Perfect won a Silver Seal at Movie 2000, a Gold Medal at UNICA 2000, and many awards at other festivals.

I started making movies at age 14.  I'd saved up all summer to buy a Russian Quarz wind-up standard-8mm camera and tried sound using a Eumig projector with a reel-to-reel tape link but lip-synch was not practical.  Still, I was hooked.  About the same time I got interested in going to the commercial cinema.

I sent in a film for Search - the BBC Children's Film competition. It was a good stimulus to make me get something done. I didn't win, but got into a short list. A lot of people start things and then drop out, but the encouragement of having a bit of recognition does help to keep you going.

Jumping forward … I was by now a full-time teacher and had little chance to make movies. But I got a video camera for family records.  During a career break I went to an evening class at Croydon Clocktower Arts Centre.  This covered the basics of how to make a video. There were six evenings talking about script and then four evenings on the more practical side of it. The idea was that at the end of the course the participants would get together and make a movie.  We were firmly told it had to be done on the weekend 12/13th April.  That focus was great.

We shot Perfect in two days.

One of the things they taught us was scheduling: how to make the most of your time. Of course you never have long enough on any location, but it made us very economical with time. Getting people together - especially having no money - meant you were casting people to help really on the basis of commitment as much as anything else.

When we had a look at amateur acting groups, we found that it is very difficult to find people who don't play to the gallery. They are projecting way too far. I've worked with children, teaching drama, and they are easy to direct because they do what you tell them. The trouble with adults is that they think they know better. You try to take people down - tactfully pretend you are zoomed in so close they need hardly move, though really you're not - then they watch it afterwards and say "I think I overacted."

The two most important things I found were the script and the casting. I'm really interested in story-telling but the course warned us that you can't tell a whole story in a short piece so you need to do something a bit more abstract. I was determined to prove them wrong! But the exercise was supposed to be about five minutes long and it ended up about twelve.

I wanted to try to move people and have a bit of emotional range in it, rather than show-off some flashy camera work. The direction was simple: camera, tripod and try to get the sound right. With the limitation on time I really wanted to try and get the performances as much as possible rather than hold that up too much with technicalities. On another film I might try to be a bit more ambitious.

I did try to prepare as thoroughly as possible.

I wrote the script . We had two or three rehearsals. The Arts Centre had rooms we could use during the day - and since the people who were appearing in it did not have jobs we could have rehearsal which is useful.

When scouting locations I took the camera and tripod with me to make sure I was going to be able to get back far enough. When you have an extended tripod in normal houses you don't have much space. So I did try to prepare as thoroughly as possible. The actual shooting is such a tiny proportion of the time that you spend on a film. We had a cutting ratio of about 15 to 1 - but a dodgy sound connection wasted a great deal of time. I hate films where you can't hear what's being said - it happens even in professional films sometimes. We had an external mic. I regard good sound as a priority.

The scene where our heroine is jostled by two lads and a lettuce falls from her bag was fortuitous. I liked that take. The trouble with making a film is that you never see it for the first time - only other people do that. So it is hard to know whether a sequence like this fits in. I liked it because she looked vulnerable but the drive of the positive thinking carried her through. I like her performance because she did it with no ironic edge. She seemed to be someone who was completely absorbed in it. When she saw the script the actress said: "I am Petal."  She felt a real empathy with the role.

I think people connect

As an audience you can empathise with people in all sorts of circumstances, so long as there is vulnerability and humanity, I think people sit in front of a screen and open themselves up emotionally to that. If it feels as if the work has any trace of authenticity then I think people connect to that.

The scene in the dress shop was important to me.  I have two daughters so I know the pressure on women to look right.  I wanted to strike a blow against that culture!

It's very difficult to judge the tone. For many people it may appear too sentimental. For others it will not. I find that putting in little comic bits as well makes it - I hope - not too sugary.

It does take an enormous amount of energy to make a film. That's why the awards help to nudge you on to make the next one, get you out of that inertia caused by exhaustion.

What's next?

I've written some more short scripts and I want to find some local people to work with. I think I've found a group in Great Yarmouth called Sea Change. They have a digital camera and they do work with a lot of unemployed people. I want to be with a group because when you are on set and meant to be concentrating on performances, you're worrying about the sound … that's inevitable in amateur films but it would be nice to sink into the comfort of the group with other people whom you can rely on to do that.

- Christopher Mander

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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