re:VAULT Short Film of the Month
Interview with Jeremiah Quinn (Writer/Director)
What’s The Strange Death of Harry Stanley about?
It’s a true story about the police killing of Harry Stanley in London in 1999.
How did you come across this story?
At the time, this was a big news story with a lot of public outcry. But for some reason, it faded away. It was a story that moved me and made me angry. I discussed it on many occasions with the screenwriter William Morrissey, and he suggested I should write a short film about it.
In the film you make many references to truths and lies, was it important for you to tell a story that Irene Stanley (the wife of Harry Stanley) would be happy with?
I researched and wrote the script with no permission. When I was happy with it I got in touch with Terry Stewart of Justice for Harry Stanley and showed him the script. Terry was very helpful and made several important corrections. He then introduced me to Harry’s widow Irene Stanley and she looked at the script. For someone who has never read a script before, this script is a very difficult starting point as it plays with the truth. Some professional readers had reservations about the titles (which undermine the action). Irene Stanley was honest about being baffled by the script. I was very nervous because if she didn’t give her approval I would not have made the film. We drew her attention to the ending when the titles suddenly shift and become honest about the most important thing in the case. Terry assured her I had her interests at heart, and she gave her approval. For the premiere, I invited Irene along so she could see the film before it was shown and ask questions. She was delighted with it.
Are they any tips or advice you would like to share with fellow filmmakers that you learned while making this film?
Hell, yes.
Don’t go off at half cock. Don’t treat it as therapy or a jaunt. Don’t get together with a bunch of mates and say, “Ooh, what larks if we all got together and made a short film”. Find your passion. So many short films are empty and leave you wondering ‘Why did anyone want to make that?’ I don’t mean find a political passion like I did for this film, I mean find something you really want to make. Think of something that always makes you laugh out loud when you think of it and find a way to turn that into a comedy film. Think of something that really terrifies you and turn it into a film.
After passion, you need polish. Any passionate short film with polish will find success. Polish starts with the script. The script must be very polished. Like most people, I won’t read scripts with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. The nuts and bolts count so much. Remember that for short films, the script itself is your pitch. When you hand it to a DP, he will decide whether to do it based mostly on what’s on the page. Your production will be built around the level of merit in the script. When I’ve commented negatively on scripts handed to me, sometimes I’ve heard the comeback, “Oh don’t worry, you can’t see the spelling mistakes onscreen”. True, but the laziness will all be up on the screen. It’s a craft, so every bit of application ends up on the screen.
I learned a lot about distribution and festivals making this film. I was very ignorant. There are things I would do very differently if I could go back and do it again.
I simply hadn’t watched enough short films. Shooting People have a Film of the Month Competition (which we won in May 2013, still waiting for Dexter Fletcher’s overall winner decision). Any member can post their film. Study this if you want to make short films. You can see the winners, the losers and how it happens. It goes to a second round with just ten films, and it is very easy to pick the top ten out of a couple of hundred. You’ll understand very quickly what makes a bad short film. One of the identifiers of bad short films is that they start with the beginning of the day. Every month you can see a crop of films with alarm clocks going off, people pushing back covers, sitting up, yawning, showering, breakfasting… Oh, dear, yes – breakfasting. Had I watched a couple of months of Shooting People FOTM, I would have known not to start a short film with breakfast. How many curators saw the opening three shots of my film and ejected it before going any further? Plenty.
The opening of The Strange Death of Harry Stanley doesn’t have any cinematic touches. And again, I think you should try very hard for an arresting, cinematic opening shot. People start short films nervously and they want to be reassured that there is vision and imagination, especially online, where they are unlikely to go past the opening shot if they don’t like what they see.
And your thumbnail image is as important as the film itself. Study Shooting People, note how often you don’t bother to click on a film to watch it if they haven’t put up a thumbnail. Note how you are reluctant to watch a film with a poor representative image. This is how you can differentiate your film from all the others before people have even seen it. Picture people with thousands of films to watch with the same attitude as you when you scan through Shooting People looking for something exciting, and you’ll soon have some ideas about how to present your film. We had a great poster made up which is beautiful, but it didn’t work as a thumbnail at all. For a while, that was our image on Withoutabox. We then did some fantastic screengrabs from the film and posted those, and things turned around. Stills are very, very important.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
I have very nearly finished a new short film about lost love, Touched. I have just successfully funded my next short on Kickstarter. It’s called Incognito, about two fugitive Nazis meeting for coffee, cake and a catch-up in Argentina in 1960. You can see all the details here.
Thanks Jeremiah
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