The 58 team won Best Short Film 2011
Match won the Golden Goul for Best Popular Film
Max Philo and Mark Castro win Best Student Film with Where The Boats Decay
Dead Dream won Best Cinematography
Violet Kelly (centre) wins Best Actress for her role in 58 with Judge Mike Shaw (left) and Theatre Royal Margate Director Will Wollen (right)
From the shadows around the Theatre Royal Margate, on a particularly dark and forbidding Saturday night (29/10/11), a ghostly hoard of vampires, witches and the assembled undead arrived. They had converged in Margate from every shadowy murky corner of England, to gorge themselves on the dark fruits of the filmmakers’ imaginations, to gasp with horror and shriek with fear. With all the courage the rest of the intrepid audience could muster, they filed into the historic theatre as the Old Town clock struck seven.
Incredibly, the 2 Days Later Short Horror Film Competition marked its 9th anniversary with this year’s shortlisted finalists’ evening film screening. The competition premise is that films must be made in two days. They can be filmed on any medium, including a mobile phone, so they are truly accessible to all. And this year really was a corker. The film industry panel of 6 judges (who include actor Andy Nyman, screen writer James Moran and film critic Kim Newman) unanimously considered this year to be the best and scariest crop ever!
Kent film scoops Best Short Horror Film at 2 Days Later 2011 Halloween Film Screening.
The Gravesend based Director, Rosie Owen, herself a previous 2 Days Later 2008 Best Actress winner, has made her directorial debut (to win a week’s professional camera hire from sponsors VMI High Definition & Broadcast) for the Best Short Film award with her film 58, a tale of a lonely survivor of an apocalyptic virus who is trapped in her own high rise apartment, looking at the distant chaos below; until the doorbell rings. The female lead, played by Violet Kelly also won Best Actress, and the film also picked up Best SFX for the ultra-convincing zombie scenes.
Local Canterbury Christ Church University Students Max Philo and Mark Castro from Broadstairs won Best Student Film with Where The Boats Decay, filmed in Dungeness, and Best Editor went to Dover based Jonathan Boxall, for his powerful and sophisticated construction of his poetic film Contrition.
The evening audience however decided to vote for their Best Popular Film as Match By Essex based filmmakers Lawrence Axe and Slade Lamey. They won placements on two professional Alexa Experience / Large Sensor Camera Courses at VMI High Definition & Broadcast, London. Their film also won Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Sound.
Referring to the unusually high standard of this year’s non-shortlisted Tales of Terror Matinee Screening, one of the audience members commented: “It’s a great way to kill a Saturday afternoon!” The audience deciding that the witty mocumentary Him In Doors, about awoman possessed, by London based filmmakers, Gareth Davies and Sonja Quita-Doubleday should win the Best Popular Film award in the matinee screenings.
Competition co-creator, Mick Etherton told me: “Since it began nine years ago, our competition has inspired other towns to take the concept and begin their own short filmmaking festivals. This shows how effective this type of event is in getting new films made, and out there on the big screen, and in terms of both reaching people and in value for money. Since we began, we have had over 400 horror films made specifically for our horror competition. We know that, because we have a list of scary items that have to be in the films. This is to help the filmmakers structure their films and to make sure they are authentically made, just for our competition. When you think that each of these films involves many people in the production, and you consider all the people coming to watch the screenings, our figures point to the competition attracting nearly 10 000 participants from across the UK to the competition since we started.”
Co-creator, Chris Cordwell, added: “And with the year-on-year improvement to the quality of the films, Two Days Later remains a truly inspirational concept. The filmmakers – many for the first time – all worked to a very tight (48 hour) schedule, to film, edit and produce their 10-minute submissions.”
Mick continued: “Also, the fact that these filmmakers make their films with their own budget and in their own time shows their love of filmmaking. The screening event at the Theatre Royal Margate is absolutely free, and attracts a national audience, this year coming from as far as Cornwall, Wales, and Isle of Man - and at the end of the day, these films are as good as any fully-budgeted film production.”
This year there were 55 UK wide film entries.
Pioneers in digital innovation, competition organisers, Beeping Bush, filmed the screening event itself in 3-D. Beeping Bush are, at present, the only company in Kent with both 3-D filmmaking and editing expertise, and are currently using 3-D technology on a ground-breaking interactive 3-D project, funded by the British Film Institute.
(By Ema Rush)
Click here to see the full film category result winners.
Click here to download a pdf document of the programme
for the day and evening screenings.
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