I got my first taste of film-making at university. I co-wrote a short film called The Rose, which won a Fuji Film Scholarship, and I worked on a few other shorts as a board member of the University Film Foundation.
When Richard Attenborough was the visiting professor of drama for a year, I had the opportunity to shadow him as an apprentice during production of In Love and War, which took me off to Italy and Shepperton. As well as teaching me a great deal about the film business, the experience was also a big influence on Olivia’s Line. In a rather lovely coincidence, Vincenzo Nicoli appeared in both the movie and my radio play.
I’ve carried on writing, directing and producing short films, and one of them, Portobello, picked up the JVC Sharp Shooters Award. It also won ITV’s Whose London? competition, leading to a primetime television broadcast and a big-screen premiere in Leicester Square. Not bad for a film with a £100 budget.
My feature-length screenplay Purity was the Best Overseas Entry in the American Screenwriters Association’s Screenwriting for the Soul contest. I act as an occasional script analyst for the Script Factory and Little Wing Films, and I’ve worked as a storyliner for Hewland International.
At the moment, I’m developing a new screenplay with the help of Euroscript. It’s a feature-length animation called Laptop.
