An Industry Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Fellow Creatures
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Length of film: 13 minutes
Date:Made in May 2020. Began festival run September 2021
Director: Jason Merrells and Jamie Glover
Producer: Mark Brennan
Executive Producer: The Shotley Collective of Jason Merrells, Jamie Glover, and Jonathan Kerrigan
Writer: Jonathan Kerrigan
Cinematographer: Richard Mott
Editor: Alexandra Wood
Composer: Jonathan Kerrigan
Production Company: The Shotley Collective
Budget: £9k
Financing: Crowdfunded through the “Greenlit” Platform
Shooting Format: 4K Digital
Screening Format: 2:1
World Premiere: Not really, But Sydney Underground Film Festival was the first showing
Awards: NA
Website: NA
The Official Trailer for Fellow Creatures
Watch The Trailer for Fellow Creatures directed by Jason Merrells
A Short Biography of Jason Merrells
Jason Scott Merrells is an English actor. He is best known for his roles in Casualty, Queer as Folk, Cutting It, Waterloo Road and Emmerdale.
The Jason Merrells Interview
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Jason Merrells (JM): Fellow Creatures is the story of struggling weekend father Tom. He answers the door to an attractive stranger with a seductive offer. Their playful encounter leads him toward a life altering decision that could have devastating consequences.
Fellow Creatures is written by Jonathan Kerrigan. The idea came to three of us, who make up The Shotley Collective. We were looking for a short project with which to relaunch our creative collaboration. Jonathan was initially inspired by a quote from the French writer & politician Rene Chateaubriand in 1802.
“If thou couldst by a mere wish kill a fellow creature in China, and inherit his fortune in Europe, with the supernatural conviction that the fact would never be known, wouldst thou consent to form such a wish?”
Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?
Jason Merrells (JM): Our festival run is just beginning. We are only a month into our journey, so far so good!
We are very happy about the first four festivals to show our film. They are namely Sydney Underground, HollyShorts – Academy qualifying, RazorReel (Bruges) and Leeds International which is BAFTA qualifying.
The Shotley Collective handles all the marketing and PR for the film as it goes along. We had a very small budget, and like many filmmakers. This year we shot our film at the height of the pandemic (Just after the first complete UK lockdown). Jonathan Kerrigan, Jamie Glover & I are friends who have worked with each other over the last 25 years many times.
The three of us were all involved with the making of my first Short Film as director Le Petit Mort. It premiered at Manhattan Short Film festival in 2007. Jamie played the lead character and Jonathan composed the score. We had talked often about doing it again but we wanted the energy to continue. The new short had to be the beginning of a more consistent output of original material. So The Shotley Collective was born.
We are very proud of what we achieved on such a small budget. Two characters, one small location felt like a challenging creative constraint as well as a practical necessity! If that, and the brilliant performances of Shelly Conn and Jonathan Kerrigan are recognized then we will be really pleased.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Jason Merrells (JM): Tom opens his door to a woman who offers a chance to win a free money. As the game progresses, the stakes change rapidly and Tom’s desire for ‘more’ is laid open to full moral scrutiny.
Last year, most of our usual activity, including filming was stalled by a pandemic. It has killed over four and a half million people worldwide, and left many more ill, confined, and frightened. But it also provided a brief respite for our choked planet. A pause for breath. A chance to question our rapacious appetite for more.
Fellow Creatures dramatizes a century old philosophical conundrum – what is a single life worth? And while it exists outside of time, perhaps the central moral dilemma is pertinent now more than ever.
Development & Financing?
Jason Merrells (JM): The script for Fellow Creatures went through roughly 9 drafts before we were ready to shoot. We all loved the story; it was a question really of making the script as concise as we could. Once we were happy with a script to proceed with, we turned to finance. By that stage COVID-19 had changed the landscape of everything. We didn’t really know if the usual funding channels were working. But more importantly, so the team specifically designed the film with a micro budget in mind. One location and two characters (daughter MADDIE) we felt confident we could crowd fund the project ourselves.
We did this via the brilliant UK crowdfunding platform Greenlit. Which is specifically for filmmakers. We set a target of 6K and reached that within 3 days. Then added a stretch goal of another 2K realizing we would need this for post production.
We reached both targets in five days, and we believe this was a record for them. The team was blown away by this, it felt like such an affirmation of what we were doing. We were determined that we would pay everyone involved something. Our ‘daily rate’ wouldn’t have got anywhere close to a normal rate for most of the people
we managed to get involved. But it was very important to us that everyone took home a wage, however small.
All the people that agreed to work with us on the film are professionals, not amateurs, and professionals need paying. I think this was appreciated and contributed to the mood on the floor. I should add that many pulled in massive favours for us, including our brilliant DoP Richard Mott. With the hiring of equipment and other extras.
In truth our budget has stretched a little in the following months with all the unforeseen costs. These costs rack up in post-production in festival submissions, grading, titles etc. But, the amount of money we have ended up spending is more than reflected in our final film.
Production?
Jason Merrells (JM): We wanted to work with as diverse a group of people as we could. As 3 white men, diversity and equality of sexes on set was paramount. But as a low-budget short, that was not able to pay proper wage rates, we had to do what we could within those constraints, and within the constraints of the pandemic. Much of the production planning and many of the crew slotted into place once we had our DoP in place Richard Mott, whose brilliance and network were key to the films success.
As we all came blinking tentatively out of that first complete lockdown in the spring of 2020, we knew that this was the window of opportunity we had to make this film. We were among the first productions to try and go back to work in this new environment. As such we had to invent the rules a little, ourselves. We made sure one of the crew was Covid-19 safety officer, we enforced mask wearing, social distancing where possible and regular temperature checks.
We were filming in an empty school in London during the 3 hottest days of that summer, so these covid protocols were not easy to stick to! But everyone was SO glad to be back working on a set again after such an uncertain time that the spirit among the crew during the shoot was very positive. many buildings, and many locations were unavailable to us due to the pandemic.
Luckily, with the help of ‘the Film Office’ in London we found an empty school, but even then, we had to convert an office corridor into ‘Tom’s’ flat for the shoot. All of us had to pick up the tools to make sure the build and the de-rig back to being a school, happened in the time allotted to us. To say we managed both by the skin of our teeth is true, but also a testament to our determination.
I think everyone who works in this industry will recognize that ant-like efficiency that a film crew can have when it’s working well, the way a location can be transformed and then returned to its original state as if no one has been there. Post-Production was also tricky. We edited online which was made as easy as possible by our brilliant, patient editor, Alexandra Wood.
Peter Rice, our Sound Editor was also very forgiving as we threw our ideas and sound edits back and forth.
Every decision just takes longer when you’re not in the same room together or watching and listening on the same device.
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
Jason Merrells (JM): We had heard about a company called Festival Formula through our brilliant Producer Mark Brennan, himself also a curator of the fantastic Exit 6 Film Festival in the UK. It’s a team that, for a fee, basically strategizes and applies for and handles most of the deliverables for your film during its year-long festival run. It can give you the inside information on which films tend to fit which festivals, and provides what we saw as a much-needed service. We are on a path with perhaps 75 different film festivals worldwide, and that would have been mind numbingly daunting on our own.
The Release?
JM: At the moment, it’s festival by festival, with as much social media marketing as we can do between us, to keep the interest alive and our brilliant backers informed.
Advice from the Filmmaker?
JM: It’s vital to get the script watertight before you turn over. We had all experienced the cameras rolling when scripts are still a couple of drafts away, leaving it to the director and the actors to ‘refine’ things on the day. It can waste a lot of time. So much better to be confident in your script before you begin, because then any changes that arise during shooting are creative rather than being a sticking plaster.
It went through many drafts and a couple of incarnations, but by the time we came to shoot, we were very confident in the quality and tightness of the script. And it was that script that the people we asked to work with us responded to and wanted to be a part of. Collaboration and a sense of collective ownership reaps incredible creative rewards.
The quality and professionalism of the collaborators we attracted to the project, the speed with which all our backers were excited and wanted to invest in what we hoped to achieve was humbling and inspiring. Cinema is still possible to make outside of the giant studios and franchises. It just takes belief and a refusal to accept all barriers that seem to be in the way.
Tell us what you think of the Case Study for Fellow Creatures. What do you think of it? Let’s have your comments below and/or on Facebook. Or join me on Twitter.
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