Tom Betts

3 Things I’ve written recently

The End Of The Neverending Story

An article for hack/flash about Secrecy’s long journey to release.

Watch it!

A piece for Plastik about supporting independent cinema.

Roath People

My entry on the hyperlocal Cardiffian blog.

Roathbud 2011 line-up

Here’s what we showed at the Roathbud film night, which was part of the Made in Roath Festival 2011. First, the intro film:

Funday 

Directed by Keri Collins (trailer only below)

Fujiya & Miyaji: YoYo

Directed by Casey Raymond & Ewan Jones Morris

Tentboy

Directed by Ryan Owen (film to come)

Kutosis: Skin 

Directed by Tom Betts (i.e. me)

Fixer

Directed by Jon Ratigan

Classic cinema:

Advertisement Broke

Directed by Daniel Portillo

Spotter 

Directed by Chris Marsh

Stop Motion in the Rex

From Carolina Vasquez and the CuatroOOjos Project

Röyksopp: Forsaken Cowboy

Directed by Matt Callanan

You can also check out Emily Bater’s recap of the night and interview with a waffling me here.

Aside from stress, loss of income and the exasperation of your peers, one of the big pitfalls of shooting the same feature film over several years is that you may run into continuity issues. Just ask those kids who spent their youths re-enacting Raiders of the Lost Ark – they (re)shot it out of sequence and consequently bounce in and out of puberty within individual scenes. Thankfully, though Secrecy’s epic production schedule eventually rendered it a period piece (circa 2007/8) we largely dodged such jarring juxtapositions thanks to one lucky ace up our sleeve: the unchanging hair of lead actor Adrian Walsh. No matter when we shot or how little notice I gave him, it always looked pretty much the same*.

I wish I could say the same for my diminishing crop. Adrian, I salute your amazingly consistent follicles. Also your incredible patience. They glued the film together.

[* It’s definitely not a wig. I am a keen spotter of hairpieces, and this is the real thing.]

Secrecy will begin to hit screens from Autumn 2011. Till then, you can follow facebook.com/secrecymovie and twitter.com/secrecymovie.

On the 11th of July 2006 ~ 5 years ago today ~ we started shooting Secrecy, my debut feature film. Armed with only minimal equipment, a rough outline and a sackload of chutzpah, I met actors Adrian Walsh and Nathan Sussex and cameraman Vivian Thomas upstairs in the Prince of Wales pub in Cardiff and proceeded to direct some of my first ever dialogue-driven scenes.

It went surprisingly well: with minimal prompting, Adrian and Nathan improvised convincingly about pop culture, diving logistics and the mysterious character of Sean, recently disappeared and apparently quite the dark horse. Within a few hours we’d got nearly 5% of the final film in the proverbial can. This whole thing was going to be a cakewalk! Reader, I regret to inform you that half a decade later, Secrecy remains my only feature film to date and isn’t quite out yet. However, I have learned way more about production scheduling, funding applications, seagull nesting behaviour and the Japanese transit system than I anticipated when we started rolling all those years ago. And fingers crossed, Secrecy will finally be hitting screens (maybe even one near you) from this autumn. Here’s a trailer:

Until then, you can follow our continuing adventures at facebook.com/secrecymovie and twitter.com/secrecymovie.

Here’s an article I wrote for Blown Magazine about the excellent British film Skeletons and its director Nick Whitfield. Read it, then go watch the film. Or vice versa.