Crowtown: Rolling Sixes

This film came into creation while talking to two very talented individuals, Tony Lee (write) and Derrick Peters (Cinematrographer). We wall wanted to make something to show what we could dao.

Tony a prolific writer and New York best selling author had never managed to get anything from page to screen and to me that was a real shame.

Derrick Peters a very experienced 1st Assistant Camera and cameraman (Paddington, Justice League, Star Wars) wants to start shooting more of his own work but didn't have anything to shoot.

So I went to my producer Luke Thornton, a dear friend and film veteran whom we had a lot of history and discussed helping make this project, He agreed and here we are. This project wouldn't be what it is without him, I practically drove him mad in the run up to the shoot.

Tony and I sat down and I told him what I wanted, Tony presented me with a comic idea he's had called Crowtown, I loved the name and some of the ideas in it but it wasn't quite what I wanted so I went away and considered what is Crowtown? After a short holiday with my wife in Sicily I came up with the world of Purgatory where Crowtown resides. How the world works, the keys and mechanics which felt to me plausible despite fictional. I present this to Tony and we collaborated both our concepts into what we have in this film. A couple days later (Tony writes at a pace which would make hurricane look like a light breeze) we had a script and I started shopping it about.

Casting was an interesting process, Im not the most experienced of directors so a lot of this was news to me and got a lot of help from Thomas Adams (Casting). We saw a lot of interesting people and choose the best actors with the best chemistry, Leon Annor had this gravitas to his performance that not a single other person could match, I was totally blown away. My main choice for Inspector Gravel actually dropped out last minute which considering all the other complications we were experiencing with the location and crew, was disastrous. Fortunately, Thomas Thoroe was a strong backup for my main choice came in and kindly saved the day and I think the film, its always hard to come in knowing you weren't the first choice and I thank him and fate as this added a new level to the script and performance I hadn't considered.

When it came to the filming our network of friends, colleagues jumped in and discounted and threw in things for free. Panavision went above an beyond delivering all the equipment and giving it for nothing including their legendary C-Series anamorphic lenses used in many of the biggest films in current and past history.

I feel incredibly lucky to have made this film the way it was made and it was all down to the people involved.