THE RESIDUE OF A RELATIONSHIP: THE STORY SO FAR

My film 'The Residue of a Relationship' was released online by Short of the Week on June 5th and it's been quite the ride watching it find its own little audience ever since.

I just wanted to give a little run down of all the places it's appeared so far and where you might be able to find it in the future. 

The movie premiered on Short of the Week via Vimeo and got some really nice feedback from a few reviewers and publications...

Short of the Week said: "Reminiscent of a John Green or Woody Allen movie, Chapman’s visual diary is campy to the point of cheesiness, but gets away with it because of how utterly charming it is." https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2017/06/05/the-residue-of-a-relationship/

Film School Rejects said: "Every single person in the world can relate to what Chapman’s documenting, because regardless of the specifics, we have all loved someone we couldn’t quite have, even when we deserved them. How Chapman uses what he’s lost to discover more about himself and the conundrum of love is inspiring, endearing, honest, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful.” https://filmschoolrejects.com/short-day-residue-relationship-documents-ramifications-love/

Director’s Notes called it “A short that feels impossible not to like.” http://directorsnotes.com/2017/06/05/residue-relationship-brett-chapman/

It was also released as a featured short by Film Shortage here: http://filmshortage.com/shorts/the-residue-of-a-relationship/

I was pretty happy with the reviews the film got at this stage and it managed to garner a respectable enough number of views. I also received a heap of messages from people who watched the film and wanted to share their own stories with me or just talk about what it had meant to them. This was an unexpected but really heartening side effect.

Then I was contacted by a company called 'Omeleto' - I guess they're sort of like 'Upworthy' but just for video content. I was skeptical at first - I'm always skeptical of unsolicited emails from people claiming to like my work. All that considered, I decided to trust in them and they released Residue on their Facebook page and YouTube channel. Despite them slapping a clickbait title on the film that I'm not in love with, they managed to snag over 110,000 views (at the time of writing) across their platforms.

Hello, World!

Residue has also made it into a bunch of festivals and recently won the Audience Choice award at Indie Flicks. I'm still waiting to hear back from a lot of the festivals it's been entered into but I'm hopeful.

The majority of people commenting online or speaking to me about the movie have been really positive and I have to say that it's helped me to keep the faith in my own particular style of filmmaking and point of view. The support and encouragement I've also had from my local community of filmmakers has been amazing. 

I'm really excited to see how much further Residue can go but, also, I can't wait to get to work on the next project. Watch this space.

INTERVIEWED BY THE SHEFFIELD CREATIVE GUILD

I was recently interviewed about my work by the Sheffield Creative guild. You can read the full interview here

THE MEMORY BOOK

I've always been fascinated by my nan, I think this will be the fourth film I've made about her. For me she is a person full of contradictions. As a small child I recall being terrified of her but as we both aged and I became aware of her creeping vulnerability and her ever so slightly warming personality. I began to feel close to her.

She's a woman who has been plagued by tragedies and illness her whole life and in her 91st year dementia is one of the many obstacles she has to overcome on a daily basis. She's essentially bedridden and seems to have lost her appetite for most things. 

As Christmas approached I knew that I wanted to do something special for her, something that would reach outside of our usual interactions and try to muster something new. I wanted to bring back her appetite for life, even if it was just for a moment. What I came up with is detailed in my new film:

PEREGRINATION: A SERIES

Earlier this year I put together a series of four films that all shared some DNA. The connecting thread that ran through all of them was an appreciation or acknowledgment of a particular journey. 

It only occurred to me recently that I never specified that they should be viewed together, as a series, so this is my attempt to rectify that. Viewed in order, there is a story to be decoded and understood.

MY STUDIO IN SHEFFIELD

For the longest time I've wanted a space that I can work from, with everything that I need for my films close to hand. Since I came back from travelling I've worked hard to make that desire a reality and I think I'm just about there.

My brand new fully functioning studio

I knew that I wanted to be based in Sheffield, for a while anyway, so the first port of call that jumped into mind was the amazing CADS. It's a great organisation that's committed to an ethos of affordability, inclusivity and creating spaces that are laid back and multi-functional. It's full of genuinely lovely and really helpful people too.

I had a look around their spaces and found a little room that was somewhere close to my price range. It was a little run down but had good light and a certain charm. Plenty of potential - I'd found my studio. 

My studio before I got my hands on it.

Over the next few weeks, with the help of my friend Ollie we transformed that room into a functional space that gave me everything I need to make the sort of output I'm passionate about. We had a lot of fun doing the work and improving our DIY skills too - I'm now very very handy with a drill.

We painted walls, put up shelves and filed everything so that I always know where the thing I need lives. The space usage for the room was planned out so that it mixed storage and practicality with versatile free space to shoot against.

I want to be able to meld art, film and romance into a finished article that inspires and encourages people and this is now my base of operations. I can come here and when the door closes I am focused on whatever work is at hand. I think that's vitally important - to have a space where work is the priority.

Since having this place I've completed more work and met more people than I think I managed in the last few years of living in Sheffield. This is a procrastination free zone where ideas are king and nothing is too silly to suggest.

It's not perfect, not just yet, but I have a great overhead shooting space, access to some incredible areas and a collection of tools trinkets and talent that will help me produce pretty much any film. 

One of the important aspects of my work is to mix what some would think of as outdated technology with modern tools to produce unique visuals with definable personality. I like to incorporate stationary and found objects into my work too so that a real hand-made feel and defined perspective is present.

Something I really love about my new home though is that my building is packed full of interesting characters.

I share my floor with a boxing gym and an artist and our building even houses a church! There are art directors and furniture makers and many others so it makes sure that every day is a school day. Always something to learn, always someone to collaborate with. 

Upstairs in my building

Over the next year I want to collaborate with as many companies, artists and makers as possible to produce some work that really has something to say. I want to make honest films and artwork that is unafraid to share a point of view and I want to do everything I can to put some goodness out into the world.

Films and art has always encouraged me to see the best in people and pay attention to the world around me and I hope that I can contribute to that tradition even if it's just in some small way form my little space in Sheffield.

Everything in the studio has a purpose and a use. 

So that's it. I have my own studio and I'm open for business. Let's make some films. If you want to work together or have some ideas you'd like to develop I would love to hear from you. I also love to have people swing by so if you want to pay a visit just get in touch at: info@brettinthecity.com

WE WERE HERE

Four months in Europe with a camera in my pocket. These are some of the moments I will remember. Really helped me to learn how powerful the Sony RX100 IV can be if you put in a little time with it. Pushing it to it's full potential is kind of my little pet project at the minute. Looking forward to seeing what I can get out of it next.

TRAVEL FILM FOR SEE YA NEVER

I spent the first part of this year travelling around Europe. During that time I was also shooting a little film for an indie clothing company called 'See Ya Never'. Travelling was never supposed to be a holiday for me so having a few projects to focus on was great. I'm pleased with how this came out.

I shot everything using a Sony RX100 IV and a Go Pro Hero 4. If you want to read the accompanying blog that See Ya Never put out with the film, you can read it here. 

SUPPORTING JUNIOR DOCTORS

As the junior doctors begin their 48 hour walkout I'm reminded of all the great people I met at this protest in Leeds. The NHS is one of the few things we have that we should be universally proud of and we should do whatever we can to protect it.

I made this film to try and highlight the feeling of positivity and solidarity that was on show that night. I don't think this campaign by the junior doctors is about greed - it's about our government listening to the people and professions it is supposed to serve.

If junior doctors say that the new contract, which is being forced upon them, will create unsafe working environments I believe them. I will put my faith in the real doctors over the Conservative spin doctors every single time.

TRAIN//SPAIN

I love taking the train. This journey through Spain was the perfect opportunity to test out the Sony RX100 IV.

BEING REJECTED FROM FILM FESTIVALS

This was originally posted in September 2014

When you make a film it can be a deeply personal and important event for you. When I made my short film ‘Lilly’ I put a whole stack of myself into it and I found the process of making it to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

I am very happy with ‘Lilly’ – I feel like we basically made the film that I wanted to and it’s one of the few things I’ve produced that I feel almost comfortable showing to other people. It’s still an anxiety inducing event to watch it in a room full of people though.

I’ve still got a long way to go to get to the level that I’d like to be at.

Anyone who has ever screened a film for an audience will know the feeling well. You sit there, wriggling around in your chair like a mid-interview Tom Waits, anticipating a reaction from the audience. Where do the laughs come? Does anyone gasp? Does anyone cry? Do they sound bored? I’m not even sure what the sound of boredom is…

So, if you can get over the initial fear of actually allowing people to watch your movie soon comes the time to send it out into the world. For a filmmaker at my level I really had two options open to me: I could put the film online, promote it and hope to find an audience or I could send it to film festivals and hope it gets accepted and develops a buzz from there.

There are, obviously, pros and cons to each approach that I’m not going to explore in an in-depth way because, frankly, there are people far more qualified than I to do that. What I will do, however, is briefly touch on some of the elements that were most pertinent in my decision and what’s happened since.

Despite Lilly being a short film the final cut came in at 28 minutes. That’s not an ideal starting point for either online or festival promotion. Many film festivals prefer their short films to be at the very least under 25 minutes if not shorter, and everyone knows that you’ll struggle to hold or even draw in an online viewer for something over three minutes. 

I could have made cuts to the film to get it down to a more manageable length, and in retrospect perhaps I should have, but this was my first film and I didn’t want to lose any of the moments or space in the film because I’d landed squarely on my original vision for the piece.

Utlimtately I decided that I wanted to send Lilly to film festivals and see whether or nt we got a positive reaction. I suspect there was something in me that liked the idea of my film being shown on the same screen as some other more credible films. 

Because I also work a full time job I didn’t have the free time to research the multitude of festivals that are out there and then go through the long process of submitting. To overcome that problem I decided to hire in an external company to handle the process.

I ultimately went with Festival Formula, a company run by the lovely and knowledgeable Katie McCullough. She produced for me a list of festivals that might appreciate what Lilly was trying to say and handled the whole submission process for me. I can’t recommend this company or Katie enough. 

Any shortcomings that Lilly had in gaining entry into festivals are totally down to the film and my own decisions. The Advice Katie offered throughout was impeccable and perhaps something I should have taken on board in a bigger way - especially regarding the length of the film! 

This was always going to be a costly experience and after submitting to about 25 festivals I’d totally exhausted my finances, so, I sat back and waited for the responses to come rolling in. Then I waited some more – and some more. Then it happened! The first response. 

“Thank you for sending us the above film for consideration for the [Insert Festival Name] Film Festival. While we very much appreciated the opportunity to consider the film, unfortunately it has not made the final line up for this year’s festival.”

I very quickly became accustomed to this sort of response. Whilst I thought I had prepared myself for the inevitable rejections I don’t think I realised just how disheartening it would be to see your film rejected from all the festivals you were so desperate to get into. 

Like I said, this film was a bit part of me and it can be hard to separate the rejection of your work from being a rejection of yourself personally. But then, in rode the East End Film Festival to save the day!

The first festival acceptance for Lilly took me to London to watch Lilly being screened as part of The East End Film Festival’s ‘Britain on Film’ programme. It was wonderful to see my film screened alongside some really wonderful shorts and the short Q&A post screening was a fun, if nerve wracking, experience. I will forever adore The East End Film Festival for accepting my film. 

I had hoped that the EEFF screening might have been the start of a few screenings for Lilly but unfortunately that’s not the way it went. A combo of rejections came a few weeks later and its been much the same ever since.

I’ve seen other films that I worked on finding their way into some pretty prestigious festivals and that is heartening and I’m pleased for the filmmakers involved but it does kind ofcement in place the disappointment that my own work hasn’t found an audience. 

I think it’s important to remind yourself that this is something most people who pursue creative endeavours have to go through. Not everyone is going to ‘get’ what you’re trying to say and, furthermore, there’s no guarantee that what you create will every time be ‘good’. It’s a long process.

So, rather than get down on the fact that Lilly hasn’t found its place on the festival scene I’ve been trying to come up with the next move for the film and that took me back to my original two choices: online or festivals.

I’m not too proud to see that, for whatever reason, Lilly isn’t doing it on the festival circuit so to plow more money that I don’t have into more submissions that likely won’t be accepted doesn’t make sense to me. More and more I’ve been thinking about making the film available to view online. 

More than getting good reviews or seeing my film on a big screen I think the thing that is most important to me is that its viewed by people who understand what it’s trying to say and appreciate the themes that I’ve tried to flavour it with. 

The most encouraging thing that’s happened during Lilly’s short time out in the world is the response I’ve had from the audiences who have watched it. Quite a few people who watched the film took the time to tell me that the titular character really reminded them of strong women in their lives and thanked me for making the film. That felt amazing.

One person saying something like that to me was enough justification for making the film in the first place. Some people even cried. I had joked when making the film that all I wanted was to make someone cry with it. I guess that sounds sort of crass but all of the films I most admire make me cry.

Here I am, then, weighing up when and how exactly I put my film online. I could upload it to Vimeo or YouTube and try to promote it via social media and short film websites or I could look into VOD options. To be honest, I don’t think Lilly has the audience interest to do well on VOD. So, at the moment, I’m planning to put the film online, for free. 

It’s OK to be rejected. It is not the end of the world and I don’t think it’s the end of the journey for your film, if you believe in it.

All I really want is for people to have the option to see the film if they choose to. I say it all the time but I don’t think a film exists until it has an audience. With that in mind, watch this space for updates about where Lilly will be available to view and if you’d like to help promote the flick, that’d be lovely.