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Ken Russell Critiqued My Short Film
The legendary British director taught me during my final year of university.
Whilst at university during the mid-1990s, one of our lecturers was the legendary Ken Russell, the late British director of classics such as The Devils (1971) and Tommy (1975). Ken was brought in to comment on the rough cut of our dissertation short films, and he also provided a series of screenings and lectures on highlights from his directing career. My first viewings of both the above masterpieces were with the great director present. An eccentric figure always accompanied by a little sausage dog, Ken was consistently engaging, good-humoured, and full of fascinating anecdotes. I enjoyed getting to know him a little during my time as a student.
I first met Ken at the aforementioned rough cut critique. My dissertation film, entitled Dead of Night (a nod to the 1945 Ealing horror anthology classic of the same name) was a horror-thriller about a burglar (played by author and fellow film enthusiast Marcus Bines) breaking into an office building after dark, attempting to raid a safe. What he doesn’t realise is a corporate AGM is taking place on a different floor, and the corporate bigwigs are all vampires.
Although most of the dissertation films on my course were group projects, with three or four people assigned different production roles, no one else on my course wanted to make Dead of Night. My contemporaries were happy enough to help out during the shoot, as we all crewed one another’s films in a quid-pro-quo arrangement, but I was faced with a Herculean producing/directing/editing task, arranging everything myself, as the script was fairly ambitious for a no-budget student film. It involved the use of latex arms, sugar glass bottles, lots of practical fake blood effects, gory make-up, and so forth (I funded the film by assisting a friend flogging booze cruise tickets to freshers, in case anyone is interested). The locations were also of critical importance, and I also had the devil of a time obtaining large scary syringes (eventually acquiring them from a drug clinic). I should add that I didn’t write the screenplay; a good friend on a different film course had written it with me in mind to direct for my dissertation. Very decent of him.
