Remembering the people who have supported you at such an early stage of your development as a Director is so important. it’s those people that I remember when a fellow director or producer phones me up asking for crew recommendations or references. Too many filmmakers shit on people in order to get what they want, they have one goal- solely to make the film and they don’t care about the carnage that they leave behind. A wise person once told me “Be careful of who you step on if you think you are on the way up! You will have to pass them on the way back down!”

During the last few months I’ve been hired to undertake several Director of Photography duties on local productions. This was a first for me as I usually employ my good friend Rick Trainor on my own shoots. As a result, I have learned a lot about lighting techniques from him during our collaborations. As many people know, the role of a Director of Photography and light in particular is so important in film but is often neglected in small to low budget productions. On previous shoots, Rick and I have used light as creatively as possible and lit many scenes using professional lights to £5 Ikea lamps and even Blackberry phones. Light is everything!