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talent spotting
Compiled by Jane Crowther
Alicia Duffy
licia Duffy seems to excel in everything she turns her hand to; currently, she has her eye on feature films.
A musical child who sang and played piano and cello, Duffy attended the prestigious Cheethams Music School in Manchester before going on to read Mathematics and History of Art at Cambridge University.
While there Duffy was attract- ed to directing after singing on a student short: “It had never even occurred to me that I would like to direct, but in retrospect I think it was quite clear that I was going to be a director!” she admitted. “I had to see the process of mak- ing a film before I understood that it was something that was possible for me.”
She went on to win a place on the National Film & Television School Directors’ course despite having relatively little experience.
Two shorts made there, Numb and Crow Stone, won numerous prizes and led to a five-month stint writing features with the Cannes Film Festival Cinefondation Residence in Paris. The discipline of writing produced Duffy’s self-penned and directed short, The Most Beautiful Man In The World, co- produced by the Film Council and CNC.
Part of the official selection at Cannes last year, Duffy’s short picked up awards at Berlin, Chicago and Rhode Island, won the Turner Classic Movies Short
Film Prize for 2003 and was BAFTA nominated.
But Duffy is now aiming at telling stories in longer, more satis- fying formats. “ I love short films when they’re short – it’s a whole different discipline from a feature. A story in a feature needs that length of time to be told. So I’m really excited about making fea- tures now.”
Her current projects include adaptations of the novels Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains and Original Bliss plus an original script, Sadie By The Sea. “I’ve got stacks and stacks of ideas and stories I could tell.” And no doubt she will.
RWebecca Promitzer
riter Rebecca Promitzer believes her work is best served by having a crack at everything herself. To that end, she went on a screen-acting course at The Sundance Film Festival, took up singing lessons (and discovered an operatic voice) and turned her hand to presenting a talk show pilot.
“Writing’s always the first thing I’ll do and the thing that I’ve done all my life,” she conceded. “But I really believe all these things help each other. If you can have a go at doing all of them, they help whatever you’re doing.”
An avid theatre producer at university, Promitzer became interested in film when she worked in a production office after graduation. “It was all quite fascinating seeing how films were
made but it was also frustrating because I got to do script analy- sis but didn’t get to actually make the film.”
The next stage was writing her own, so she went to study Film and TV drama at Goldsmiths, where her student short Keepers (which she wrote and directed) was shown at 12 festivals around the world.
Its success gave her a develop- ment deal for her first feature film script, Out To Lunch, as well as the taste for writing features. Two fur- ther feature scripts, Retro (a super- natural thriller set in a vintage clothing shop) and Chasing A Kiss (an eighties coming-of-age come- dy) are now looking for a produc- er along with Out To Lunch.
While Promitzer, 31, chases a producer she’s keeping busy by finding inspiration for new proj- ects wherever she looks; “I want to write feature films and one-off TV dramas and I’d love to write a musical.” With her new-found singing talent, maybe she’ll star in that as well?
DIavid Peter
t’s a fact of life that the older you get the younger police- men and producers look. Take David Peter, for example. He’s 25 and the head of his own produc- tion company, Jakey Films (staff of one).
“It is quite young to be doing it and it’s a lot of responsibility but to be honest, I like that,” he admitted. Jakey Films came about after Cambridge-grad
Peter was working as a self-con- fessed “dogsbody” at a film pro- duction company.
When a series of instructional DVDs for extreme sports came in he leapt at the chance to pro- duce and was soon winging his way to California to shoot It’s Pretty Fly To Skateboard.
Described by Mixmag as “the best DVD of it’s kind...ever” the success of the DVD prompted Peter to set up shop on his own in order to produce the whole series.
“All the instructional videos were very basic and badly put together. We wanted to do something that celebrated the sport as well as teaching you how to do it.”
The project has taken Peter to Florida for wake-boarding, to the Swiss slopes for snowboarding and next up he’s toying with locations in either South Africa or Hawaii for surfing. But it’s not just an excuse to get a good holiday – a keen music fan, Peter hopes that Jakey Films will branch out to produce TV and film, and espe- cially music promos.
“What I’ve discovered over the past year is that I enjoy, and have a talent for, production. If you’re persistent enough, eventu- ally you’ll be in the right place at the right time.” Quite.
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