VELVET THOMPSON

Very happy to have made my first film, it really is an achievment to have made Velvet Thompson on such a tight budget. Nearly all the scenes were shot on green screen which limited the angles and shots we could do, but the restrictions were welcomed as my understanding of film Noir is that it was born from independent filmmakers on a low budget with limited equipment (lighting) so it seemed apt to work as close to the original film noir structure as possible.

I always saw Velvet Thompson as a Dark Comedy to be played out as a drama. It is subtle, but there are a number of themes I was interested in about masculinity, also about accepting your own identity. As a heterosexual man, when I was younger, I had problems accepting difference until I came to an age of understanding, it seemed odd that I restricted my own capacity to accept other peoples lives and choices, the anxiety Tony feels about revealing himself and the fact that this masculine killer could be a transvestite was a deliberate juxtaposition to the setting and period and its intentions were to show how much western society has moved forward in accepting diversity in all its forms.