The Double Deal

Mark and I had worked together as actors on one occasion during a BT ad, directed by Alan Coulter and in the passing years we always talked about making a film together. The Double Deal is the result of that collaboration, a part moral tale, part fantasy thriller with a hugely experienced cast and crew who were a joy to work with.
The story idea was entirely Mark’s and I had the task of developing it from a story and a rough script to the final version. When Kerryn Arcari was brought on I knew we were in safe hands .This was an ambitious effort for a short film; with an allocation of only two days on the schedule I knew there would be no room for error. The first day at the hospital and the house were relatively simple. But day two involved a stunt, as Mark’s character gets hit by the van and I had to be creative with shooting enough footage and angles to deceive the audience. The afternoon into the night involved shooting the poker game. This did prove challenging with a single camera and a fairly large cast! I have to be happy with the amazing work everybody contributed and to the highly skilled work from the editor, Emma Collins who we are privileged to have on the project.
‘Film making is always an edgy environment to be immersed in. The process is always changing from calm to complicated to critical and back again! But the creative process is so complete compared to the visiting structure, for example, of being an actor, where you spend a few days on set and then disappear, leaving this huge moving unit to continue on day after day. I was drawn by that and became a director because of the involvement from early idea, to script drafts, to casting to shooting and then the edit. The rewards are immense, as is the pressure sometimes ‘
Mark and Patsy proved to be astonishing first time producers and there would no hesitation whatsoever in collaborating with them again. The festival circuit awaits the film and I wish it the luck it deserves.