No, no, no, not even that.
• 40:38
  I mean, I mean more like I'm, I'm puzzled.
• 40:40
  Like I said, I'm puzzled by what they're doing.
• 40:43
  I'm like I feel like like I said before the essay work is is
• 40:48
  great for certain things. I just, I don't know that it's
• 40:51
  really going to advance your career or push you in the
• 40:54
  direction you want to be heading it.
• 40:56
  You know, like it's it's you just have to look at how people
• 41:01
  in the industry look at it to tell you everything you need to
• 41:04
  know. Sorry, a lot of people who are a
• 41:09
  DS. If you are an extra or an essay,
• 41:12
  that is how they will always perceive you as an essay will
• 41:17
  never see you. Beyond that, a casting
• 41:18
  department won't bump you up for having been on 50 TV series as
• 41:24
  an extra as an essay. That's not how it works, You
• 41:28
  know that. What is?
• 41:29
  I mean, I've literally had people in the industry, agents,
• 41:33
  people I've worked with tell me don't talk about extra stuff.
• 41:36
  If anything, keep it a secret. There's people that joke about
• 41:39
  it in Hollywood, like, oh, it's like a dirty secret.
• 41:40
  Like I personally, I'll never be ashamed.
• 41:42
  I work is work. It's we acted.
• 41:45
  We were on those productions and we did our work and we went home
• 41:48
  and we got paid for it. It's work.
• 41:50
  Like, I don't understand that mentality.
• 41:51
  I never will. One of the best stories that you
• 41:54
  have, certainly if you're going to talk about them on a podcast.
• 41:57
  It's not the essay work that you do.
• 41:59
  They're not the best stories that you have.
• 42:01
  The best stories are working with a friend on a film that we
• 42:05
  made last year, right? They're the stories that you
• 42:07
  want to tell, and not because I think telling stories about
• 42:10
  essay work is kind of. It's like war stories, isn't it?
• 42:14
  It's like being in the trenches and you're kind of like, oh, do
• 42:17
  you remember when we did this? Or like, Oh yeah, it's that's
• 42:20
  how I feel like you're all in the same position dealing with
• 42:24
  this thing and you all kind of know it's a little bit shit, but
• 42:28
  you're in it together. Do you know what I mean?
• 42:30
  It's like we're win this together.
• 42:32
  Like that's how I feel with it. I'm like and that's what makes
• 42:34
  it all the more funny when someone's because every now and
• 42:39
  again there'll be one person that'll come and they'll be
• 42:40
  like, yeah, so I've done this, this, this, this, this, this,
• 42:44
  this this and this. I was there on this production,
• 42:46
  on this production and we're like, great, that's brilliant,
• 42:48
  you know, because you're not you're not going to be shitty
• 42:50
  about that. You'll be like, well, fantastic,
• 42:51
  I'm happy for you. But then they sort of lured it
• 42:54
  about a bit and you're like, OK, but we, we, we all know that,
• 42:59
  like, this isn't doing anything for our careers.
• 43:01
  It's. It's we'll come in, we'll come
• 43:02
  in on these ICA jobs. We'll come in going.
• 43:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, I'm going.
• 43:09
  He's like, yeah, I've just got off the phone with my agent.
• 43:11
  That's great. And then I'll just.
• 43:14
  I don't want to ask because I know what they're waiting is me
• 43:17
  to go oh what is it? And they go, well, I've just got
• 43:20
  this walk on job on this production.
• 43:22
  Good for you, mate. Good for you.
• 43:24
  That's the thing, isn't it? Like, I feel like it's always,
• 43:27
  it's always going to help your professionalism to be humble
• 43:30
  about things and just say like, Oh yeah, you know, like if
• 43:33
  anything, like I I often will talk things down.
• 43:36
  I'd be like, Oh yeah, I know things are all right, you know,
• 43:38
  whatever, Like because I don't want to make other people feel
• 43:40
  crap, #1 because I care about other people's feelings.
• 43:43
  And also too, like, I just don't think it's very becoming to to
• 43:46
  to sort of like we're all in the same, like, I I like this idea
• 43:50
  that a lot of the people that I've met and maybe I don't know
• 43:53
  if it's the same for yourself, but a lot of people I meet
• 43:56
  actors, directors, whatever. It feels like a big community of
• 43:58
  people that are trying to bump each other up and look out for
• 44:01
  each other because they know how hard it is to book a gig that we
• 44:05
  mentioned at the top of of the podcast that like January is
• 44:08
  quite quiet month for us, you know.
• 44:11
  And like it's not like you're not putting the effort in,
• 44:14
  you're not auditioning. Like you're you're trying as
• 44:16
  hard as you can, but sometimes there's just not work.
• 44:19
  I was talking to a lady yesterday who we were talking
• 44:24
  about SORBS because she really wants to be involved as an essay
• 44:27
  in SORBS. And I was talking about
• 44:29
  Hollyoaks, and I know a few people have bad experiences on
• 44:33
  Hollyoaks. Really.
• 44:34
  I've always had good experiences.
• 44:36
  Yeah. I think predominantly if you ask
• 44:38
  essays they've only heard the bad things about.
• 44:41
  I. Could joke about the certain
• 44:43
  things that have happened, but that would be quite
• 44:46
  unprofessional of me to talk about that, right?
• 44:50
  But what you have to realise as an essay, you are coming into
• 44:54
  the workspace of maybe 100 people who work with each other
• 44:59
  five days a week, and you're only there for one day.
• 45:03
  So there might be a reason why, because they have such a quick
• 45:06
  turn around and you might only be on one day shoot a year.
• 45:11
  They're not going to remember you because they work with
• 45:15
  themselves. It's like the job I did
• 45:18
  yesterday. There's so many people who have
• 45:20
  met before on other sets, but they're like a family and you're
• 45:24
  coming into that family as an essay.
• 45:29
  So it's like it's very clicky, you know, you feel like the
• 45:32
  outsider as an essay because they go through so many people
• 45:37
  every day. Yesterday, when what we were
• 45:39
  filming were, there was maybe only six of us as an essay.
• 45:44
  What they film next week, there might be over the course of the
• 45:47
  week 100 people that they go through, but they're working
• 45:51
  with each other, the camera guys, the lighting, everything,
• 45:53
  and you're coming into that workspace.
• 45:55
  So I understand why people kind of not bad mouth essay work, but
• 46:00
  why the experience isn't what people expect because I
• 46:03
  encourage people to do essay work.
• 46:05
  Yeah, no same. I mean I think it's it's useful.
• 46:09
  I don't want to make it sound like I don't think there's any
• 46:11
  value in it because absolutely there is.
• 46:13
  I think people just people have to be reasonable with their
• 46:15
  expectations. I think that's what I'm trying
• 46:17
  to push forward. It's like this is not going to
• 46:19
  lead to you becoming the next lead in a Hollywood movie,
• 46:22
  right? That's it's not, it's just not.
• 46:25
  But it can be used. And this kind of leads me into
• 46:29
  the next thing I wanted to talk about with you is that, like, it
• 46:31
  can set up beautiful sort of working relationships.
• 46:34
  And we've now worked on, I believe, 2.
• 46:39
  It's separate productions, one of which you led and one of
• 46:41
  which you were the lead actor in.
• 46:45
  And that's what I think it's more useful for is, is building
• 46:49
  up that stuff, which then will also be useful for other things.
• 46:53
  So, for example, the film that we did together, Oh, no, Guano
• 46:57
  is featured prominently in my show reel, Right.
• 47:00
  Which for those who don't know, is like a way of showing an
• 47:05
  actor's range across several projects and being like, This is
• 47:07
  why you should hire me, You know, it's basically like ACVI
• 47:10
  guess, a video TV. And so there's that element to
• 47:14
  it. But then there's also, you know,
• 47:16
  working together, working on your craft, getting better.
• 47:19
  It's a new experience. And then it can help.
• 47:22
  But nothing, I feel like nothing is ever wasted with stuff like
• 47:25
  that, you know? But let's talk about this in
• 47:28
  detail. Ono Guano.
• 47:30
  What's the kind of thought process behind this particular
• 47:35
  film? Like, where did this idea come
• 47:36
  from? I think partly when you're
• 47:39
  making films yourself, self funded films yourself, you want
• 47:45
  to use people that you know are reliable if there's a specific
• 47:49
  location in mind. Certainly there's a lot of times
• 47:53
  even in feature films they're quite unambitious where they
• 47:57
  will just have, certainly if it's a horror film, they'll just
• 48:00
  have one location. I don't like just filming in one
• 48:04
  location unless it's a sure real pics where you can really have
• 48:07
  fun with the writing, the character dynamics between the
• 48:09
  people. But in terms of an actual short
• 48:11
  film, I like various different locations.
• 48:15
  But with on Orguano, I really have fun writing dialogue.
• 48:19
  So to be able to mainly have fun visually because there's no
• 48:23
  dialogue in on Orguano, right? Except for the end of the
• 48:27
  interview. Which is kind of like the
• 48:30
  epilogue. There's there's no dialogue and
• 48:33
  it kind of came about because our friend Giuseppe ABBA, Gee,
• 48:38
  I'll call for short, but I just wanted to throw his name out
• 48:40
  there he was at the time. And this is not to bad mouth who
• 48:45
  he was working with or the projects that he was doing, but
• 48:49
  he was a a filmmaker who was doing a lot of corporate jobs.
• 48:56
  Every time I'd meet him because I'll go day drinking with him
• 48:58
  quite often we would talk about the films we want to be making
• 49:03
  and I'm assuming it can be quite demoralising when all you're
• 49:06
  doing is corporate shoot interviews, certainly if you're
• 49:10
  working with the same clients. Since then he's gone off and
• 49:14
  separated because he was working with his friend who then just
• 49:20
  became his work colleague. So now he's separated and is
• 49:22
  doing his own thing now. So now he's kind of got that
• 49:25
  friendly relationship back with who he was working with.
• 49:29
  And what we wanted to do is just collaborate on a film which was
• 49:31
  more experimental with the camera, having fun with it that
• 49:36
  way and drawing inspiration from Sam Raimi in particular.
• 49:40
  Because we're fans of Evil Dead, we're fans of the Spider Man
• 49:44
  films that he did. I think it helped.
• 49:47
  It certainly helps when it comes to writing films to visualise
• 49:51
  the influences that you have. And it was always Sam Raimi with
• 49:54
  this film, and G was on the same page as that.
• 49:58
  So what we wanted to do is a film which was a bit more
• 50:01
  experimental, a bit more minimalist with the story, and
• 50:05
  we could get someone in who was. Because I've never really seen
• 50:09
  you do comedy before, Christian, I don't think.
• 50:13
  Like, I've done light stuff years ago, but yeah.
• 50:16
  Every few that I've been on, you're very partly because
• 50:19
  you're very well spoken. I can't say the same about
• 50:23
  myself. I'm from the North, I.
• 50:25
  Think you have a nice accent. But I've I've never really seen
• 50:29
  you do comedy, but there was a certain atmosphere that you
• 50:33
  brought that I wanted to get. There was actually a film that I
• 50:36
  wanted to put you in before that, but logistically, this one
• 50:40
  was a lot easier. So we went with on a guano.
• 50:44
  Interesting. Well, how do you feel like it
• 50:47
  went like let's talk about because I don't think we've
• 50:49
  really spoken about that. We spoke about like obviously
• 50:52
  how it did and and you know, I like, I think we all kind of
• 50:55
  agree it went well and it was a good, good project and we got a
• 50:57
  lot out of it. But like how do you actually
• 50:59
  feel about it? Well, what did you learn from
• 51:02
  it? I think partly because there was
• 51:08
  such a gap from the film that I made before that and on or
• 51:11
  guano, it was just good to be making a film of my own again.
• 51:16
  I was having a lot of fun on set because like I say when it's
• 51:20
  it's very small crew that we had there was yourself as the only
• 51:24
  actor. I was the director, GE was the
• 51:28
  camera guy and then we had a drone operator one day then come
• 51:32
  in. And that was it really.
• 51:34
  So it was just kind of I always treat the films that I make.
• 51:38
  It's not a job. I always say that it's a hobby
• 51:41
  for me because I think a job often entails getting paid.
• 51:46
  All the films that I've made, I've not got paid for any of
• 51:48
  them. I've spent, you know, I've spent
• 51:51
  £1000 on a film that didn't even get made.
• 51:54
  You know, I've thrown money out there or no guano, didn't cost
• 51:58
  that. But there's certain shoots that
• 51:59
  I've done where we've set off. I've had to get accommodation,
• 52:03
  hybrid generator, lighting and then a storm hits and after one
• 52:06
  camera set up we called it off. That's 1000 lbs.
• 52:10
  Just gone. So in terms of what I've learned
• 52:14
  I'm I'm basically just happy that it came out the way that it
• 52:17
  did. Rick Wiltshire who was the
• 52:22
  standing who was there because I knew you couldn't make one of
• 52:27
  the days in which we were testing all the camera work and
• 52:31
  stuff like that. So we did a previous shoot from
• 52:34
  the storyboards we had. We then developed that into as a
• 52:39
  video with the lenses and going through over 1 morning with G
• 52:44
  and with this actor called Rick and when we were leaving the
• 52:48
  wetlands he said, what do you hope to accomplish with this
• 52:51
  film? And I said just to get it made
• 52:55
  because I knew that it would maybe do a few festivals, it
• 52:58
  would go on YouTube. I think of all the shots that
• 53:00
  I've made, it's I've had more correspondence with it because
• 53:04
  if you go on any of the other shots that I've made, there was
• 53:07
  maybe one comment, two comments, three comments.
• 53:10
  There's about 30 comments on that, all praising you because
• 53:13
  of your fanbase that. Wasn't all me there was.
• 53:16
  There was three other other people celebrating.
• 53:19
  It's all from you, Christian. I don't think there's a fanbase
• 53:24
  of mine that subscribe to me like waiting for my next thing.
• 53:28
  That's what I'm saying. So I'm glad that the film came
• 53:31
  out the way that it did and it got a lot of good reactions from
• 53:33
  people. This is the thing about your
• 53:36
  film. Making that like surprises me
• 53:38
  because like it's there's really good ideas.
• 53:41
  It's very experimental. I really felt like I know you
• 53:46
  that you say it's just a hobby for me.
• 53:48
  It's just fun and it is. It's refreshing to hear like a
• 53:51
  bit more about that as well, to be honest like that.
• 53:54
  It's because it's more like it puts less pressure on it rather
• 53:57
  than it. Not because like you've been
• 54:00
  doing it for so long. I have to believe there's part
• 54:03
  of you that feels like every time you do it.
• 54:05
  Like this might be it, this might be it.
• 54:08
  There's got to be a part of you. The film that projects you.
• 54:11
  Well look, when we, when we did that, right, I I felt like this
• 54:16
  is mega. This is huge and it all will.
• 54:19
  Like this is the thing about timing as well, OK.
• 54:23
  Like we did that film. It's not boosted our careers
• 54:27
  like in a huge way suddenly now. But who's to say that won't be
• 54:31
  in the future because you never know who's watching.
• 54:33
  You never know who sees certain things.
• 54:35
  I mean have a little look at like some of the people I've
• 54:37
  been in contact with recently. Right.
• 54:40
  And a lot of that's come from, don't get me wrong from like
• 54:43
  connections you know network and stuff like that.
• 54:45
  But I think a lot of it also comes from the work that you do
• 54:49
  and who you work with and how you put stuff together.
• 54:53
  I know there's people clamouring to work with yourself and it's
• 54:57
  because they've seen your work and they've seen what you're
• 54:59
  doing and they want to kind of tap into that a bit more.
• 55:06
  It's good to know. Yeah, I mean, I but like, I do
• 55:09
  understand the other side of it, that it gets like frustrating.
• 55:11
  And Lord knows I have days where I'm like, you know, like what
• 55:16
  we're doing here, like, I'm pouring everything into this.
• 55:19
  Why is it not going anywhere? Like, I literally did a video
• 55:22
  the other day about this. But like, I feel like it's so
• 55:24
  important that we keep going because so many people do give
• 55:29
  up and that's the reality. Like people would do this
• 55:32
  sometimes years and years and years and years and then decide
• 55:34
  to give up. And it's like you can't give up.
• 55:36
  You have to keep going because there will be that moment when
• 55:39
  it pays off, you know. And I feel like another element
• 55:45
  to this as well is that we, we have a very similar work
• 55:49
  situation. So like most people, I know that
• 55:52
  doing this will have like a, a permanent job.
• 55:55
  Like I have a friend called James who like, works the bar
• 55:57
  somewhere like permanently. He's an actor, but he, you know,
• 56:00
  works there. And I've done that.
• 56:02
  I've had like bar jobs here and there, hotel jobs, whatever.
• 56:05
  Right now I've taken the full plunge and I do like, agency
• 56:09
  work. So basically technically I'm
• 56:12
  unemployed if you want to. I mean I am employed.
• 56:14
  But like, you know, like I'm relying on acting, voice acting,
• 56:19
  online stuff and then this hospitality work like yourself,
• 56:25
  you're doing that so you can keep yourself free for projects.
• 56:30
  And this is, this is how I know, this is how I know that you're
• 56:34
  fully committed. Like, I know, I know you'll say,
• 56:36
  Oh no, it's just a hobby. No, it's not.
• 56:38
  You you know as well as I do have.
• 56:39
  A normal job. OK, let's, let's, let's be real,
• 56:44
  right. If tomorrow you turn around and
• 56:46
  you were like, yeah, I'm done and then you just got like a
• 56:49
  nine to five, I'd be like, all right, fair enough.
• 56:51
  He's, he's put it to bed, but you're not.
• 56:52
  You're still chasing it. And I believe that's because you
• 56:55
  know as well as I do that you've got something to offer and that
• 56:59
  all it takes is the right people to see that and then it's going
• 57:02
  to go somewhere. Absolutely.
• 57:04
  It's fun as well because you never know what will happen.
• 57:08
  You never know. Maybe after this podcast, an
• 57:11
  e-mail will come through for a job for five days next week.
• 57:14
  Absolutely, I'll do it. You never know what's around the
• 57:16
  corner, but a lot of times it's in other people's hands.
• 57:20
  Certainly if it's an essay job, it's up to #1, If there's a
• 57:24
  production shooting local, if the agent will then get to you,
• 57:27
  and if you fill that criteria that they're looking for.
• 57:33
  A lot of times, certainly with yourself, you're sending head
• 57:35
  shots out, You're doing self tape auditions.
• 57:38
  You might not even get any any correspondence from that.
• 57:41
  That's the standard, Yeah. I.
• 57:43
  Did one last week. I did one last week.
• 57:44
  I went out. I dropped my girlfriend off at
• 57:47
  work. It was a film partly influenced
• 57:51
  by Drive, the Ryan Gosling film. I'd love to be in something like
• 57:56
  that, especially now that I do drive.
• 57:57
  This time last month I didn't have a car that cost me.
• 58:01
  Got the licence in November. Yeah, definitely qualified for
• 58:05
  these things, right? The role is called the Driver.
• 58:08
  I can drive, I'll go for it. So we left.
• 58:10
  I dropped Zoe off at work and she was filming me in the car,
• 58:14
  changing gear, driving work. It was about half six in the
• 58:17
  morning, so it looked quite new Irish.
• 58:20
  I did it. I spent a couple of hours
• 58:22
  editing it, putting some things on, reading the lines at home.
• 58:26
  I've not heard anything back, but that's often the case.
• 58:30
  You don't watch him? Watch him get the role next,
• 58:32
  like tomorrow and. Then go Christian.
• 58:35
  You have to take that bit out the out the podcast, man.
• 58:39
  Well, that's that's what happens, you know, that's always
• 58:41
  what happens. Do you?
• 58:43
  Oh, just on a complete side note by the way, because you
• 58:45
  mentioned there that you're filming like you going into a
• 58:47
  car, stuff like that. Do you often when you're out and
• 58:50
  about, just like film, like B roll or stuff to be used later?
• 58:55
  I don't, I I haven't got a good enough camera for that.
• 58:58
  I know people who do. I know people who have really
• 59:02
  high quality drones and they'll go out on walks and film B roll
• 59:07
  like stock footage that they can sell on stuff like Pond 5
• 59:11
  because with on or guano all the shots of the birds.
• 59:16
  I didn't film any of that. That's all stock footage that I
• 59:19
  have to go in frame by frame to remove the bird, to put on
• 59:24
  footage that we have shot. And so if you that's the reason
• 59:29
  why it was a dove. I wanted it to be a pigeon.
• 59:31
  There's not a lot of stock footage of pigeons flying,
• 59:34
  there's a lot of stock footage of doves flying.
• 59:36
  So we'll just change it to a dove.
• 59:38
  I love that it's one of those pieces best sea of people.
• 59:41
  It's a flock of doves harassed by a flock of doves.
• 59:48
  I know a guy who owns a like a macaw parrot, because a part of
• 59:53
  me was thinking we'll just use that.
• 59:55
  Oh, that would have been amazing.
• 59:58
  You use what you have access to. That's the thing similar to why
• 1:00:01
  I made on a guano. I knew you were capable of
• 1:00:04
  something like that, and the location is a 5 minute walk in
• 1:00:08
  that direction. I really appreciate the
• 1:00:10
  opportunity, man. Thank you so much.
• 1:00:13
  There'll be more, there'll be more, of course.
• 1:00:14
  I hope so, man. I really would love to work
• 1:00:16
  together again. The second time we got to work
• 1:00:19
  together was interesting because and now I was working alongside
• 1:00:24
  you as an actor, so we were in this film called Choc Chips
• 1:00:28
  Together. As of recording, it's not out
• 1:00:30
  then when? I think it'll probably come out
• 1:00:32
  sometime this year. Don't text G Don't text G Let
• 1:00:36
  him edit it. Just let him edit it.
• 1:00:41
  I just my thing is that you record this stuff because
• 1:00:44
  there'll always be things I've worked on.
• 1:00:46
  I'm sure you have the same thing.
• 1:00:47
  You've you've done it and then you just don't hear anything for
• 1:00:50
  ages and you forget about it. And then eventually it's like,
• 1:00:52
  oh, hey, this is out and you're like, oh, yeah, I forgot about
• 1:00:55
  that, right. Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  I'm going through, I'm going through the because when I look
• 1:00:59
  at, I sent you a few notes the other day because I know if you
• 1:01:03
  look on my IMDb there's a lot that's missing.
• 1:01:07
  If you look on my star now, there's a lot that's missing.
• 1:01:10
  But on my lap, on my computer, there's a file of everything
• 1:01:12
  that I've done. And I think when I counted them,
• 1:01:15
  there's about 160 things that I've done over nine years.
• 1:01:19
  Right? And a lot of them I'm reading
• 1:01:21
  Quinn, What is that? And I'm there's no evidence of
• 1:01:24
  it out there. I'm going, what is that?
• 1:01:26
  And then I'll be in bed and I'll go, oh, it's the film that I did
• 1:01:30
  with abandoned all those years ago.
• 1:01:32
  He didn't finish it. That's what that is.
• 1:01:34
  And this was, I'm done. I was an expert in a bar for the
• 1:01:37
  student film. I can't remember that film.
• 1:01:40
  And then all of a sudden it'll come to me, Oh yes, it was this
• 1:01:42
  one where this happened. And that's an interesting story.
• 1:01:46
  But you have so many that unless you go back, you forget.
• 1:01:49
  I have the same problem as well. Like, I sometimes there'll be
• 1:01:53
  something where I I recorded something and they're just
• 1:01:58
  taking a really long time to put it together.
• 1:02:01
  And then they reach back to me and they're like, hey, so we
• 1:02:03
  need you to do some lines for this.
• 1:02:05
  And I'm like, who are you? What?
• 1:02:07
  And I have to start Googling that or like looking in their
• 1:02:10
  name and emails. I'm like, oh, and then if it's a
• 1:02:13
  voice actor thing, I have to, like, sit and listen to my own
• 1:02:17
  lines and relearn the voice again.
• 1:02:20
  Then they go from there. Christian I did a film, I think
• 1:02:24
  2017 or 2018 student film and then I messaged maybe a month
• 1:02:30
  later one of the producers saying, oh, he's he's left the
• 1:02:33
  country with all the footage. The director or what?
• 1:02:36
  I went, yeah, I think he faked his own death and left the
• 1:02:38
  country. I was gone.
• 1:02:39
  I wasn't that bad in it, was I? Yeah, I'll just have to fake
• 1:02:42
  your own death and just take all the footage.
• 1:02:45
  I think he lives in like Thailand now or something.
• 1:02:47
  But it was one of those cases where we didn't hear anything
• 1:02:50
  and I thought I was quite good in it.
• 1:02:51
  So I messaged, the producer said.
• 1:02:53
  Any word from this this film that we did or we've not heard
• 1:02:57
  from him in however long? I have AI have a similar story.
• 1:03:01
  Where with everything, he left uni, he left his house and he
• 1:03:04
  just fled. Oh, mad wow.
• 1:03:06
  Probably like a drug mood or something.
• 1:03:14
  There was a film that I did and it had like a big budget and the
• 1:03:18
  director was an asshole and long story, but like.
• 1:03:22
  I remember not an asshole. Sorry.
• 1:03:26
  Christopher Nolan's not an asshole.
• 1:03:28
  No, it wasn't him. He was, he was a sweetheart.
• 1:03:30
  I'm sure. I'm sure he remembers me very
• 1:03:32
  well. No, there was a film that I did
• 1:03:37
  and the director was just very rude and blunt people on set,
• 1:03:42
  which, yeah, it's not the end of the world, but it kind of did
• 1:03:44
  suck to see that. And I remember like calling him
• 1:03:47
  out on it one time and he just kind of, I walked away and I was
• 1:03:51
  like, all right, fine. But then Fast forward to like
• 1:03:55
  years later, he's like finally releasing it online or he's he's
• 1:03:59
  trying to like promote it. And I'm like great, when can I
• 1:04:02
  see it And he's like it will be out, it'll be out.
• 1:04:06
  I was like great, looking forward to it.
• 1:04:09
  I promote it as well on my socials and then he has a go at
• 1:04:15
  me because one of my images was crop cropped so I dropped some
• 1:04:19
  names out. So he's like lecturing me on
• 1:04:21
  like we need to give credence or like acknowledgements to
• 1:04:25
  everyone. And I'm like, dude, I know how
• 1:04:26
  filmmaking and TV works. I know that there's like a big
• 1:04:30
  crew of people that make it happen, like and I'm proud of
• 1:04:32
  everyone that worked on it. We smashed it.
• 1:04:35
  When can I see the film And he just, he just, he was after
• 1:04:39
  being rude to me, he was like, yeah you'll see it, you'll see
• 1:04:41
  it and then it just never got released or whatever.
• 1:04:44
  All I've seen is some stills, a very short teaser trailer, but
• 1:04:49
  like he's just not released it and I'm like why wouldn't you
• 1:04:51
  release it? So my only thought is that maybe
• 1:04:53
  it was just so bad that he's like ashamed of it, but I'm
• 1:04:57
  visually it looks great. I don't know so but.
• 1:05:00
  I don't, sorry. When we we had a screening of
• 1:05:05
  was it on or guano? I think it was at Gulliver's
• 1:05:08
  last year and we screened On a guano and then a film that I
• 1:05:14
  made, a horror film called In the Dead of Night Love.
• 1:05:17
  That, yeah. It goes from day to night.
• 1:05:20
  Now that was basically a film with a three act structure.
• 1:05:23
  And in September or October I had filmed back-to-back the
• 1:05:32
  first two acts of the thing because for people listening,
• 1:05:35
  it's a film in which someone gets stalked by a creature who
• 1:05:38
  was only there at night. When it cuts from day to night.
• 1:05:41
  When it's at night, the creatures there, when it's day
• 1:05:43
  it's not. We basically filmed it so that
• 1:05:47
  seamlessly it cuts from day to night.
• 1:05:49
  So the first day at night we were having to film the scenes,
• 1:05:55
  me running me, whatever I'm doing, and then we have to
• 1:05:58
  basically do it with the same camera, set up me in the same
• 1:06:01
  position the next morning, and then in the edit it comes
• 1:06:05
  together day to night. So it's like 1 long sequence.
• 1:06:09
  This was a film that we shot in September or October.
• 1:06:12
  Fast forward 6-7 months later. I've not even finished shooting
• 1:06:17
  that film. It's just there.
• 1:06:20
  And Rick who I mentioned earlier was the creature in that film
• 1:06:25
  and he came to the screening of Surprise, which was a feature
• 1:06:31
  film that we made that was released late 2018.
• 1:06:35
  And I said at the time of filming that in the dead of
• 1:06:39
  Night would be kind of like a a part of that.
• 1:06:42
  It would be like a In the Dead of Night.
• 1:06:45
  And then now your feature presentation, this other film
• 1:06:48
  that we made, this feature film, he came along.
• 1:06:52
  I think he was a bit disappointed that the film
• 1:06:54
  because he was involved in surprise as an as an extra.
• 1:06:57
  But he also wanted to see this film going from day to night.
• 1:07:00
  We hadn't even filmed it yet five months into the year.
• 1:07:03
  The next year we hadn't filmed it yet, and I remember just
• 1:07:06
  going through all the files that I have.
• 1:07:08
  I have maybe 15 scripts that are ready to go, and I'm still
• 1:07:12
  writing ones now. I should just film the ones that
• 1:07:14
  I have ready. We were meant to film one this
• 1:07:17
  month with G, and I've just kind of called that the day, I think
• 1:07:22
  partly because the actress is moving to Los Angeles for three
• 1:07:25
  years. Wow.
• 1:07:26
  I can always read past, but at the same time, it's a bit of a
• 1:07:29
  spanner and that's all it takes for me.
• 1:07:31
  It's the amount of times I've met G for talking about the film
• 1:07:35
  that we're going to shoot next month and it doesn't happen.
• 1:07:38
  There must be 5 within the last three years.
• 1:07:42
  Do you get? Like I found I found all this
• 1:07:44
  footage edited of the day to night shoot and I just messaged
• 1:07:49
  my friend Dave, Dave Green Bolton filmmaker, who made
• 1:07:53
  surprise with me, basically saying I have the first two acts
• 1:07:57
  of this film. Would you help me with the
• 1:07:59
  closing of it? Which is why he then stepped in
• 1:08:02
  as the creature. He's about a foot and a half
• 1:08:05
  shorter than Rick was, but we did it just so then I could
• 1:08:10
  release it because it's not doing anything on my hard drive.
• 1:08:13
  No one's seeing it. It's just getting, you know,
• 1:08:16
  digital dust or whatever. So I'd rather just put it out
• 1:08:19
  there, even if it's as part of a show reel that I did, just to
• 1:08:23
  get the footage out there because I don't like to film
• 1:08:26
  something that doesn't get used. If it's saying.
• 1:08:30
  If it's worth it, I think that film was quite good and the
• 1:08:33
  correspondence I got from screening that film in the dead
• 1:08:36
  of Night was quite good because last year was the first time I
• 1:08:39
  screened it. I think.
• 1:08:41
  It was Halloween time, so I think that's kind of why I
• 1:08:44
  intentionally submitted it for that festival.
• 1:08:48
  Have you released it on YouTube yet?
• 1:08:49
  It was on YouTube as soon as I finished it, yeah.
• 1:08:52
  Wicked. Yeah.
• 1:08:52
  Make sure everybody. All the films that I do just
• 1:08:56
  it's they just go on YouTube and then I move on to the next one.
• 1:08:59
  Make sure everybody goes and checks it out in the dead of
• 1:09:02
  night on YouTube. Dan McGee on YouTube.
• 1:09:05
  I'll make sure to to make that visual it.
• 1:09:08
  It was brilliant. We all loved it.
• 1:09:10
  Like because we all watched it at the screening of Onoguano and
• 1:09:14
  we're like, this is fucking brilliant.
• 1:09:16
  Like you're a great idea. Like I'd never really seen
• 1:09:19
  anything like that. It's quite ambitious and it was
• 1:09:22
  really well done because there's like different ways you could
• 1:09:24
  have approached that. But it was like very like like
• 1:09:27
  that. Like it?
• 1:09:29
  Was experimental, wasn't it? It was.
• 1:09:30
  It was a high concept horror similar to Lights Out, where I
• 1:09:36
  hadn't actually seen Lights Out when it came to making that
• 1:09:39
  film. Since then I have because it's
• 1:09:41
  one of the most. It's one of those films which
• 1:09:45
  really bumped up the filmmaker. He made a short horror film and
• 1:09:50
  then since then in the industry, it's like the guy who made
• 1:09:53
  Paranormal Activity. He made one film and then his
• 1:09:57
  name's on everything. Now he doesn't.
• 1:09:58
  He's not involved in them. A script will come his way yet,
• 1:10:03
  and then from the makers of Paranormal Activity.
• 1:10:05
  He's not involved in that. I couldn't imagine not being
• 1:10:08
  involved in the projects that my name on I oh, I don't know about
• 1:10:12
  that. Is it Executive producer credits
• 1:10:14
  someone who just put your name on it?
• 1:10:17
  Yeah, from the maker of one of the most successful horror films
• 1:10:19
  about. David, that's kind of the same
• 1:10:21
  as like saying that you have an honorary doctorate from a uni.
• 1:10:24
  It doesn't mean anything. It's not.
• 1:10:27
  A person. It does.
• 1:10:28
  But but don't forget, if you put from the making up from the
• 1:10:32
  makers of this film and you're trying to get funding, they'll
• 1:10:37
  know that this film cost $20,000 back in 2009, made $150 million.
• 1:10:46
  That's what that's why so many people make horror films,
• 1:10:49
  because they're very easy to market, they're very marketable,
• 1:10:52
  and they know they're going to make a profit.
• 1:10:54
  You look at the recent Winnie the Pooh film, right?
• 1:10:57
  Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey.
• 1:10:58
  I know a lot of people involved in the making of those films.
• 1:11:01
  I'd love to be in one of those films.
• 1:11:03
  I'd love to be in one of those films.
• 1:11:04
  You would. You want to do horror?
• 1:11:06
  Let's do it. I actually know one of the
• 1:11:09
  actions in. Bambi now the shooting.
• 1:11:11
  Bambi the reckoning. Now let's go and do it.
• 1:11:13
  Let's just turn up the set and go.
• 1:11:15
  Let's do it. I would like, yeah.
• 1:11:17
  I'd love to do horror movie. I just, I just, Oh my God, it it
• 1:11:23
  kind of reminds me of how everything is going in public
• 1:11:25
  domain now like I've seen on YouTube.
• 1:11:28
  They're all people are posting the Steamboat Willie video and
• 1:11:31
  just been like, oh check out this crazy new animation.
• 1:11:33
  Of course everyone can do that now, and there's no worry about
• 1:11:36
  getting sued because it's people feeling the public, don't we?
• 1:11:41
  Well, well, The thing is that's, that's jumping on a fan base,
• 1:11:44
  right? That's jumping on an established
• 1:11:47
  IP that, like I say, quick turn around on these films, They're
• 1:11:51
  going to make a profit. Brilliant.
• 1:11:54
  And that's why, that's why I made In the Dead of Night and
• 1:11:58
  the feature film Surprise, because I was, I was mainly
• 1:12:00
  doing comedies before that. If you look at the films that I
• 1:12:04
  was doing at university and after that they were all
• 1:12:09
  comedies. Because I figured regardless of
• 1:12:12
  the quality of the film making or the acting, if the audience
• 1:12:15
  is laughing, whether it be at the film or with the film, it's
• 1:12:19
  a comedy, At least the laughing. But the thing with horror, it's
• 1:12:23
  the antithesis of that, right? Everything has to work.
• 1:12:26
  The Mizon Sen, as they say, has to work because you're trying to
• 1:12:30
  frighten the audience. And that's quite hard.
• 1:12:33
  It's all good just having something go blah to the camera
• 1:12:35
  and everyone jumps. But that's not, that's not what
• 1:12:38
  horror is. So that's why I wanted to get
• 1:12:40
  into horror and why since that I've kind of stuck mainly to
• 1:12:45
  horror in terms of the films that I've made.
• 1:12:48
  What does this year look like for you as far as what you're
• 1:12:51
  planning to do? I would like every year the
• 1:13:01
  passes. I would certainly like to make a
• 1:13:04
  film of my own. I would not a feature.
• 1:13:11
  No, we did. We did a feature before and that
• 1:13:14
  was maybe three years of work. There was a short film, can be
• 1:13:19
  four or five months of work, you know, I'd love to do a feature,
• 1:13:23
  but that feature was self funded with myself and Dave Green and I
• 1:13:28
  think over the years it was about maybe 10,000 lbs that we
• 1:13:30
  spent on it, which for a for a film budget is very small.
• 1:13:35
  But when I have your own pocket and you're having to just do
• 1:13:38
  normal jobs, essay jobs in order to other people, accommodation,
• 1:13:43
  travel, whatever it is. So in terms of this year, it's
• 1:13:47
  January, it's quite up in the air.
• 1:13:49
  I'd like to have an answer of this is the film I want to go in
• 1:13:52
  production of. We were meant to shoot this one
• 1:13:55
  that is kind of cancelled or on hiatus for the time being.
• 1:13:58
  I would love to finish that because I think it's the best
• 1:14:01
  short film script that I've ever done.
• 1:14:03
  In terms of being like a whole piece, I would love to do that
• 1:14:07
  on the board. There's about 1236, I don't
• 1:14:10
  think you can see there's 6 lbs there that I would love to
• 1:14:12
  finish writing this year. So I think for this year, what I
• 1:14:18
  would like is to have the script for a feature which I can then
• 1:14:21
  get out there, and then it's someone else's responsibility.
• 1:14:26
  Because over the years I've found I don't often have that
• 1:14:29
  much fun on my own film sets. Even surprised when I was making
• 1:14:34
  this film, I wasn't having. When I look back I was.
• 1:14:38
  But I think there was so much weight on this project that I
• 1:14:40
  was having. I came into it perhaps with
• 1:14:44
  higher expectations than what I got, and I was perhaps being a
• 1:14:48
  bit more pretentious with some of the things we're doing, you
• 1:14:51
  know? Whereas now I kind of know my
• 1:14:53
  place. A lot of the work that I like
• 1:14:55
  doing as a creative is it's happened before the cameras
• 1:15:00
  start rolling, it's the writing, it's the research, it's the
• 1:15:04
  location scouting, it's getting the actors together, it's
• 1:15:09
  storyboarding the project. That's what I have more fun with
• 1:15:12
  because I can be myself, I can, I can be home, I can do all that
• 1:15:16
  work. So all the work I've done is
• 1:15:19
  before we even get to set. And that's what I think I enjoy
• 1:15:23
  more of and perhaps what I think I'm better at than actually
• 1:15:28
  being on set. Because this feature film that
• 1:15:30
  we did surprise there was I was Co creator with Dave Green.
• 1:15:34
  We were both credited as writing the film and directing the film.
• 1:15:39
  Dave loves working with the crew.
• 1:15:41
  He loves because at the start of the project I was being too
• 1:15:46
  ambitious with some of the camera work.
• 1:15:48
  I remember the first or second day of the first chapter of the
• 1:15:52
  film, because it's an ontology film.
• 1:15:55
  I spent about an hour and a half trying to block this specific
• 1:15:58
  shot. It was like a it was a tracking
• 1:16:01
  shot, it lasted about 30 seconds of screen time, and it was
• 1:16:05
  following this character. And as she comes into frame,
• 1:16:08
  there's something in the background, backlit, There's
• 1:16:11
  smoke. And every time it's off camera,
• 1:16:13
  it's getting closer until it's not there.
• 1:16:16
  And then instantaneously something falls into frame.
• 1:16:20
  I think it was a decoration, a Halloween decoration, and it was
• 1:16:23
  very specifically blocked out. And we spent an hour and a half
• 1:16:27
  of our time at this location doing it.
• 1:16:30
  When we edited the film, because myself and Dave edited the film,
• 1:16:33
  we used maybe 10 seconds of that show.
• 1:16:36
  So it seemed like we were wasting an hour and a half for
• 1:16:39
  10 seconds of footage because I was being too ambitious with it.
• 1:16:43
  Fast forward the following year we'd already been on this
• 1:16:47
  production for maybe 10 days, 12 days over 18 months he is we've
• 1:16:53
  we've managed to adapt where I'm I work better with the actors
• 1:16:59
  and he works better with the crew.
• 1:17:01
  And we didn't discuss that. It's just naturally how it
• 1:17:04
  progressed. He would go towards directing
• 1:17:07
  where he wants the sound coming from, even though the sound guy
• 1:17:09
  we had was fantastic, that's his job, to know where as best to
• 1:17:13
  record it. He was directing Pete, our
• 1:17:15
  camera guy, or Matt who was involved on the second chapter
• 1:17:19
  where I was working with the actors.
• 1:17:21
  Because there's someone who's acted.
• 1:17:23
  I like to be involved in that, even if I'm not on camera.
• 1:17:27
  You know what's interesting as well, like hearing you talk
• 1:17:30
  about that is because I'm having a similar thing right now work,
• 1:17:34
  because this is all for me. It's like figuring things out.
• 1:17:37
  Do you know what I mean? Like, I know I want to be an
• 1:17:39
  actor, a voice actor. I don't.
• 1:17:40
  I know that that's set in stone. But one thing I'm realising
• 1:17:44
  about myself is that I'm really interested in like the set up
• 1:17:49
  and creation of things. And like, for instance, I did a
• 1:17:52
  table read for a film the other day and I'm throwing ideas for
• 1:17:57
  them. Like we could try this, what
• 1:17:59
  about this? What about this?
• 1:18:00
  And everything, from the cinematography to the storyline
• 1:18:03
  to that. Everything.
• 1:18:04
  And then I'm starting to realise like, oh, but you know, I'm just
• 1:18:07
  an actor in this piece. But that's OK because maybe this
• 1:18:13
  is the beginnings of something else in the future and as you
• 1:18:17
  said, it's like you realise about yourself, maybe what
• 1:18:20
  you're interested in. Like for me, like I want to do
• 1:18:22
  acting and voice acting, I want to do all of that.
• 1:18:25
  But I think there might be a career maybe in directing in the
• 1:18:28
  future for me more because of what I'm drawn to.
• 1:18:32
  Like same as yourself, like I'm not as fussed about being in
• 1:18:35
  front of the camp. I just want to be part of this
• 1:18:37
  film making process and I love directing other people as well.
• 1:18:40
  I love like and seeing the vision unfold and everything
• 1:18:43
  kind of come together is like oh wow.
• 1:18:45
  And it's it's interesting because like you can be involved
• 1:18:48
  in all these different things like yourself, acting,
• 1:18:50
  filmmaking, directing, writing, but you you pick out things that
• 1:18:54
  are like, yeah, this is more where I'm effective, this is
• 1:18:57
  more where I'm useful. Like for instance, I suck at
• 1:19:00
  writing. I I can sort of do it, but I'm,
• 1:19:03
  I just get a bit bored to be honest.
• 1:19:05
  You know, like I can do like poetry or songwriting, but like
• 1:19:08
  when it comes to like putting a story together, that's a big
• 1:19:12
  thing that takes commitment. And it's like we all have these
• 1:19:15
  things that we're kind of more drawn to.
• 1:19:17
  And it sounds to me like you're having a similar thing there,
• 1:19:19
  where it's like you're realising that, OK, this is the, this is
• 1:19:23
  where it really comes together, this particular role.
• 1:19:26
  It's not only that. There's a lot of things that's
• 1:19:28
  happened personally in my family's life the last two
• 1:19:32
  months. So what you have to do is
• 1:19:34
  prioritise your time. Yeah, with industry, I forget
• 1:19:37
  that. It's a collaborative industry.
• 1:19:41
  I forget that, which is why I put so much weight on the
• 1:19:44
  shoulders of the productions that I'm doing, thinking that
• 1:19:46
  it's all down to me. It's not.
• 1:19:48
  It's not at all. I'll hire Giuseppe because he's
• 1:19:51
  got a fantastic eye for detail and he's got a decent camera.
• 1:19:54
  The fact that he's got a good camera is secondary to the fact
• 1:19:57
  that I like working with him. I don't just hire him for the
• 1:20:01
  equipment. It's everything, the fact that I
• 1:20:04
  can run off. I remember filming guano.
• 1:20:06
  I left something. At home.
• 1:20:09
  So I had to run, just let you film for 20 minutes, knowing
• 1:20:12
  that G was capable of doing that as someone who's directed quite
• 1:20:16
  a lot of things himself. But it's the same thing with
• 1:20:20
  acting as well, because I've not, I've not gone to a drama
• 1:20:25
  class, I've done acting workshops, but I've never been
• 1:20:28
  to drama school. Everything that I've done is
• 1:20:31
  just being on set. Yes, possibly collaborating with
• 1:20:36
  people, but succession? I don't know if you've seen the
• 1:20:41
  series Succession. No.
• 1:20:42
  I've heard a lot about it though.
• 1:20:44
  No, Jeremy Strong in that a lot of people had trouble with the
• 1:20:49
  way in which he would act and behave on set.
• 1:20:53
  And it it was only until he said how he his method of acting,
• 1:20:59
  which is when it clicked for me because it is collaborative.
• 1:21:02
  But I always treat it as you're there at home, you're rehearsing
• 1:21:07
  your lines. This is how I'm going to do it.
• 1:21:09
  And I approach acting on set like it's a boxing match, where
• 1:21:13
  I will come on set, I'll give you all I've got and then when
• 1:21:17
  they yell cut, that's me going back to the corner, the director
• 1:21:21
  will come give me pointers and I will come back in.
• 1:21:25
  Whereas everyone else involved in that show Sarah, Snuck, Kier
• 1:21:30
  and Culkin. They treat it like a dance.
• 1:21:34
  So it's acting, reacting, that's the way it should be.
• 1:21:37
  But I've realised that I've been coming into it like it's a
• 1:21:40
  boxing match, partly because of the roles that I've made clear
• 1:21:44
  when we did Choc Chips. The character I'm playing is
• 1:21:46
  this. So for that it works.
• 1:21:50
  It kind of works like that. But it also should be a dance.
• 1:21:53
  And that's what I think I need to on the craft of acting.
• 1:21:57
  I need to kind of find what I'm good at because it's all well
• 1:22:00
  and good seeing you can do all these parts, but I forget all
• 1:22:04
  the time because the work I like doing comes before the cameras
• 1:22:07
  start rolling. When I don't have to bounce
• 1:22:10
  ideas off anyone else, I can just do it myself.
• 1:22:13
  And I think I've been approaching acting the same way
• 1:22:16
  and it's not worked for everything that I've done.
• 1:22:19
  You picked you picked on something really, really
• 1:22:21
  important though as well. You talk about like the
• 1:22:23
  collaborative approach and like how that's a big part of it.
• 1:22:27
  Like, I feel like with certain people, they're just not
• 1:22:29
  interested in that. It's like come here, do your job
• 1:22:31
  and that's fine. It is.
• 1:22:32
  I get it, like especially if someone is leading this, you do
• 1:22:35
  what they say, right? But I always feel I get a lot
• 1:22:38
  more out of myself and out of the experience itself when you
• 1:22:43
  can collaborate like you mentioned on an Aguano, like me
• 1:22:46
  and G were having time of our lives just running around, like
• 1:22:48
  what if we would try this, what about this?
• 1:22:50
  We could try this and we were trying to, like logistically
• 1:22:54
  figure out certain things. We were also because there's
• 1:22:56
  another thing as well. You have all these ideas, but
• 1:22:58
  does it work for the story? Is it actually useful?
• 1:23:02
  You know, like there's all these things that you learn through
• 1:23:04
  the collaborative process. And I think that's one of the
• 1:23:08
  most fun aspects of film making is getting to do that, like
• 1:23:12
  working with people, bouncing with each other and creating
• 1:23:14
  these things, you know? And like, when that's not there,
• 1:23:20
  I felt, I feel like it's less fun.
• 1:23:21
  Like, as you mentioned, like sometimes it will just be like
• 1:23:25
  showing up doing a job. And yeah, like every actor has
• 1:23:30
  their process and it can be effective.
• 1:23:33
  But sometimes you do have to go outside of that to get more out
• 1:23:36
  of yourself. Like for instance, me and
• 1:23:38
  comedy. Like, I can do comedy, but it's
• 1:23:41
  not like something I'd feel that comes naturally to me.
• 1:23:44
  It's something that I have to kind of step out of my comfort
• 1:23:47
  zone to do. But that's good that's that's
• 1:23:50
  how you become a better act. That's how you get more
• 1:23:51
  versatility and and you you get more out of yourself and I think
• 1:23:55
  it's like that's the key isn't it is is really just trying to
• 1:23:59
  like get the most out of yourself and and grow as a
• 1:24:03
  filmmaker and and that ultimately is going to lead to
• 1:24:06
  you creating your best work I think.
• 1:24:09
  Maybe, Of course, Yeah. I mean, it's all it's all
• 1:24:11
  compromise, especially in low budget filmmaking.
• 1:24:15
  You don't have the budget to do that shot you don't have.
• 1:24:18
  It's not that you don't have the vision, but you physically can't
• 1:24:21
  do it because you need all this equipment.
• 1:24:24
  You know, you go on a film set, there's fifty people, 80% of
• 1:24:30
  them are just sat around doing nothing on these big budget
• 1:24:33
  shoots, right? Because a lot of their work
• 1:24:35
  involves, you know, there's a crew of 10 people to work the
• 1:24:38
  smoke machine. When the smoke machine is
• 1:24:40
  running, they don't need to do any.
• 1:24:42
  I kind of, I kind of love that though.
• 1:24:43
  But it's hilarious that they just do nothing like but they
• 1:24:47
  are waiting for. I get it, you're you're you're
• 1:24:49
  on hold. Almost.
• 1:24:50
  That's probably the best way to put it.
• 1:24:52
  Or on call. On call or yeah, waiting for
• 1:24:55
  your moment. And that's, that's the thing I
• 1:24:57
  sometimes I hate about acting. It's like, you know, your scene
• 1:25:01
  might be like the main thing that they're doing that day, but
• 1:25:04
  it might take 9 hours to get to that point and you might be like
• 1:25:07
  knackered, tired, fed up by that point.
• 1:25:09
  But you've got to go in there and a fault, and that can be
• 1:25:12
  hard to really to to do that. And I think that it takes its
• 1:25:17
  toll on you. Like no matter what part of the
• 1:25:19
  production you are, whether it's filming, you know, sound work,
• 1:25:22
  lighting, like it's tiring, just being there and just waiting,
• 1:25:26
  waiting and set, resetting up stuff.
• 1:25:29
  And but then that's the thing, isn't it?
• 1:25:32
  Like if you love what you're doing, you kind of ignore how
• 1:25:36
  it's making you feel. Like when I think about acting
• 1:25:40
  and filmmaking, I've had bad experiences, but I still had a
• 1:25:46
  good time. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:25:48
  Like, I still love it. And I think that's why.
• 1:25:50
  It's like, I know this is what I want to do because like, like
• 1:25:53
  for instance, when I go and work tonight and I do hospitality,
• 1:25:56
  I'll be there. It'll be me.
• 1:25:58
  But my heart's not in it. But my heart's always in this,
• 1:26:04
  you know well. That's when you're going to get
• 1:26:05
  somewhere, Christian. That's the thing.
• 1:26:07
  We'll see, I guess, but you've got.
• 1:26:08
  The mindset, Yeah. But you know, how long have you
• 1:26:13
  been doing this? This is Year 5.
• 1:26:18
  Year 5, right. OK.
• 1:26:19
  But I would say to your point by what you said earlier where it's
• 1:26:23
  like you have that official point where it like really
• 1:26:25
  starts happening. I'd say only a few years to be
• 1:26:28
  honest. Like around 2021-2022 is where I
• 1:26:31
  was like, right, We're getting serious.
• 1:26:33
  Putting the like, last year was a set up year.
• 1:26:37
  I got a lot of, you know, I got a spotlight, got signed, show
• 1:26:41
  reels, all this. I'm like, right, if we're going
• 1:26:43
  to do this, we're going to do this properly by the book and
• 1:26:46
  we're going to see where it takes us.
• 1:26:48
  See, I don't. I don't have Spotlight.
• 1:26:50
  I don't have outside of extras agencies.
• 1:26:53
  I don't have an agent, which is kind of what I like.
• 1:26:57
  I used to just apply for jobs OnStar now before it signed with
• 1:27:01
  Backstage, and it wasn't the jobs that were on Start now, but
• 1:27:05
  it's the people you meet on those jobs, which is where it
• 1:27:08
  develops. I remember within the first two
• 1:27:11
  months applying for a job for a zombie experience.
• 1:27:15
  You know, these haunted houses, airsoft companies, you have to
• 1:27:19
  pretend to be a scientist. Then the lights go out and all
• 1:27:23
  of a sudden you're a zombie. Now everyone's got guns and
• 1:27:25
  they're shooting you with airsoft things.
• 1:27:26
  You come away covered in thick blood, sawdust and bruises
• 1:27:30
  everywhere. And then I went just for the
• 1:27:33
  meeting saying, would you like to be involved in this?
• 1:27:36
  Have you done any stunt work before?
• 1:27:38
  Yes, I used to be. I used to do professional
• 1:27:40
  wrestling. OK, so we'll get you for that.
• 1:27:43
  Perfect. When I'm talking to him, he's
• 1:27:46
  going, where would you like to progress in the industry?
• 1:27:49
  First time meeting the guy I would love to be involved in
• 1:27:52
  filming. This was my first year doing it.
• 1:27:54
  Two months in. Oh, we've actually got a Robert
• 1:27:58
  Rodriguez associated producer involved in this film that
• 1:28:03
  shooting on the outskirts of Manchester in a month and a
• 1:28:06
  half. Would you be interested in that?
• 1:28:09
  I didn't apply for that job. I just went with the idea that I
• 1:28:14
  would be working as this zombie actor, right, this scare actor.
• 1:28:19
  Then the next thing I know, I'm going to be involved as a third
• 1:28:22
  AD for this fairly high budget action zombie film that's
• 1:28:26
  shooting in Manchester, shooting in Glasgow.
• 1:28:28
  They're going to pay me to go out there, train 80 people how
• 1:28:32
  to act like a zombie when you're shot, how to fall.
• 1:28:35
  Brilliant. That wasn't OnStar.
• 1:28:36
  Now, that was just knowing the right people.
• 1:28:38
  And that's what I mean when it's a collaborative industry, you'd
• 1:28:41
  like something to happen. Where if I know a lot of people
• 1:28:45
  who have took off in the industry but they have no power
• 1:28:49
  when it comes to casting people. We did a on or guano was
• 1:28:55
  screened at a fairly high profile Film Festival in
• 1:29:00
  Manchester last year. Jason Wingard who was a film
• 1:29:04
  director he'd done a few indie feature films now is involved in
• 1:29:10
  directing episodes of Coronation Street.
• 1:29:12
  Oh wow, nothing wrong with that. It's a very steady job.
• 1:29:15
  He's quite high profile director to be doing that.
• 1:29:18
  But the amount of people who were wanting to talk to him and
• 1:29:23
  thinking that he's going to go, I like this actor.
• 1:29:25
  I will put them in recurring on Coronation Street.
• 1:29:29
  He came out at the start of the presentation saying I have no
• 1:29:34
  say in who gets passed, so don't approach me with that.
• 1:29:37
  He said it in a very professional manner, but you
• 1:29:40
  could tell that's what he was saying.
• 1:29:43
  I get it, man. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think
• 1:29:45
  that's another element to it as well.
• 1:29:47
  Like when I talk to people, I don't expect anything.
• 1:29:50
  I think I just talk to people. Like when I was on Hollyoaks, I
• 1:29:54
  was talking to John Sutton and James Sutton.
• 1:29:58
  Is it James Sutton plays John Paul.
• 1:30:04
  Great guy, really nice. Like was very forthcoming with
• 1:30:10
  with advice and just just very friendly.
• 1:30:12
  I was, I was the whole experience was like really kind
• 1:30:15
  of surreal, but it was just nice.
• 1:30:17
  Like, I didn't feel anything other than just like nice
• 1:30:20
  experience. But like when I would talk to
• 1:30:24
  him, like I wasn't thinking like, oh, if I talk to him, I
• 1:30:26
  can get this out of him or that out of him.
• 1:30:28
  I just looked at him as, like, we're working together.
• 1:30:31
  I can ask him to start and he was more than willing to do so.
• 1:30:34
  And now that's a contact. Like every now and again I might
• 1:30:36
  drop him a message about something, but like, I don't.
• 1:30:40
  Like, I don't expect, do you know what I'm saying?
• 1:30:42
  Like, I feel like you can, you can.
• 1:30:43
  You can feel when people are doing that.
• 1:30:46
  Like another example, I just had professional voice actor John
• 1:30:50
  Bailey on the podcast. I saw that one.
• 1:30:53
  I saw that one. It was crazy, the podcast.
• 1:30:56
  Started. I heard obviously the honest
• 1:30:58
  trailer's voice, right Wow. You got, you got this guy to do
• 1:31:03
  his info. I was like, wow.
• 1:31:05
  Not realising that he was John Bradley.
• 1:31:08
  John Bailey. John Bailey.
• 1:31:10
  John Bailey. And then all of a sudden he's on
• 1:31:12
  there going, I know that guy because he's involved in the
• 1:31:15
  nostalgia critic and other online content.
• 1:31:17
  I was like, wow, amazing. But you were saying, Yeah,
• 1:31:20
  sorry. Yeah, well, no, I mean, it was
• 1:31:22
  amazing. You know, that's the hero of
• 1:31:24
  mine. So I was like blown away by
• 1:31:26
  that. But I was also thinking about it
• 1:31:27
  from the perspective of this is a guy and if you watch that show
• 1:31:32
  and you and you like, and I recommend everyone go check it
• 1:31:34
  out, right? But if you watch it, you'll see
• 1:31:37
  a guy that's doing exactly the same thing that me and you are
• 1:31:39
  doing. He's at the top of his industry
• 1:31:43
  he's doing really well but he still has to send about 1000
• 1:31:47
  self tapes every single day and and use every project that he's
• 1:31:50
  doing to help him set up for the next thing.
• 1:31:52
  I'll be like hey I've done I've worked for Marvel for for this
• 1:31:55
  and for that I've done Transformers.
• 1:31:57
  Please give me a job like he has to do the same thing that we do
• 1:32:00
  and. It's the same process.
• 1:32:02
  It's the same process you have to set with Sean Bean and you
• 1:32:05
  look over and he's just got his script and he's walking back and
• 1:32:08
  forth talking to himself with the lines.
• 1:32:10
  That's what he's doing. It's Sean Bean.
• 1:32:13
  It's just a bloke. Or Amir, but that's how we do
• 1:32:17
  it. That's how regardless of how
• 1:32:18
  professional you are or whether you're just very low in the
• 1:32:22
  industry, it's the same thing You have to put the work in.
• 1:32:25
  That's all it is. I really do feel like if you if
• 1:32:29
  you break it down like that and you and you carry yourself with
• 1:32:32
  professionalism and you just keep going it, it will work out.
• 1:32:37
  But it's it's it's it's you have to be prepared for those
• 1:32:40
  rejections, the disheartening feelings, the frustrations and
• 1:32:44
  everything involved with it. But keep going and keep pushing
• 1:32:48
  with your vision. Like, one thing I like about
• 1:32:51
  your approach is it's, I feel it's quite old school, but I
• 1:32:55
  love that because I want to see more of that.
• 1:32:56
  I feel like film makers right now, they're not taking enough
• 1:33:00
  risks and like that, as in like visually and like, do you know
• 1:33:05
  what I'm saying? Like, it's there's not much you
• 1:33:07
  like. For instance, we're both fans of
• 1:33:09
  Edgar Wright and he was quite experimental with with how he
• 1:33:12
  would shut things up and how he would tell a story.
• 1:33:14
  And it's like it was refreshing to work with you and and have
• 1:33:18
  that kind of approach to things. You know, I was like, this is,
• 1:33:21
  this is fun, this is when it's fun and I feel like it's more
• 1:33:23
  fun for the viewer as well because it's you're you're
• 1:33:28
  trying to do something different.
• 1:33:29
  You're not doing what everyone else is doing or what you know
• 1:33:32
  is just definitely going to please everyone.
• 1:33:33
  You're doing something that's risky, but that's where the
• 1:33:37
  interesting stuff is. That's where you, you know,
• 1:33:39
  every now and every now and again, it's always the same in
• 1:33:42
  the industry. Every sort of five years someone
• 1:33:44
  tries something different. You know, like right now
• 1:33:48
  everyone's going on about this salt burn, right?
• 1:33:51
  It's cut, cut. Outrageous, Bit crazy.
• 1:33:54
  But do you know what I was thinking about it?
• 1:33:55
  And I was like, it's getting people talking.
• 1:33:57
  It's getting, it's getting people's interested.
• 1:33:59
  And yeah, there's kind of nefarious reasons for why that's
• 1:34:02
  the case. But still, it's it's ambitious.
• 1:34:05
  It's doing something different. No one else is doing that.
• 1:34:09
  And that's that's what I look at.
• 1:34:10
  Like when you meet people in the industry, you're working with
• 1:34:13
  people, they've got their own processes, the way they do
• 1:34:15
  things. Like one thing, I know we joked
• 1:34:18
  about it, but like when I was on set with you and I was like,
• 1:34:21
  what if we try this? We've tried that.
• 1:34:22
  And you sort of jokingly said, like, yeah, just just do your
• 1:34:25
  job. Like, I'm the director here,
• 1:34:27
  right? But.
• 1:34:30
  I. Didn't say it like that.
• 1:34:31
  We were you know, it was like tug and cheek.
• 1:34:33
  We were having a fun drink afterwards and we were talking
• 1:34:35
  about like, because that's the thing about me.
• 1:34:37
  I will say what I think and I know that can rob people the
• 1:34:41
  wrong way like in the sense that like, but I'm not going to
• 1:34:45
  change who I am. I'm going to do that.
• 1:34:47
  And I think that's important to stick to that.
• 1:34:50
  It's very easy to let other people kind of come in and and
• 1:34:53
  prevent you from from doing you or being like, Oh yeah, I should
• 1:34:56
  probably just, you know, toe the line, do my thing.
• 1:34:58
  No, don't fuck that. Be you.
• 1:34:59
  And if it rubs through the wrong way, then it's going to rub
• 1:35:02
  people the wrong way. But it's as long as you're doing
• 1:35:05
  what's true to you, that's what's going to help you stick
• 1:35:08
  out and get somewhere with it potentially.
• 1:35:12
  Anyway, going back to the audition process, because I was
• 1:35:15
  thinking about this, what you need to do is just completely
• 1:35:20
  forget about it. When I get back, if I've got the
• 1:35:23
  sides of the character, I'll delete the sides of my laptop
• 1:35:26
  and I won't even think about it because that's when you start
• 1:35:29
  doubting yourself. Maybe if I said this this way,
• 1:35:33
  maybe if I acted like that, you start to doubt what you've done.
• 1:35:36
  If you've ever been in an audition scenario when you're in
• 1:35:39
  a waiting room with 20 other actors, remember you don't have
• 1:35:43
  to be the best actor in that room.
• 1:35:46
  You just have to fit the character and what they're
• 1:35:49
  looking for. That's all it is.
• 1:35:52
  You don't have to compete with these actors.
• 1:35:54
  You just have to bring something different to whatever role it is
• 1:35:57
  that you're auditioning for, right?
• 1:35:59
  I think as well, and I remember, I can't remember exactly how he
• 1:36:03
  said it, but Bryan Cranston said something on this issue and he
• 1:36:08
  summed it up quite well. I'll try paraphrase what he
• 1:36:10
  said, but basically you go there with a particular idea of what
• 1:36:14
  you want for the character, right?
• 1:36:16
  And they might be looking for that specific thing, and you're
• 1:36:18
  maybe completely off the mark, but you've gone in there with
• 1:36:21
  your idea based on what you thought works for the character.
• 1:36:26
  Like, I like, I got rejected for something the other day.
• 1:36:29
  And they were gracious enough to reach out to me and be like,
• 1:36:31
  hey, we're going to go a different direction.
• 1:36:33
  But we enjoyed your interpretation.
• 1:36:35
  And I looked at that and I was like, that's great.
• 1:36:37
  They saw merit in what I was doing.
• 1:36:39
  But they're thinking about something else.
• 1:36:41
  And I think a lot of young actors, they forget about this.
• 1:36:45
  You didn't get rejected because you're not a good actor.
• 1:36:47
  You got rejected because you don't fit the part because they
• 1:36:50
  have a particular, like maybe it could sometimes it's not even
• 1:36:53
  about the acting. It's like, oh, they just don't
• 1:36:55
  look how I because remember like the director or the writer's got
• 1:36:58
  this particular vision in their head, you know, like for
• 1:37:01
  instance when you chose me for or no guano, like, yeah, there
• 1:37:04
  might have been, it might have been somewhat to do with my
• 1:37:06
  acting. But I think it was probably like
• 1:37:07
  you're thinking like OK, if I'm visualising this in my head, how
• 1:37:11
  do I see this act like, OK, so Christian can do the the
• 1:37:14
  mannerisms. We're willing to get that kind
• 1:37:16
  of slapstick thing, you know? And who do I know that can do
• 1:37:19
  that? Like, it's you.
• 1:37:20
  You think about these things. Like, what are the tools I need
• 1:37:24
  to make my dream come alive? This person has it.
• 1:37:28
  This person doesn't. But obviously, because it's such
• 1:37:30
  a industry based upon, like, Lurks and all this other shit,
• 1:37:35
  like, it's and look, I see for it.
• 1:37:37
  It is what it is. I tried to focus on me and what
• 1:37:40
  I'm doing and just try to ignore all that, but I know it's there.
• 1:37:44
  I know that that's, you know, like I know that, for instance,
• 1:37:47
  there's a certain way that people see me and and what I can
• 1:37:51
  do. And I ignore that because I know
• 1:37:53
  what I can do and I know I'm just going to keep pushing for
• 1:37:55
  that. But you do have to kind of prove
• 1:37:59
  it. You have to prove it as well.
• 1:38:02
  Yeah, going back to you don't want to be typecast, but you
• 1:38:05
  have to break that barrier and go beyond that.
• 1:38:08
  Brian Kingston, I think, I think did it best.
• 1:38:11
  Like before he did Breaking Bad, he was that lovable, funny
• 1:38:16
  father figure. He literally had to like, I I
• 1:38:20
  like to, I like to think that he took that character and just
• 1:38:22
  killed it on screen in front of us.
• 1:38:25
  Because that's kind of what if you think about if you watch the
• 1:38:27
  beginning of Breaking Bad, he's he's basically hell, but then he
• 1:38:30
  just systematically destroys Al and creates strange.
• 1:38:37
  Turn. But you have to do it like I
• 1:38:39
  look at like Daniel Radcliffe and I know he's desperately
• 1:38:41
  trying to do that. And he will do it because he's a
• 1:38:44
  brilliant actor and eventually there's going to be a role where
• 1:38:47
  it's like, Oh my God, he's this guy.
• 1:38:49
  But people, it's still too early there.
• 1:38:52
  And I love him. I I have a bit of a
• 1:38:54
  controversial opinion in that. I think he sucked in Harry
• 1:38:57
  Potter, but he's been brilliant in everything else since.
• 1:39:01
  But we're not. He didn't suck in Harry Potter.
• 1:39:03
  He was fine, but it. Take a look at Robert Pattinson
• 1:39:07
  Twilight Twilight films. Since then, every career choice
• 1:39:11
  he's made is an improvement just to get away from that.
• 1:39:15
  And he didn't do what the Disney people tend to do when like
• 1:39:18
  Miley Cyrus tries to break out of that look and goes.
• 1:39:22
  It felt the way in which Robert Pattinson does.
• 1:39:27
  It is quite organic. He made a lot of indie films
• 1:39:31
  after the success of Twilight, which people didn't even see.
• 1:39:34
  People don't talk about The Rover or Cosmopolis or all these
• 1:39:38
  films. Fantastic directors he's working
• 1:39:40
  with, but the fan base from Twilight didn't follow him.
• 1:39:45
  Whereas which is I think better for him because you look at the
• 1:39:49
  box office figures of the films he made after Twilight.
• 1:39:52
  Unless it's a romantic film, then no one was interested.
• 1:39:56
  Which is why he was able to progress as an actor, because he
• 1:39:59
  was able to take chances that a lot of us can take because maybe
• 1:40:03
  we don't have the fan base. So.
• 1:40:06
  So we're allowed to fail because we have yet to succeed.
• 1:40:10
  Wow, what a statement there. Yeah.
• 1:40:14
  I think another thing as well is that you have to figure out what
• 1:40:16
  type of actor you want to be before you approach this.
• 1:40:21
  Like I've already decided that I want to be a chameleon.
• 1:40:23
  I want to do just reinvent constantly, just all sorts of
• 1:40:27
  crazy stuff. And you'll always buy it because
• 1:40:33
  I'm fully committed to that. You know, I'm not going to like
• 1:40:35
  just because like I've had people say, like, oh, you
• 1:40:37
  should, you know, you should do like Loki and something else, or
• 1:40:41
  you should be like a vampire Viking.
• 1:40:44
  And look, I can visually see it, and I would have an idea of what
• 1:40:48
  to do with that. But I'm not going to go to the
• 1:40:50
  most obvious things because acting is about taking on a
• 1:40:54
  character that is far from what you are.
• 1:40:58
  If you're becoming someone else, if you're just playing you, then
• 1:41:03
  you're not acting, are you? You do you know what I mean?
• 1:41:06
  Like, like, well, OK, look, this is controversial, but I'm just
• 1:41:09
  going to say it. If you take someone like Dwayne
• 1:41:11
  Johnson, I love him as The Rock, but as an actor, right?
• 1:41:16
  And I think even he would have to admit this.
• 1:41:18
  He's playing. Wrestler, right.
• 1:41:20
  Did you know that? I did.
• 1:41:21
  I loved him. One of my.
• 1:41:23
  Favourite wrestlers? Someone, I was having a
• 1:41:25
  conversation with someone and said did you know you used to be
• 1:41:27
  a wrestler, right? No, really, no.
• 1:41:30
  That's how he will always be, in my opinion.
• 1:41:33
  Well, that's the thing. Even if you're not a wrestling
• 1:41:35
  fan, I think that it's like that's what he will always, and
• 1:41:39
  he would. He's happy and will admit that
• 1:41:41
  too. It's like that's where he came
• 1:41:42
  from. That's where he made his bread
• 1:41:43
  and butter. That's the starting point.
• 1:41:46
  Then there's always going to be something that someone is not
• 1:41:49
  most known for. But that doesn't mean that you
• 1:41:51
  can't break out of that and try different things.
• 1:41:54
  You know what I mean? Like what I was going to say
• 1:41:57
  about Dwayne Johnson is he's basically playing like a very
• 1:41:59
  specific character. He's playing like the action guy
• 1:42:02
  that makes sort of, you know, little little quips here and
• 1:42:05
  there and you know, and obviously we know he's got the
• 1:42:08
  charisma to to be funny. And because my God, like if you
• 1:42:11
  look at those old wrestling promos from back in the day, he
• 1:42:13
  just destroys people and he still does it brilliant.
• 1:42:16
  But when you're talking about the type of actor you want to
• 1:42:19
  be, he seems quite happy in playing that role.
• 1:42:22
  And he's, he's tried to do a little bit serious, but he's
• 1:42:25
  still in that space. And I don't know, look, I don't
• 1:42:28
  know him. I don't know if he's trying to
• 1:42:29
  break out of that or if he's just comfortable doing that.
• 1:42:32
  But my point with this is that you can either be a type of
• 1:42:35
  actor that's playing a very specific role again and again
• 1:42:38
  and again, or you're an actor who plays several different
• 1:42:42
  roles or you're an actor who, you know, like for instance,
• 1:42:46
  Jared Leto, I think is a really good example of this.
• 1:42:48
  He does like lots of different types of roles and it's always
• 1:42:52
  something very different. And sometimes you don't even
• 1:42:55
  know it's him, you know, it's like, and that's kind of where I
• 1:42:57
  want to be in it. Like I not to be over the top
• 1:43:01
  with it, but like, I see acting as like an art form and that's
• 1:43:05
  what I'm focused on. I don't care about fame or money
• 1:43:08
  or or like any of that shit. Like, I care about, like being
• 1:43:12
  believable, being telling a good story and and captivating an
• 1:43:16
  audience. Like, that's what I think it's
• 1:43:18
  about. And in order to do that, you
• 1:43:20
  have to be committed to what you're doing.
• 1:43:23
  You know, you have to take it seriously.
• 1:43:25
  And I feel like it's just too easy to just do what everyone's
• 1:43:28
  expecting of you. So do the unexpected.
• 1:43:30
  Do what everyone is not thinking you'll do.
• 1:43:33
  You know that's how you're going to get their attention.
• 1:43:36
  Absolutely. I think as well with The Rock,
• 1:43:39
  he's kind of put the work in. So now they hired him.
• 1:43:42
  He's kind of a brand. It's the same as Ryan Reynolds,
• 1:43:47
  right? The good thing with Ryan
• 1:43:49
  Reynolds is he he managed to fit a character with Deadpool that
• 1:43:53
  fits his personality. He brought the same range into
• 1:43:58
  Green Lantern, but it didn't work with that character.
• 1:44:00
  I think it was timing with that you.
• 1:44:02
  Did the same with Blade Trinity. It didn't work with that.
• 1:44:05
  He did the exact same thing now in Deadpool and it works.
• 1:44:09
  So he's he's kind of, it's almost the character that fit
• 1:44:13
  his personality so well that if you look at his career before
• 1:44:17
  Deadpool, he was already playing.
• 1:44:19
  I feel like that's timing though, Don't you feel?
• 1:44:23
  Possibly, because look at it, you're not wrong.
• 1:44:25
  Like I was aware of him in Blade Trinity days.
• 1:44:27
  I thought he smashed it. People say that's a flop.
• 1:44:29
  I thought it was a great movie. It wasn't as good as the first
• 1:44:31
  two. I still.
• 1:44:32
  Like it? Yeah, same.
• 1:44:34
  I thought. I thought Ryan Reynolds honestly
• 1:44:36
  smashed it in that movie. He was really funny and, like,
• 1:44:38
  genuinely funny. It wasn't like a guy trying to
• 1:44:41
  be funny. It was Ryan Reynolds doing what
• 1:44:43
  he does best. He did a bunch of romantic
• 1:44:45
  comedies. They were funny.
• 1:44:47
  Green Lantern was a flop. But I think that was more to do
• 1:44:49
  with the story rather than his acting.
• 1:44:54
  And then, yeah, he tried things throughout the years.
• 1:44:56
  I think. I think that you sometimes the
• 1:44:58
  universe comes together and it aligns.
• 1:45:01
  And I think it comes down to having confidence in yourself as
• 1:45:05
  well. Like he kept believing in
• 1:45:07
  himself and that's what made him succeed.
• 1:45:09
  When I look at myself, the reason I know I'm going to
• 1:45:12
  succeed is because I believe in myself.
• 1:45:14
  Well, the good thing what you're saying as well is you're not.
• 1:45:18
  You don't want to just accept the fact that you could be
• 1:45:21
  typecast. It's going to look, it's going
• 1:45:23
  to. That's other people.
• 1:45:25
  That's other people telling you in.
• 1:45:26
  Terms of influences that you have, you like the almost the
• 1:45:30
  Colin Farrell's, the Christian Bale's, the Jared Leto's, the
• 1:45:34
  fact that all the projects they do are so different, different
• 1:45:38
  genres, very different characters.
• 1:45:41
  You don't want to be Chris Pratt or Ryan Reynolds or The Rock,
• 1:45:45
  which is what I like. I like the fact that you you
• 1:45:48
  have that. Well it's boring.
• 1:45:50
  I think that the the big thing about it is that I'm, as we've
• 1:45:55
  established A fuss pot, which is I'm a fuss pot.
• 1:45:58
  I can't just. You did it on a on chopped
• 1:46:00
  chips. I remember the scene was you
• 1:46:03
  have to drink the whiskey and leave.
• 1:46:06
  And I remember you did the first take and you sat there because
• 1:46:09
  you're always professional at everything, right?
• 1:46:12
  And you're there and you're What's wrong, Christian?
• 1:46:15
  No, nothing. Just maybe I could do it a
• 1:46:17
  different way. I just felt I wasn't doing.
• 1:46:19
  It trying to bring things in. Well, The thing is, it was a
• 1:46:23
  very small role, right? Yeah, you're bringing so much
• 1:46:25
  into it because, you know, you could establish yourself better
• 1:46:30
  and do a better job at the simplest thing of having a
• 1:46:33
  drink, getting up and leaving. Here's the thing though, just to
• 1:46:37
  add to that as well, and I appreciate the compliment.
• 1:46:40
  Thank you, by the way. It's not all about me.
• 1:46:44
  For me, it's the scene. That scene in that film was you
• 1:46:48
  are an angry mob boss and you're pissed off.
• 1:46:51
  And look, it's a bit tongue in cheek comedy, but we're all
• 1:46:54
  supposed to be terrified of you. My character was supposed to be
• 1:46:58
  terrified of you. My character also was a bit
• 1:47:01
  taller than you, right? Obviously I'm taller than you in
• 1:47:03
  real life. But like and we established and
• 1:47:06
  we established it. I like working with GE we
• 1:47:09
  established it in in like how you were sat and how I was sat.
• 1:47:13
  But I knew for instance my body language needed to communicate
• 1:47:16
  that just because I'm taller than you I'm still scared of
• 1:47:19
  you. So you notice my my shoulders
• 1:47:21
  were hunched. I was kind of sat like this you
• 1:47:24
  know I'm my head's looking down a lot of the time.
• 1:47:27
  I you know I that's not in the. Writing.
• 1:47:28
  That's not in the writing? No, of course not.
• 1:47:30
  Collaborative project. It's something you bring into
• 1:47:33
  that. But I wanted, I wanted everyone
• 1:47:35
  to. I wanted it to be believable
• 1:47:37
  that I'm scared of your character and that I'm nervous
• 1:47:40
  and I'm, you know, and I was trying to put myself in that
• 1:47:42
  headspace of like this nervous guy who owes money and that
• 1:47:47
  that's the key, you know what I mean?
• 1:47:50
  And I knew by doing that, it's going to make your performance
• 1:47:54
  better. It's going to make the whole
• 1:47:56
  scene better. Like, that's what I'm thinking
• 1:47:58
  overall. Because if I suck in that scene
• 1:48:01
  and I'm not doing my job, it means everything else sucks.
• 1:48:05
  Because I'm sure you, you know when you're like watching
• 1:48:08
  something and it's like all the acting is really good except for
• 1:48:11
  this one person. Yeah.
• 1:48:13
  Have you seen the bear on Disney?
• 1:48:15
  No, I have. A similar opinion with a certain
• 1:48:19
  someone in that. But it's it's so disappointing
• 1:48:22
  as well because everyone else is like really committed.
• 1:48:25
  And then you've got this one person who's like, yeah, Oh no,
• 1:48:28
  I'm, I'm so terrified. Oh, it's awful.
• 1:48:32
  And like the thing, the thing with the bear.
• 1:48:33
  And I do want to clarify this because there might be a certain
• 1:48:36
  point where people come back to this podcast if I am, if I do
• 1:48:39
  make it and I happen to be working with the cast of the
• 1:48:42
  Bear. The problem with this one
• 1:48:44
  person, everything about it is very believable.
• 1:48:47
  And that's what you hit on with chopped chips.
• 1:48:50
  What you said when you came in it just I want it to be
• 1:48:52
  believable. Everything that you've just
• 1:48:55
  mentioned, this specific actor is performing like it's a stage
• 1:49:00
  play. So the acting is very different
• 1:49:03
  than the realism that the bear has.
• 1:49:06
  And that's the problem that I have and quite a few people have
• 1:49:09
  as well. It's not a controversial
• 1:49:11
  opinion, but. No, but it's it's solid, it's
• 1:49:14
  it's like everything has to match.
• 1:49:16
  Because as you said, theatre acting and on screen acting are
• 1:49:19
  two very different things. Like if you're on stage, I know
• 1:49:21
  very. Little.
• 1:49:22
  I know very little about stage acting.
• 1:49:24
  No, you're saying I'm just going from like what I've seen in in
• 1:49:27
  you know, on stage of people performing.
• 1:49:30
  But what I've noticed is that they, you know, they they
• 1:49:33
  announced themselves more, they're more dramatic obviously
• 1:49:36
  because they have to be, but that doesn't.
• 1:49:38
  For the nosebleeds, when I when I when I did professional
• 1:49:42
  wrestling, it's the same thing. The move has to look as it does
• 1:49:46
  for the person on the front row as it does at the back.
• 1:49:49
  That's why the movements have to be big.
• 1:49:51
  So it's the same thing. I've just not attributed that to
• 1:49:54
  acting yet. That was just years ago when I
• 1:49:57
  did that. What's the same premise?
• 1:49:59
  I've got to ask you about this real quick.
• 1:50:00
  Professional wrestling you're because I love wrestling.
• 1:50:03
  You're a professional wrestler. How long?
• 1:50:04
  What happened? Come on.
• 1:50:05
  I wasn't. I I did training for
• 1:50:07
  professional wrestling. My cousin.
• 1:50:09
  I left for financial reasons. I couldn't continue to make the
• 1:50:13
  payments. My cousin stayed at it and has
• 1:50:16
  since gone to, you know, the film, fighting with my family.
• 1:50:23
  Yeah. So he my cousin has wrestled the
• 1:50:29
  the brother of Is it Paige? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:50:34
  Yeah. Yeah, so obviously not the
• 1:50:35
  actor. But the real guy.
• 1:50:38
  The real guy, he's wrestled with him numerous occasions and he
• 1:50:41
  travels the country. He's, he's gone to Afghanistan.
• 1:50:43
  Wow. Performing one of the troupe.
• 1:50:45
  So he is stuck with it. And one of my biggest regrets is
• 1:50:48
  not sticking with it, because I love, I love acting, I love
• 1:50:53
  action and stunt work and that was the best of all of them,
• 1:50:56
  right? So I really wish that I could
• 1:50:59
  have stayed at that. I only did it for maybe six
• 1:51:01
  months. I was doing it before, obviously
• 1:51:05
  with my cousins, but I learnt all the techniques, the moves,
• 1:51:10
  everything. I just never went on to actually
• 1:51:13
  perform in front of an audience, Whereas my cousin did and I
• 1:51:18
  think his brother. I've got two cousins, one stuck
• 1:51:21
  with it. You're the one lasted longer
• 1:51:23
  than I did, but then since he's come out of it, he's a musician
• 1:51:27
  now. They all do the wrong things,
• 1:51:29
  but he wants to really get back into wrestling.
• 1:51:32
  And I wish I did. I'm 30 now.
• 1:51:34
  I don't think I could get back into it, but it was.
• 1:51:37
  I loved it. And I know you like professional
• 1:51:39
  wrestling as well. I love it.
• 1:51:41
  And I will say this, don't write yourself off for your age man.
• 1:51:45
  Because DDP made it in his mid 30s.
• 1:51:48
  He only started like he was older than you when he started.
• 1:51:52
  There's there's quite a few wrestlers that like get their
• 1:51:56
  break and and start actually making it a bit later in life
• 1:51:59
  like. So if that's something you
• 1:52:00
  wanted to try again just saying you could but but it's the
• 1:52:05
  physicality element to it obviously.
• 1:52:07
  I understand how much that goes into it and like one thing I
• 1:52:10
  was, I was watching something yesterday, you know, Maven
• 1:52:13
  Huffman, tough enough guy. No.
• 1:52:19
  No, he's a guy. He won the first WWE Tough
• 1:52:21
  Enough and he was like in WWE for like 4 or five years.
• 1:52:25
  He famously drop kicked Undertaker out of the Royal
• 1:52:28
  Rumble and got beaten up for his troubles when was.
• 1:52:32
  He When was he performed? 2000 between 01 to 06, something
• 1:52:37
  like that. OK, so I was still probably
• 1:52:40
  watching it about. You would have, you would have
• 1:52:42
  seen him, Russell, he, he, he's got a YouTube channel and it's
• 1:52:46
  brilliant to be honest. And he did a video the other day
• 1:52:50
  of like it was like a tier list of like the most painful moves
• 1:52:54
  and why. Right.
• 1:52:56
  He's that breaking through them. And he's like one thing I kind
• 1:52:59
  of realised which maybe it was a bit naive of me, like I knew I
• 1:53:02
  know that wrestling hurt like because whenever someone says
• 1:53:04
  like, oh, it's fake, it's not real.
• 1:53:06
  Like, well, you you try having someone slam you down on a
• 1:53:09
  canvas buddy and tell me that don't at least because there's a
• 1:53:14
  difference obviously between like hurting versus pressure.
• 1:53:16
  You're throwing pressure at your body, whether it's jumping off a
• 1:53:19
  top rope, you know, slamming against something, bouncing
• 1:53:23
  against something, being hit with something like it's going
• 1:53:25
  to hurt. But there's varying levels to
• 1:53:27
  it. And obviously with professional
• 1:53:29
  wrestling it's all about protecting each other, trying to
• 1:53:32
  make things look violent and aggressive, but not actually
• 1:53:36
  hurting your opponent. Because you want to work
• 1:53:37
  together. You want to continue working
• 1:53:39
  together and making money. But there are just certain moves
• 1:53:42
  that just are pain and like that's there's no way of getting
• 1:53:46
  out of that. Like just a quick example, I
• 1:53:51
  remember watching many times like Eddie Guerrero doing like
• 1:53:56
  the Frog splash or Rob Van Damme doing the Frog splash on like
• 1:54:00
  Triple H And one thing I noticed straight away, like there's just
• 1:54:03
  apparently what you have to do to protect yourself and stop
• 1:54:06
  your ribs from getting crushed. You have to basically like, and
• 1:54:10
  you'll notice this next time if you watch a wrestling match and
• 1:54:12
  you see the guy jumping off the top rope onto the other guy,
• 1:54:15
  he'll tense and he'll kind of right at the last minute be
• 1:54:19
  like, oh like to to protect himself obviously.
• 1:54:22
  But that's how he stops himself from dying basically is by doing
• 1:54:26
  that. And that's still going to hurt
• 1:54:27
  because it's a man who might weigh like 2-3. 100 lbs.
• 1:54:31
  You're not landing with your stomach on their stomach you're
• 1:54:33
  no forearms and knees, right? That's where all they're doing
• 1:54:38
  is from, 5 feet off and then leaping.
• 1:54:42
  That's where all the pressure is going.
• 1:54:43
  Now, yes, it's quite the professional wrestling, it's
• 1:54:46
  canvas, but it is quite, it can be quite bouncing depending on
• 1:54:50
  where you're training. It's not always the case.
• 1:54:53
  If you've ever go to these small events where they have to put
• 1:54:57
  the ring up the day off and when they run into the ropes, the
• 1:55:01
  sounds that it makes, the creaking, you feel like it's
• 1:55:03
  just going to fall apart at any moment.
• 1:55:08
  Just complete side question, totally unrelated to wrestling
• 1:55:13
  you worked on boiling point. Yeah, name only I was there for.
• 1:55:21
  I was there for three days and I wasn't really used.
• 1:55:25
  This was. About the same time.
• 1:55:27
  Well, it was January last year. I was there for three days.
• 1:55:32
  I was paid for three days. I was on set for maybe half an
• 1:55:36
  hour, one of the days, and then I was just in the holding area
• 1:55:40
  for pretty much 9 hours a day, three days.
• 1:55:45
  Did you get to me? Interact with Stephen Graham.
• 1:55:50
  I have before. He wasn't.
• 1:55:52
  If you've seen the show, it was. It was the TV series, not the
• 1:55:56
  film. If you see the TV series, he's
• 1:55:59
  he's not in the kitchen. He is.
• 1:56:03
  He's lost a job in the kitchen and we're followed with the
• 1:56:05
  series is based on the other actress in IT, so I've worked
• 1:56:09
  with Stephen Graham a few times. The wrestling film which I
• 1:56:13
  talked about, where I just kept going to the pub.
• 1:56:18
  He was the lead actor in that. He was in a series called The
• 1:56:23
  Virtues, which was filming in Sheffield.
• 1:56:27
  We walked up the set within about 5 hours the year he came
• 1:56:32
  out saying Stephen Graham doesn't fancy it today, so we're
• 1:56:35
  not going to use anyone. We're just going to call the
• 1:56:37
  shooter. That's great.
• 1:56:39
  My train's not for another six hours, so I'm stuck in
• 1:56:42
  Sheffield. So I've I've talked to him, but
• 1:56:46
  as an essay, what's? He What's he like?
• 1:56:50
  Like, what's his? What's his vibe?
• 1:56:52
  Great. Great.
• 1:56:53
  He's he seems like he's he's from a working class background,
• 1:56:56
  right? Yeah, Liverpool.
• 1:56:58
  Me. And the reason why I do like
• 1:57:00
  Stephen Graham a lot is because he's kind of accepted his
• 1:57:04
  accent. I always thought because you're
• 1:57:07
  very well spoken when you talk to me in person, not like this.
• 1:57:13
  I'm a lot more. I sound a lot more common,
• 1:57:16
  right? I think everyone does, to be
• 1:57:18
  honest. I think so, but especially
• 1:57:19
  because it's associated with the Newcastle accent, Geordie
• 1:57:23
  accent. I'm from Middlesbrough with the
• 1:57:25
  Smoggies, right? If you listen to someone who is
• 1:57:29
  from Middlesbrough, they have a very specific regional accent,
• 1:57:33
  which there's very few people, unless it's Game of Thrones
• 1:57:37
  where you have Davos intentionally doing an accent
• 1:57:40
  from that region, there's not many famous people from that
• 1:57:43
  area who are actors. So I thought that it would kind
• 1:57:46
  of be almost my downfall in some degree, where I always have to
• 1:57:51
  turn the accent down, where Stephen Graham has managed to
• 1:57:54
  overcome that. I think it's it's really
• 1:57:58
  important to retain it because it can be used for so many
• 1:58:01
  different things. Like I've I've had Oh well you
• 1:58:03
  remember you remember that short the extras thing that we did and
• 1:58:07
  there was a guy and he was worried about his accent.
• 1:58:09
  I was like, dude, there's like literally productions calling
• 1:58:12
  for like people from say Yorkshire to do accents all the
• 1:58:15
  time. Like there's always going to be
• 1:58:16
  work there. But you're right.
• 1:58:18
  Yeah, getting to the top with with like a regional accent, it
• 1:58:22
  might be tricky but I don't think it's impossible.
• 1:58:25
  It's just I suppose there's are there are going to be accents
• 1:58:30
  that are fitting for different types of projects like
• 1:58:35
  specifically like when it comes to my voice, I'm from London.
• 1:58:40
  I'm not ashamed of of being from London or anything.
• 1:58:42
  I have my own, my own thoughts about London, my feelings.
• 1:58:45
  But yeah, but like I'm proud of growing up there and stuff.
• 1:58:48
  I grew up in the Northwest in the suburbs and but I've not
• 1:58:52
  lived there in like 10 years. You know what I mean?
• 1:58:55
  Like it's and obviously when you when you go there and you're
• 1:58:57
  around family and stuff like it's quite common human thing
• 1:59:00
  that you you almost like revert back to like an older version of
• 1:59:04
  yourself like unconsciously. But I don't know it's like
• 1:59:08
  you're not protect you're not Trump like some some people do.
• 1:59:11
  Some people would like I guess they're they're ashamed or or
• 1:59:14
  they they're trying to put on a persona or or whatever and fine
• 1:59:18
  like that is what it is. But like, I think for for some
• 1:59:21
  of us, it's just like we don't have a discernible accent
• 1:59:25
  really. Like, obviously I I spend a lot
• 1:59:27
  of time practicing and doing stuff with my voice for other
• 1:59:30
  characters in like English accents or American accents, but
• 1:59:34
  I focus on what the client or the production wants.
• 1:59:38
  I'm not really thinking much about how I sound but.
• 1:59:42
  But. It's I've worked with actors who
• 1:59:45
  when they yell action, they're completely different.
• 1:59:49
  It's like, you know, when you're a child and you think, what
• 1:59:52
  acting is an American accent like that.
• 1:59:55
  Clint Eastwood kind of I'm acting and I'm very serious.
• 1:59:59
  He kind of goes into that, which I think is just a way to
• 2:00:03
  completely disassociate who he is with this character.
• 2:00:09
  Yeah, that's that is part of it. They.
• 2:00:12
  Don't want to bring any baggage that they have as an individual
• 2:00:16
  to this character. They want it to be completely
• 2:00:18
  different, which you admire. But it's also quite strange to
• 2:00:21
  see because certainly with myself I don't really bring any
• 2:00:24
  pretension into the films that I do.
• 2:00:27
  I'm still a working class guy in the North interest.
• 2:00:30
  I'm meeting friends, were making a film, but the way in which
• 2:00:33
  certain people act to that, where they're making anyway, no.
• 2:00:38
  No, no, dude, I'm the same as you.
• 2:00:39
  Like I'll always be working class born and bred like N
• 2:00:43
  northwest London. That's always going to be me.
• 2:00:45
  That's me as a person. I'm not changing.
• 2:00:47
  You know obviously you changed throughout the years but you
• 2:00:49
  remember where you came from. But when it comes to playing
• 2:00:53
  roles like I'll base OK like for instance I know how to do like
• 2:00:57
  posh accents. I can do, like what people want
• 2:01:00
  with with that character, but that character, I'm basing that
• 2:01:03
  on people I've met, people like, I know what that character is.
• 2:01:07
  I've met that person that's not me.
• 2:01:09
  You know, That's why I find it funny when people say I I'm well
• 2:01:11
  spoken. Yeah, I'll take that as a
• 2:01:13
  compliment. But like that's not because I
• 2:01:15
  went to like private school. Like I went to a public school,
• 2:01:18
  you know, like I grew up poor. I, you know, I made the best of
• 2:01:21
  things and I've just had a lot of jobs, customer service jobs
• 2:01:26
  or voice acting or acting business where I've had to spend
• 2:01:30
  a lot of time speaking and making sure the voice.
• 2:01:34
  Episode 250 what? This would be 252.
• 2:01:39
  Wow. There we go.
• 2:01:43
  I yeah, I think that helps. If you go back and watch the
• 2:01:46
  early episodes of the show, I mean I think part of it's
• 2:01:49
  confidence as well in in your character and in yourself.
• 2:01:53
  I can understand why people sometimes get shy of their own
• 2:01:57
  accents because they think like as you mentioned, it might be
• 2:01:59
  detrimental and it's like, Nah, you could be proud of of your
• 2:02:02
  accent. And it's important like, and I
• 2:02:04
  think it's important for realism.
• 2:02:07
  Like going back to Stephen Graham, the reason he's such a
• 2:02:09
  fantastic actor is he's not a guy trying to be other people.
• 2:02:13
  But, I mean, he is, But, like, he's bringing that realness
• 2:02:16
  because that's how people speak on the street.
• 2:02:19
  You know, like, to be honest, I've not really acted a lot with
• 2:02:23
  my own accent. I've deliberately avoided it.
• 2:02:27
  And the reason why is I struggle sometimes to act with it because
• 2:02:34
  I hate my accent and also just feels uncomfortable.
• 2:02:39
  And I know I'm going to have to address it.
• 2:02:40
  I know I have to. Eventually I have to do that,
• 2:02:43
  and I will, but the mindset has always been it's quite easy for
• 2:02:47
  me to slip into different accents, different, because
• 2:02:50
  that's a different character. It feels, as you mentioned
• 2:02:52
  before, removed from who I am. Yeah, but when it's your voice,
• 2:02:57
  that's part of you. So when you're playing someone
• 2:02:59
  else, it's like, weird. A big problem that I have with
• 2:03:05
  coming into work that someone else has written.
• 2:03:08
  I often approach that even though I'm there as an actor,
• 2:03:11
  I'm approaching it like a writer.
• 2:03:14
  So part of me thinks of how I would want it delivered as
• 2:03:17
  opposed to me bringing. And it's something that maybe I
• 2:03:21
  have yet to overcome if we're talking about faults in what I
• 2:03:25
  do on, maybe that is the case. But you look at, say, going back
• 2:03:29
  to Stephen Graham, Jack O'Connell, who was in a small
• 2:03:34
  role in This Is England, the film from that.
• 2:03:37
  He's from the Shane Meadows school of film making realism,
• 2:03:42
  the film that he made. After that he approaches on set
• 2:03:45
  or whatever and he's obviously before that he's handed a script
• 2:03:49
  and he's what's this a script? I have lines that I have to
• 2:03:53
  remember. I'm from the Shane Meadow school
• 2:03:55
  of we just turn up to set and it's kind of like improvised.
• 2:04:00
  We know where the scene goes, but that's where he gets the
• 2:04:02
  realism from. It's not always scripted.
• 2:04:05
  So all of a sudden when he's on AI don't want to say a
• 2:04:07
  professional shoot because a Shane Meadow shoot is
• 2:04:10
  professional. So when he rocks up he goes hang
• 2:04:14
  on, but it's the realism that they want and that's the films
• 2:04:18
  that he does. The series, the virtues.
• 2:04:20
  When they came out and said Stephen Graham, he doesn't want
• 2:04:24
  to work. Today that was a Stephen.
• 2:04:26
  That was a Shane Meadows production TV series.
• 2:04:30
  I would love to work like that, like because I love
• 2:04:33
  improvisation, I'd struggle with learning lights.
• 2:04:36
  I love. I love that because it's like a
• 2:04:38
  don't you feel it's like a wrestling promo.
• 2:04:40
  You've got your bullet points. You know where it's going.
• 2:04:43
  Yeah, I think you. Find a natural way to get there.
• 2:04:46
  I remember we have very little in terms of improv.
• 2:04:51
  I think people associated with comedy, improv a lot of the
• 2:04:54
  time. I've done a few improv comedies
• 2:04:57
  and I'm often working with people like Ray William Butler,
• 2:05:00
  who is a fantastic comedic actor.
• 2:05:04
  So all of a sudden anything that I'm in, which is improv with
• 2:05:07
  him, I'm not going to be the good one.
• 2:05:09
  Not that it's competition, but that's always the case, right?
• 2:05:12
  The only time that we did improvise the film, I mentioned
• 2:05:16
  it partly earlier. I spent about 1000 lbs on this
• 2:05:19
  film called Point Pleasant. It was based on the Mothman, the
• 2:05:26
  legend of the Mothman of New Jersey.
• 2:05:28
  I made the costume animatronic wings.
• 2:05:32
  I built the structure of it because I'm from a special
• 2:05:35
  effects background. I did three years Bachelor
• 2:05:38
  Honours degree in university doing special effects make up
• 2:05:42
  for TV, film and theatre. So I made this Mothman creature.
• 2:05:46
  We got accommodation, travel, hide the generator, got all the
• 2:05:51
  lights. Camera guy Pete Allinson right,
• 2:05:54
  we're ready to film it. Over two nights in Yorkshire,
• 2:05:58
  the first camera set up is a shot of a car pulling up the
• 2:06:03
  actor Dale Wholey, leaving, drinking a can, throwing it and
• 2:06:07
  walking off to the woods. But as he's doing that, there's
• 2:06:11
  two red lights in the distance behind him and they come and
• 2:06:16
  then last minute it rises above the car.
• 2:06:18
  So it's meant to look like there's a car about to hit the
• 2:06:21
  back of his, but then it flies over and then the car rattles.
• 2:06:24
  So there's a lot of moving parts.
• 2:06:26
  There was myself, my cousin, aboard with two headlights and
• 2:06:32
  then on action. I'm running and then lift up
• 2:06:35
  last minute. There's a lot going on.
• 2:06:38
  We did about 6 takes of that over the course of two hours and
• 2:06:41
  the weather was so bad Christian, that we had to just
• 2:06:44
  call it quits. That night I'd spent £1000 just
• 2:06:48
  to get here. At this point I'm not a rich
• 2:06:51
  man, 1000 lbs, a lot of money, so we had to just call it quits.
• 2:06:57
  I'm depressed, I'm upset. I go right, we'll just go to the
• 2:07:00
  pub then. So I go to the pub, drowning my
• 2:07:04
  sorrows. I've spent all this money.
• 2:07:06
  I came with the impression of making this ambitious short
• 2:07:11
  horror film. Not on a budget, it's not.
• 2:07:15
  It's my money. So I'm drinking.
• 2:07:17
  And then Pete Allenson. Pete Allenson, God bless him.
• 2:07:20
  The camera guy said it's only a waste if we come away this
• 2:07:24
  weekend without anything. We've still got tomorrow and
• 2:07:28
  that stayed with me. So then the next morning, I
• 2:07:30
  couldn't sleep that night because of the rain.
• 2:07:32
  I'm in a tent without I bought. I just bought this tent.
• 2:07:36
  I opened it. There's no out of it.
• 2:07:39
  It's just mesh. So in the middle of the night I
• 2:07:41
  can't sleep. I'm getting dripped on.
• 2:07:44
  I'm trying to think of this short film we can make the next
• 2:07:46
  day. Just a salvage this weekend.
• 2:07:50
  And then this idea hits me, this short film.
• 2:07:54
  I've got myself who I was there as director and producer.
• 2:07:59
  I'll just step in as an actor. This other actor will get him.
• 2:08:03
  I've got Stuart Allsop, who is the drone operator, my
• 2:08:07
  girlfriend who is like the runner on the shoot, and Pete
• 2:08:09
  Allenson, the camera guy. There's five creatives who we
• 2:08:15
  can do anything, so we go to this location.
• 2:08:17
  I have a very basic premise for the story and I know where I
• 2:08:22
  want the scene to go and how I want the scene, the film to end,
• 2:08:26
  but how do we get to that? So what we did is just over the
• 2:08:29
  course of three hours at this one location, improvising and
• 2:08:34
  trying to bounce ideas while on camera.
• 2:08:37
  And then when we yell cut, we'll all come together like the
• 2:08:42
  boxing match analogy. What works, what doesn't work.
• 2:08:45
  I like that line. I like how you delivered that.
• 2:08:48
  Let's do it again. And then we do another Tick and
• 2:08:51
  the whole short film it's on YouTube became known as Fell
• 2:08:55
  Walker was this improvised 5 minute short film which we none
• 2:09:01
  of us went out to make that film, but just to try and
• 2:09:03
  salvage the weekend and come away with this project, which is
• 2:09:08
  one of the biggest accomplished accomplishments because we were
• 2:09:12
  all forced into this corner. We were forced to just try and
• 2:09:16
  do something. And I love that.
• 2:09:18
  I love that university. I was involved in a short film.
• 2:09:23
  You had to make a 7 minute short film in seven days and they give
• 2:09:28
  you a prop and all that stuff, you know, And I like the fact
• 2:09:32
  that we have to do it. We have this is what we have to
• 2:09:36
  do. Otherwise it's waste.
• 2:09:37
  We're all together. It's amazing how much work goes
• 2:09:40
  into pre production over film and you can overcome, you know,
• 2:09:45
  you can plan everything and it's a collaborative project.
• 2:09:48
  So the moment that you come on set and pitch different ideas,
• 2:09:52
  that's what I like. I'd like to just be able to meet
• 2:09:54
  up because there's so many networking events where they're
• 2:09:58
  just talking about what they want to do.
• 2:10:00
  They're looking at the future, where they want to be in the
• 2:10:03
  industry. I'd like to just meet up and go.
• 2:10:06
  We've got a camera guy, got some guy, three actors.
• 2:10:09
  Let's just see what we can do. That's what I think too.
• 2:10:11
  Yeah, like, why? Why is it not like hey let's
• 2:10:14
  work together? It's all good.
• 2:10:16
  It's all good. Talking a good game.
• 2:10:18
  And next week I'll be meeting G I'm going drinking with him.
• 2:10:21
  We'll be talking about ideas, but let's let's not talk about
• 2:10:25
  it. Let's just do it.
• 2:10:27
  Networking events. I'm in a networking event going.
• 2:10:30
  There's like 20 really good actors in this room.
• 2:10:33
  There's fantastic do PS imagine if you just brought the
• 2:10:36
  equipment. We've got this location.
• 2:10:38
  Let's just mess about with something.
• 2:10:40
  That's what I like. That's why I treat it as a
• 2:10:43
  hobby, not a job, because I like spontaneity.
• 2:10:47
  I like, I like it planned, but I also like the diversions that
• 2:10:52
  you can take in life career paths.
• 2:10:55
  We not know what we're working next week.
• 2:10:57
  You know? Who knows?
• 2:10:59
  That's what I love. That's what I love about this
• 2:11:01
  industry, that you never know what you're going into.
• 2:11:04
  So when you ask what's your plan for the year, I've no idea.
• 2:11:08
  I'd I'd like an answer and I hope that I'm still working the
• 2:11:11
  music festivals that I work. But I've no idea what the next
• 2:11:14
  film is. Maybe it'll be the film that
• 2:11:17
  takes off. Maybe it's just another film
• 2:11:19
  that goes on YouTube. I've no idea.
• 2:11:22
  Now I get where you're coming from, man.
• 2:11:23
  Like, I like my life right now is just the just all over the
• 2:11:28
  place. But I quite like that as well
• 2:11:32
  because it's exciting. It's different.
• 2:11:35
  Like it's not the 9:00 to 5:00. It's not, you know what Monday
• 2:11:39
  to Friday brings? Like you don't know what the
• 2:11:40
  next day brings. Who knows?
• 2:11:42
  Is my shift going to get cancelled tonight?
• 2:11:44
  Am I going to be doing this random thing here?
• 2:11:46
  And we're going to go out here and we're going to do this and
• 2:11:48
  I'm going to do that, like next week I'm in London, for
• 2:11:50
  instance. Like it's you.
• 2:11:51
  Who in fuck knows, You know, it's like, but that's what keeps
• 2:11:54
  it interesting. That's what keeps not only what
• 2:11:57
  we do interesting, but life interesting.
• 2:12:00
  Yes, yes, it's making the most. It's having stories, it's
• 2:12:05
  interacting with people, networking the amount of people
• 2:12:08
  in, dare I say, normal jobs. I think in the industry they say
• 2:12:12
  survival jobs, jobs that you have to have to pay for the
• 2:12:17
  acting jobs that you want to do. But the amount of times you talk
• 2:12:20
  to these people where they don't really have ambition, I don't
• 2:12:24
  like that. I'd like.
• 2:12:25
  I don't understand. That no, no, you have to, yeah.
• 2:12:30
  You have to make the most of what you have, right?
• 2:12:32
  If you've got a talent doing that, do that.
• 2:12:34
  What is like I mentioned that B roll footage friend earlier,
• 2:12:39
  like I just asked because I was just curious, right?
• 2:12:41
  But the reason like I've started doing that.
• 2:12:43
  I've started like making little short film type deals.
• 2:12:47
  I put commentary over it. Sometimes it will just have no
• 2:12:52
  like like for instance I uploaded something on my Patreon
• 2:12:54
  and it was a day in the life of barista and it was literally
• 2:12:56
  just a bunch of clips, 3-4 minutes, just me as a barista
• 2:13:01
  and it was like something clicked in my head was like this
• 2:13:04
  is what I should be doing. I should be experimenting.
• 2:13:05
  I have a phone. I might not have a professional
• 2:13:08
  film camera or whatever, but I have a device which will enable
• 2:13:11
  me to try things. Try try try in the. 60s
• 2:13:15
  Seventies making films more than they had.
• 2:13:17
  Exactly like it's it's like, like you said, you you look at
• 2:13:21
  what you have and not what you don't have.
• 2:13:23
  Make the best of it, and who knows where this could take us.
• 2:13:26
  There's there's an act that I worked with years ago on a NHS
• 2:13:31
  training video depression, suicide at work thing.
• 2:13:35
  So when it when you apply for a nursing job, you might end up
• 2:13:39
  seeing me in these training videos that you see.
• 2:13:42
  I've done it for JD Sports, I did it for NHS and there was an
• 2:13:46
  actor I was working opposite who I auditioned with called Corin
• 2:13:49
  Silva. He's quite high up in the
• 2:13:52
  industry now he's working on the new Spielberg production.
• 2:13:55
  You're doing quite a lot of things.
• 2:13:57
  It's quite annoying because he's a few weeks younger than me, so
• 2:14:01
  you always feel like you're competing with similar, a
• 2:14:04
  similar age as you, right? Where was I going with that?
• 2:14:11
  That had a point that I completely got.
• 2:14:13
  We we were talking about people's goals as far as like
• 2:14:18
  trying to get somewhere in the industry and having like
• 2:14:20
  motivations for for pursuing things.
• 2:14:22
  And I think that like one thing that I was mentioning was like
• 2:14:26
  how we want to try and work together to achieve that and
• 2:14:30
  like try different things like be experimental, you know and
• 2:14:34
  and see where that leads and see where we can take that moving
• 2:14:38
  forward. We with it wasn't the story I
• 2:14:42
  was I was getting to. The next time I worked with
• 2:14:45
  Colin Silva, I just hired him to IG as well.
• 2:14:50
  We were basically the scene was it was a short comedy sketch,
• 2:14:55
  2-3 minutes in length filming a crazy Pedros Manchester City
• 2:14:59
  centre. We prepped it all.
• 2:15:01
  We'd done all the storyboards, all the actors together, and
• 2:15:04
  then as we walked up on the day we're knocking on the door, they
• 2:15:08
  wouldn't let us in. Well, we've we've got this place
• 2:15:11
  booked, we're filming in the toilet, We're not in the
• 2:15:13
  restaurant area, We're filming in the bathroom.
• 2:15:16
  No, no, you can't go in. So we're there for an hour and a
• 2:15:19
  half, two hours in Costa over the road.
• 2:15:23
  And then all of a sudden the boss who we'd negotiated with to
• 2:15:27
  work, there, he comes in. Yeah, you just film.
• 2:15:31
  So we had three hours to film this short sketch.
• 2:15:34
  Now all of a sudden we have one hour to shoot the short sketch.
• 2:15:38
  So it was like with greyhounds in the box and then as soon as
• 2:15:41
  the door opens, it's run, run, you get the camera set up, you
• 2:15:44
  get the everything. And then we did it all.
• 2:15:47
  It was the same, similar to what we did do in Yorkshire with that
• 2:15:51
  film. We just kind of not improvised
• 2:15:53
  it, We just had to rush it all and it came together quite well,
• 2:15:58
  but we had to rush with this idea.
• 2:16:00
  So it's things that you can't predict you.
• 2:16:03
  Know it's it's like. Short film, you get there.
• 2:16:05
  It's raining and all of a sudden we're inside filming What?
• 2:16:08
  This completely changes the scene, but it's that
• 2:16:10
  spontaneity. Yeah, It kind of speaks to that
• 2:16:13
  whole thing in life of of adapting to change.
• 2:16:16
  Life is it's never just going to be textbook.
• 2:16:18
  It's never just going to be what you expect.
• 2:16:20
  It's always going to be what you don't expect.
• 2:16:22
  And how do you make the best of that and maybe make even
• 2:16:26
  something better than you'd originally envisioned?
• 2:16:27
  I mean for sure a couple of final questions for you,
• 2:16:31
  completely unrelated to today's show, but just I ask everyone
• 2:16:35
  this interested for your thoughts.
• 2:16:38
  What's the biggest mistake that you've made that you've learned
• 2:16:41
  a valuable life lesson from? In filming or in life, could.
• 2:16:49
  Be either, whatever, whatever comes to mind.
• 2:16:53
  I think I often regret the things I don't do than the
• 2:16:57
  things I do do. It's quite a broad statement,
• 2:17:03
  but I the things that I'm regretting are the things that I
• 2:17:06
  didn't carry on doing the films I didn't make, the career paths
• 2:17:10
  that I could have gone down, as opposed to things in life that I
• 2:17:12
  have actually done because I'm here, I'm relatively healthy.
• 2:17:17
  So it's such a big question that there's so much to answer in
• 2:17:24
  terms of personal things which I don't really want to discuss
• 2:17:28
  online. But I think just to wrap that
• 2:17:31
  bit up, not to be, not to breeze past the question was the things
• 2:17:35
  that I didn't do. No, I get.
• 2:17:37
  It man wrestling. It's the fact that I had the
• 2:17:40
  opportunity to make a short film three months ago and then I
• 2:17:44
  pushed it back to January and now something happens where we
• 2:17:46
  can't film it this month. It's things like that, because
• 2:17:50
  that would have started the year off pretty well, going straight
• 2:17:53
  into production of my own. So then, even in between other
• 2:17:57
  jobs that I'm doing, I can still be editing that film.
• 2:18:02
  So now all of a sudden I'm having to rely on other people's
• 2:18:05
  projects for the next. Unless I think of an idea or I
• 2:18:10
  see a short film that I could just do in a day.
• 2:18:13
  I think that's the case. I've not got anything of my own
• 2:18:15
  to work for in the next four months as of now, and I wish
• 2:18:20
  that I did. I could do well.
• 2:18:23
  I yeah, I could. I bet I could just sit there and
• 2:18:25
  look through all the the stuff you've got, like the scripts and
• 2:18:28
  be like, oh, what? We could do this, this, this,
• 2:18:31
  this and this with this and you'd be like because that's.
• 2:18:33
  What you need? But that's what you need.
• 2:18:36
  That's what you need is, is like enthusiasm.
• 2:18:40
  You need someone to kind of like go, oh, this is amazing, we
• 2:18:43
  could do this, this. And then your mind starts to
• 2:18:45
  come alive and you're like, oh, and that and that is what you're
• 2:18:49
  looking for. I mean, I've got a good friend,
• 2:18:51
  Bolton, filmmaker Dave Green, The amount of conversations of
• 2:18:54
  films we have, that's that's what I have.
• 2:18:57
  He's my go to guy when it comes to day drinking, discussing
• 2:19:01
  films because he is so good with ideas, certainly horror.
• 2:19:05
  He's a big horrible and we'll just bounce ideas and I wish
• 2:19:08
  that I was either recording those conversations or writing
• 2:19:11
  it all down because we're drinking and there's so many
• 2:19:14
  good ideas where the next day going?
• 2:19:15
  What was that film we were talking about?
• 2:19:17
  I can't remember. Should have wrote it down very
• 2:19:20
  little. So that's another thing I regret
• 2:19:22
  not writing, you know, waking up for an amazing dreams.
• 2:19:26
  I'll remember that I forgot it. A great line of dialogue.
• 2:19:29
  I forgot it. It's the little things that I
• 2:19:31
  regret, not the, you know. What's the best advice you've
• 2:19:37
  ever received? I was waiting for that one since
• 2:19:41
  you said I was going to be on this podcast.
• 2:19:43
  I've been trying to think and for the life of me I can't think
• 2:19:47
  because often times I don't take advantage.
• 2:19:50
  Yeah. The advice of someone would be
• 2:19:52
  get a normal job. No, no, no, that's not for me.
• 2:19:57
  That doesn't excite me. It's been like I'm butchering
• 2:20:02
  these answers that. No, no, no.
• 2:20:04
  This is amazing man. Not the best sound bites that
• 2:20:06
  you're getting, but the best advice?
• 2:20:08
  I'm honestly, I'm not sure I've been.
• 2:20:10
  Trying Let's let's dissect that one, for instance.
• 2:20:14
  I mean, that's an interesting one you said.
• 2:20:17
  Advice I don't take. I think that's brilliant too.
• 2:20:20
  I mean, right there. You've been pursuing this for.
• 2:20:23
  Yeah, it's about about nine years, give or take.
• 2:20:25
  Right. And people listen, I've had
• 2:20:29
  people say the same thing. I've heard people say,
• 2:20:31
  Christian, your head is in the clouds.
• 2:20:33
  You should get a real job. You know, what if this doesn't
• 2:20:36
  work out? Have you thought about that?
• 2:20:38
  Well, the answer to that is no. I haven't thought about if it
• 2:20:40
  doesn't work out because I'm focused on what.
• 2:20:43
  Yeah, I think that's what motivates me.
• 2:20:45
  I think I don't like the compliments.
• 2:20:47
  I don't like the the the advice that sinks in is the negative
• 2:20:53
  advice. It's the ones that I'm not going
• 2:20:55
  to listen to. That's what stayed with me,
• 2:20:57
  because otherwise I just kind of.
• 2:20:59
  Because you want to prove me wrong.
• 2:21:01
  Yeah, yeah, well, prove me right, not prove them wrong.
• 2:21:08
  Prove me right. I know what I'm doing, leave me
• 2:21:11
  to it. What's the biggest life lesson
• 2:21:15
  you've learned so far? That's a very good question.
• 2:21:25
  The best life lesson? Be a good human being.
• 2:21:31
  I know that sounds simple, but it's so easy to be distracted on
• 2:21:34
  film sets. And the way in which you're
• 2:21:36
  treated comes back to what we were first talking about, all
• 2:21:39
  the essay jobs. Your job is to just talk to me
• 2:21:43
  as a human being and we'll get through this right?
• 2:21:47
  The amount of times, bad experiences I've had with SAS
• 2:21:50
  and arguments that I've had with them walking off sets, if you
• 2:21:55
  just talk to me as a human being, not as someone you could
• 2:22:00
  just bottom up as a human being in all lives of work, That as
• 2:22:06
  simple as it is, it's just that. Just be human.
• 2:22:09
  Don't come in with all your pretensions.
• 2:22:11
  We're going to do this. Just just be a human being.
• 2:22:18
  Very. Broad answers, very broad
• 2:22:20
  answers. It's beautiful.
• 2:22:23
  Final question for you. Do you have any upcoming
• 2:22:25
  projects or final thoughts that you'd like to share with our
• 2:22:27
  listeners? Upcoming projects.
• 2:22:31
  I'm doing a lot of writing at the moment, which is quite
• 2:22:33
  frustrating because I've so I've so many projects that I'm
• 2:22:36
  written that I should be moving on with.
• 2:22:40
  I'm happy to just continue a career in writing, directing a
• 2:22:44
  few projects myself. But I'm happy to because it is a
• 2:22:48
  collaborative industry. Hand over, sell the script for
• 2:22:53
  someone else to take that on. I'm very much happy for that.
• 2:22:57
  So I'm doing a lot of writing at the moment.
• 2:23:00
  Wednesday, coming with rehearsing and blocking a short
• 2:23:04
  film that I auditioned for last week.
• 2:23:07
  I bagged the role. We're filming it next Friday.
• 2:23:10
  Congrats. Thank you.
• 2:23:13
  And after that, I think it'll just be as and when jobs start
• 2:23:16
  coming in with different agencies.
• 2:23:19
  There's not a big project I'm looking forward to.
• 2:23:22
  I'm not actively looking at shooting a film soon, but if
• 2:23:27
  something comes along, if we meet up one day, we talk about
• 2:23:32
  something with G, with Dave Green, something will come
• 2:23:36
  about. So it's mainly what I'm working
• 2:23:38
  on now. It's just a lot of writing,
• 2:23:41
  which is always the case. It's always anticipating that
• 2:23:44
  next project which might not come, but I'm always on standby,
• 2:23:47
  ready for whatever happens, you know, in life.
• 2:23:54
  This has been amazing conversation because I think not
• 2:23:56
  only have I learned more about just filmmaking and in general,
• 2:24:00
  but I've learned more about you, which is like it's quite nice
• 2:24:03
  for me to like get more inside your kind of.
• 2:24:06
  But how you approach this, how you think about this, I think
• 2:24:09
  that's always been a bit of a mystery to me.
• 2:24:11
  So it's been it's been a lot of fun for me, man A.
• 2:24:12
  Little bit. It's not baggage, but it's a lot
• 2:24:15
  of things that you want to tell you want to get off, you know,
• 2:24:18
  certain conversations you have with yourself, especially
• 2:24:20
  knowing that you're doing a podcast.
• 2:24:22
  I'll talk about that. I don't even know if we've not
• 2:24:25
  talked about all the projects that we've done, whatever, but I
• 2:24:28
  kind of like that because I felt like I needed to almost project.
• 2:24:33
  There are so in the. Industry, The things I love and
• 2:24:36
  the things I wouldn't change, basically.
• 2:24:39
  That's what the purpose of this has been for me at least.
• 2:24:42
  This has been one of my favorite shows so far because every now
• 2:24:45
  and again you get a podcast where like, look, here's a full
• 2:24:50
  page of notes here, Here's another page of notes here.
• 2:24:53
  Like every show I do, I've barely asked any of the
• 2:24:56
  questions. Why?
• 2:24:57
  Because it's been a conversation.
• 2:24:59
  Because it's been like and there's been a point with it and
• 2:25:02
  as you noticed, I would have been guiding it and and digging
• 2:25:05
  into it. But like a lot of the time you
• 2:25:06
  get invested in the conversation and you lose yourself in that.
• 2:25:11
  And as you said, it's getting things off your chest.
• 2:25:13
  It's it's showing the world like this is, this is how I think you
• 2:25:17
  know. So for anyone watching,
• 2:25:18
  especially in the industry, you'll see that Dan is a
• 2:25:20
  filmmaker who's got ideas and enthusiasm, just needs like,
• 2:25:29
  well, do you know what we all do sometimes?
• 2:25:32
  I know I do sometimes. Sometimes I get like really
• 2:25:34
  caught up in myself and negative about things.
• 2:25:37
  And then my friends remind me, you know, hey, listen, get back
• 2:25:43
  on the horseman. It's time to get business done.
• 2:25:45
  Like, look at everything you have done, you know?
• 2:25:47
  And I say the same to you. Like nothing drives me more nuts
• 2:25:51
  than when you don't see what I see.
• 2:25:53
  And of course, we're different people.
• 2:25:54
  But when I look at your work, I see, oh, this is brilliant.
• 2:25:58
  And like, I can't wait to see what he does next and where he's
• 2:26:01
  going to go. And you know what I mean?
• 2:26:03
  So it doesn't to me, it doesn't compute when when you're like,
• 2:26:05
  oh, I don't know, man, because I'm like, but what?
• 2:26:07
  Like this is how I see it. And.
• 2:26:09
  But that's the thing, isn't it? You, you, you try to big up your
• 2:26:12
  friends, you try to make them see how brilliant they are.
• 2:26:16
  And I think that's it. It's it's just remembering that
• 2:26:19
  you are brilliant and you've got so much potential and so you're
• 2:26:23
  going to do bigger and greater things.
• 2:26:25
  Just because it's been this long doesn't mean it's not going to
• 2:26:28
  happen. Like, don't forget, all this
• 2:26:30
  time you've been building your craft, you've been working on
• 2:26:34
  what you do and you've built your own style.
• 2:26:39
  The amount of people I've worked with where they don't know what
• 2:26:41
  they're doing or they don't know where they like you know exactly
• 2:26:43
  what you're doing. And as you mentioned before,
• 2:26:45
  you're ready. You're just waiting.
• 2:26:48
  Like, and it's, that's it. And I'm the same dude, I'm
• 2:26:51
  literally the same. I'm like, look, I can act.
• 2:26:54
  I know I can do it. Give me the fucking opportunity
• 2:26:56
  and I'll knock it out the park, you know what I mean?
• 2:26:59
  And I say that complete confidence and it's that's it,
• 2:27:02
  man. That's the mindset you have to
• 2:27:04
  have, so. I appreciate the kind words,
• 2:27:06
  man. It's it's good.
• 2:27:09
  I'll be going through my hard drive.
• 2:27:11
  All the all the scripts, partly written features, everything
• 2:27:13
  going on. Just film that.
• 2:27:15
  That's a good show. Real bench.
• 2:27:16
  Just film that. Get Christian involved in that.
• 2:27:19
  Well, like I said before, I'd love to work together again.
• 2:27:22
  And I know that people would want to see it because, Oh no,
• 2:27:24
  Iguana was really well received. I loved acting alongside you in
• 2:27:27
  Choc Chips. I can't wait to see the end
• 2:27:30
  result for that. And yeah, obviously our friends
• 2:27:33
  like Gee, are working with him on something soon.
• 2:27:35
  And I was over the moon when I found out that he was on that.
• 2:27:38
  I'm like, oh, great, you know, it's and that's the thing.
• 2:27:40
  It's like you. It's you love working with
• 2:27:42
  people you worked with before because I think you know what to
• 2:27:44
  expect. But you're going to do something
• 2:27:46
  different this time. It's always different and it's
• 2:27:50
  like what can we get out of each other this time, where can we
• 2:27:52
  take this, etcetera. So, yeah, looking forward to
• 2:27:56
  that for sure. Absolutely, man.
• 2:27:58
  Absolutely. I'm excited.
• 2:28:01
  I'm excited. I'm motivated for the time
• 2:28:03
  being. That's what I need, just.
• 2:28:05
  Want to say a real, real thank you for appearing on the show.
• 2:28:08
  It's been an absolute pleasure man.
• 2:28:10
  Really appreciate it. Thank you man.
• 2:28:12
  Thank you very much for having me.
• 2:28:14
  And to the listeners of the Christian Reef podcast, I hope
• 2:28:16
  you enjoyed this show as much as I did.
• 2:28:18
  As always, make sure to like, share and subscribe.
• 2:28:20
  If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to leave us a review
• 2:28:23
  on Pod Chaser, the IMDb of podcasting.
• 2:28:27
  I don't know if anyone uses it. Yeah, I've had a few reviews, so
• 2:28:30
  thank you to everyone who's who's reviewed it.
• 2:28:33
  But yeah, I'm, I'm trying to push it.
• 2:28:34
  I think there's something there if you listen to the show on
• 2:28:37
  Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast.
• 2:28:40
  Wherever you listen to the show, make sure to leave us a review,
• 2:28:43
  a rating, comment, whatever. It really, really helps us out.
• 2:28:46
  If there's any clips that you liked.
• 2:28:48
  If you liked this show, share it.
• 2:28:50
  Share it to the world because you never know who's watching or
• 2:28:53
  listening. Thank you so much for listening
• 2:28:56
  and watching the show and until next time, see you in the next
• 2:28:59
  one.