On a dreary night last September I was wondering what to do with myself. Raindance’s Live!Ammunition! pitching competition was an obvious choice – I’m a Director; I’d never seen other people live pitch before; and I was working on a short that needed funding to get it off the ground. I didn’t have a prepared pitch per se, rather I thought it would be the ideal opportunity to see how it’s done. …little did I know how fruitful the evening would be.
I set off in a rush as usual, forgetting my business cards: call me old fashioned but I prefer these to Instagram – I’m in the minority I know! Thinking of it as a research trip to see what others were up to and what I could learn from them, I imagined it would be a room full of ‘film types’ – noisy, loud, arrogant, intimidating people, hustling bullshit. But no, within 10 minutes it was obvious that this was a room full of supportive people trying just as hard as the next person to get their story told in any way possible. As with so many last-minute decisions that night would have a domino effect on so many other things. I immediately relaxed and was looking forward to the action.
After some brief chit-chat the call came for pitches and, as I didn’t have anything to lose, I chucked my tenner in the bucket and prayed I wouldn’t be first up…We were presented with two-minute pitches for features and shorts, some confusing, some amusing, all interesting, each different. Variety is the spice of life as they say!
My name was finally called and I pitched my pitch: a 15 minute short called Happiness Batteries written by Cressida Peever and produced by Evelyn Sharples – we’d all met via WFTV – with Sandra Potoczanin as our DoP. Happiness Batteries is a surrealist, joyful exploration of a mother-daughter bond. It’s set over a day, with animation, an underwater sequence, four locations and Jane Horrocks (of Little Voice, Chicken Run, Ab Fab fame) attached. Happiness Batteries reframes the carer-patient relationship from the dour, sad depictions we usually see on screen, shifting the focus to the love, hope, and strength our two protagonists (Hazel and Jen) share. Importantly, it has a happy ending, which supposedly festivals like!
The four industry judges diligently deliberated once everyone had pitched and gave their feedback on each presentation. And of course, the evening was topped and tailed by the remarkable Elliot Grove who hosted the competition with all the panache and acerbic wit you would expect.
The judges were kind that day: I won, promising Cressida and Evelyn, in a text on the way home, that the prize money would go on a bottle of champagne (or three) for us when Happiness Batteries was in the can. But the evening wasn’t over and some funny things happened… I met serial (and brilliant) networker Tajona Karhu, who told me to email her with regards to a young art director called Angus MacDonald. Because of this, he became a runner on a micro-budget short I wrote and directed in Battersea Park some 8 weeks later. We couldn’t have done it without him. And because of this Angus was my first choice when I needed an illustrator for a music video I directed for a band called Kanoo.
Additionally, in the time it’s taken to get funding for Happiness Batteries (sadly we weren’t successful at this year’s BFI round), Cressida, Evelyn, and I embarked on another, smaller project: New Shoes, a quirky little love story. As a proof of concept – or rather a proof of ‘we work well together’, it was a great experience and a fantastic team pulled together to get it over the line – plus Cressida and Evelyn were able to see how DoP Sandra worked for the first time. We’re really proud of what we achieved on such a low budget and everyone from the editor (Emily Bussell) to the composer (Mera Royle) really went the extra mile. Why am I telling you this? Because I met our leading man – the delightful Joshua Bennett-Moore that night at the Live!Ammunition! pitching competition!! Horses for courses; swings and roundabouts and all that.
And that’s not all!… Winning the Live!Ammunition! pitching competition meant that the Happiness Batteries project had a little more gravitas and we could approach a co-producer who would hopefully get us the funding we needed: enter Aletha Shepherd, her company Shot of Tea, and Aletha’s brilliant wing-woman Phoebe-Kate Somper who helped out with the BFI application amongst others.
ALL these connections were made because of the pitching competition – a few brief moments of conversation in one evening. My advice to you aspiring filmmaker? GO AND PITCH – even if you don’t win the evening is worth it in so many ways.
Will Happiness Batteries ever be made?…well maybe, on a wing and prayer and with a lot of hard work, just maybe. And then we can all have a glass of champagne.
