Simon Horrocks is a master of making movies without spending much money. His current project is “Silent Eye,” a low-budget web series distributed on Amazon. You can get a feel for his methods in the following behind-the-scenes video titled, appropriately enough, “Making a SciFi Movie with No Money.” In the interview below, he provides a number of valuable tips for the economy-minded filmmaker. But perhaps the most important secret that he shares has nothing to do with casting, location scouting, and gear. For Simon Horrocks, the key was overcoming fear.

Interview

MMM: Could you give tell us what led you into filmmaking?

Horrocks:  I wanted to be a film director when I was about 7 years old. I have some school diaries from the time. There’s a drawing of an standard 8mm camera on a tripod my dad bought me. I would also write the synopsis of films I’d seen at the cinema, for example, “The Snowball Express.” Over a few weeks I wrote out the plot-line of this film, as I remembered it. This was in the 1970s, so no chance I could stream it or check the DVD to refresh my memory. Later, at art college, I bought myself a Super 8mm camera and shot a couple of shorts with Jonathan Glazer. After I failed to get into film school, I considered entering the film business at the ground floor and working my way up.  But out of total fear and lack of self-esteem, I never even tried. Instead,I became a music engineer/programmer for 20 years and wrote screenplays in my spare time. I had a few scripts optioned. But nothing got off the ground. In my early 40s, I was diagnosed with depression. This led to me “re-inventing” myself. I stood back and looked at why I was doing so many self-defeating things. I realised fear was preventing me from making films.

MMM: Where did that realization lead you?

Horrocks: I decided it was past the time of waiting for someone to give me money to make a film. So I wrote a feature script called “Third Contact,” bought a camcorder, invited some people to help out and started filming. I’ve written a book about this whole rather epic journey I found myself on. I never got round to publishing it, but I’ve edited it down to a long blog post. Through self-distributing this film, I met Andrea Holle in Switzerland. She told me about her idea for a festival for films shot on smartphones and so we set up Mobile Motion Film Festival.

MMM: How did you develop your filmmaking skills?

Horrocks: Learning things the academic way has never worked for me. I can’t spend days writing essays about film to learn how to make a film. Also, I have a bit of rebellious streak. If someone starts telling me, “You have to do it this way,” my mind immediately asks “Why?” and starts thinking about alternative methods. When I came to shoot “Third Contact,” I hadn’t operated a movie camera since my 8mm days. I had no idea what angles I needed that would cut together to make a scene. So I shot tons of footage, hoping I would have so much covered that I could make something of it. The shoot went on for over a year. By editing as I went along, I learned to be much more efficient. I learned how to shoot a film. “Third Contact” was my film school. Back in 2012, there wasn’t much in the way of tutorials. But more recently, especially for CGI work, I have spent many hours watching YouTube tutorials, which are an incredible resource. Filmmaking is like any other art—you learn your craft by doing it, not by studying it. You don’t learn to swim by reading a book about swimming. You just have to get in and splash about until you get some skills. The more you learn by doing, the more your own voice will come out.

MMM: How did you come up with idea of the “Silent Eye” series?

Horrocks: I have no desire to make CGI driven scifi, where it’s all about the spectacle. I’m interested in what technology says about us. I’ve written many feature screenplays.Problem is, getting a feature made takes years even if you make it yourself. So I now had a ton of scifi scripts, sitting on the shelf. As I’d been helping run the Mobile Motion Film Festival, I decided I should make a smartphone film. I wrote a script about the music business to be shot on phones and tried to raise £30k on Kickstarter. We didn’t manage to reach that total, so I decided – damn it, I’m just going to make a short! Then it all clicked in my mind—I’ve got all these cool ideas for different stories, doing nothing. Why not make an anthology series?

MMM: Can you talk about earning money via online distribution?

Horrocks: On the plus side, both Amazon and YouTube have huge numbers of viewers. On the down side, they are swamped by content, because they are relatively easy to get your work onto. And they know they don’t have to pay you much. Since Amazon reduced their rates for low viewing figure films, I find I make more money from YouTube. As a filmmaker, you have to change your way of thinking. Digital distribution, combined with a heavy social media presence, works best with relentless, regular content. This is why it’s hard to get something off the ground with a feature film, which takes 2-3 or more years to make.

MMM: How did you come up with the idea for “You Have Been Chosen”?

Horrocks: Back in 2014, after I had finished my epic “Third Contact” journey, I started to write a new feature script called “The Mentor.” It was a “found footage” idea—a documentary about a social experiment gone wrong. The experiment was about a woman who agreed to allow a male mentor to make all her life decisions for her, to see if she would be more successful. After 2 drafts, I wasn’t happy 100% with it and it went onto the shelf. So when I came to idea for the “Silent Eye” series, I thought about how I could make this mentor idea into a short. I switched the mentor character for an app called Decider. Then cut the story to 10 pages. The story is completely different from “The Mentor” apart from the central idea.

MMM:  Why did you decide to shoot with a smartphone rather than a traditional camera?

Horrocks: Whatever you shoot on, there are compromises and limitations. What suits you? What suits your story? When they have these comparison videos on YouTube between an iPhone X and a Arri Alexa, they only compare the image quality, which of course the phone is always going to lose. What we don’t see is someone trying to spontaneously run onto a train, filming without permission, holding a heavy Arri set-up, with legs, lights, lenses and a 6-person sound and camera crew. In that situation, the smartphone wins by a mile. You have to ask yourself: “Is my dependence on this big camera stopping me making my film?” or “Is it stopping me making my film the way I want to make it?” I could write a book on my experiences trying to make low budget films, shooting on 16mm or professional cameras. When we shot “Kosmos,” we had a camera crew, with a big truck full of equipment. Although it feels like you’re making a “proper” movie, for me it also feels like I’m wearing a straight-jacket. Before I made “Third Contact,” I remember watching David Lynch talk about making “Inland Empire.” He explained how liberating it was using a small digital camera. How he enjoyed shooting without having to explain everything to a DoP[director of photography]. And watching it I thought, this is very creative. It’s pure Lynch. I’d rather watch someone as creative as him making a film with a SD camera, than someone less imaginative with all the kit and 50 crew.

MMM: Any reason you chose to shoot with the Samsung S8?

Horrocks: It was the phone I had in my pocket and it has a great camera. As you may guess, I’m not a tech geek. I have almost no interest in equipment specs. I’m only interested in what a tool has to offer me as an artist. I don’t think you should be held back by anything, including whether you’ve got an iPhone, a Samsung, a OnePlus or any other brand. If something incredible, moving, gripping or thought-provoking is happening on screen, nobody cares what camera you used.

MMM: Could you talk about your gear?

Horrocks: I use a Sennheiser 416 microphone. It was the most expensive thing I bought for making “Third Contact.” But I was a sound engineer and sound recordist for many years, so I understood the benefit of good audio quality. Recording audio works differently to visual images. With the image, you can be expressive. You can experiment to achieve different things. With audio, it’s much less about how you record it, but how you design the sound in post; that’s where the expression comes in. Therefore, you want the cleanest sound possible on location. The only Rode equipment I used was a boom pole and mic mount. I used an H4n Zoom, which I also bought for making “Third Contact” 10 years ago! Also from “Third Contact” was a small redhead lamp.  A friend found it in the back of a cupboard at the BBC. They were throwing it out, so I took it and bought some legs for it (£25). We had some reflectors and some battery powered LEDs that you can clip on to things like tables and the backs of chairs.

MMM: Anything purchased specifically for smartphone filmmaking?

Horrocks: The  Zhiyun Smooth-Q gimbal and the Moondog Labs Anamorphic lens adaptor with a 37mm clip. I used 3 x £1 coins stuck on with Blu Tack as a counterweight for the extra weight of the lens.

MMM: Could you talk about casting?

Horrocks: When I had the idea for the series, the first person I spoke to was Zoe. We’d been talking about working together for a few years, after she appeared in “Kosmos.” She liked the idea and was happy to help produce. So I wrote “You Have Been Chosen” with her in mind also knowing she had access to an office where she works! Zoe helped find the rest of the cast, too. She suggested Amy, Sedef and Richard, from working with them before. Richard, who plays Lee, was an actor I met while working at the IMAX cinema, years before. Mark—who plays the cleaner—stepped in when the person we cast couldn’t make it. He had just come along to help out and didn’t realise he was going to get cast!  Mark also recorded sound. As did Scott who plays the cafe barista.

MMM: So the actor can bring more than acting skills.

Horrocks: When you’re making a low-to-no budget film, it really helps if everyone gets involved in the production, including the actors.

 

MMM: Could you talk briefly about your method of directing the actors?

Horrocks: This might sound obvious but it’s really important to think carefully about what an actor brings to a role in a film. It’s about how a personality works in the story. Then its about working with the actor to bring out what they have, rather than forcing them to do something which is against what they are. Bad casting really can mess up a great story. If you do it well, you are already halfway to a good performance before you started filming. I never rehearse before filming, but my first step is to ask the lead actor how they want to go about creating the character. For this film, I met with Zoe and we talked through the character and the scenes. Zoe went through the script, alone, writing down how she thought her character would feel at each turn in the story. I made suggestions if I thought something might work better differently. Every actor works differently and needs different kinds of assistance. For example, in the cafe scene, I felt Zoe wasn’t quite getting the raw frustration we needed in the dialogue. So, after a few takes, I suggested she do it again but this time add loads of swearing. Really, just to provoke something.

MMM: And this works for people without formal training?

Horrocks: Paul, who plays Paul, Fiona’s boss,  had never acted before. He was someone I knew from previous crowdfunding campaigns. He was very much up for playing the bullying boss, so we met in London and discussed the character and acting in general. I asked Paul to film himself playing his character, using his phone. From those videos, I gave him some direction. Pretty much, every human is an actor. We spend our whole day pretending, instinctively. Society requires that we don’t let out our innermost thoughts when we’re at the office or meeting friends. We’re trying to be liked, we’re trying to be funny, we’re trying to be accepted – so we’re all acting. But in a film, you need to do it to command. If I’m working with someone who has never done this before, I’ll try to help them access the acting skills they are, unknowingly, using every day.

MMM: Can you tell us about the locations?

Horrocks: The office looks really cool —especially the top floor with the glass roof. We were allowed to film there, out of office hours. The cafe at the start is in the ground floor of Zoe’s office. Stuart’s living room is in a flat that belongs to my old school friend. He loves to be involved with my films and has been an extra every one so far. I wanted something that looked modest and suburban, so it fitted well. Fiona’s bedroom belongs to my flatmates. They’re a married couple who manage to fit most of what they own into that one room. The overwhelming clutter makes it a great background and a visual metaphor for the chaos of Fiona’s indecisive mind.

MMM: Could you talk about problems that you encountered during the production?

Horrocks: We did have a few challenges. Although the cafe was closed, it was being cleaned as we were filming, by a guy with a huge, noisy, industrial mop or something. Also the air conditioning couldn’t be turned off. The conversation between Fiona and her friend was supposed to take place in the cafe, but it was just too noisy. So we moved upstairs to a staff room, quickly moved around some tables and chairs, and added a pot plant to make it look more like a cafe. But  the biggest set-back we had was when I had my phone was stolen after the first day of filming. I had just got home and was about to download the rest of the footage, but I hadn’t eaten much that day so I was dithering on the street, trying to decide where to eat—if only I had a decider app like the one in our movie. Two guys on a motorbike rode up and snatched my phone. We lost half that day’s footage plus we had to cancel the next day of filming as we had nothing to film with.  Luckily, Samsung lent us a new phone and we got it finished a month later.

MMM: When will the second episode come out?

Horrocks: We expect to release it in September.

You can follow Simon Horrocks and the series via Twitter, YouTube,  and Facebook.

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking picked “You Have Been Chosen” as a Mobile Movie of the Week.