The Blaine Brothers
The Blaine brothers have been making films since their teenage years and their short, Hallo Panda, is still shown on Channel 4. They have now turned their attention to feature films and run their own production company, Charlie Productions.
What training have you received?
Nothing that relevant … Chris dropped out of an animation degree and I was once put through a couple of sessions of script reader training by a well meaning screen agency but I’d say we’re self-taught.
Does your budget limit what you can explore in your films?
Our shorts have ranged in budget from £50 to £50K but within that the money hasn’t really limited the ideas, just the way we express them. However we soon realised that there were stories we couldn’t tell in ten or even thirty minutes. Our short films have tended to be quite funny because when we try and say something serious in five minutes it always just feels a bit fatuous. Now that we’re focusing our attentions on longer films it’s given us more scope to talk about things that matter to us.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a low-budget filmmaker?
It came from a gaffer who said, “We’re in the movie game, and the rules of the game are—they’ve got the money—and we’ve got to get it off ‘em.” It’s a massively over-subscribed industry so making some films for the next-to-nothing you have in your bank account is always worth doing at least twice. However, there must come a time when you look yourself squarely in the face and agree that you’ll only ever make another film if you can find someone else out there who believes in you enough to put their money where your mouth is.
Most significant moment in your career so far?
One of the most significant moments was in meeting with our script editor Carolyn Young. She was one of the first people who didn’t give a flying fuck about who we were or what we’d done and told us in no uncertain terms that we weren’t as good as we thought we were. Initially we were forced to work with her by Screen East, and for the first six weeks it was like a war zone. Then, just by being completely right, she helped us to strip down all the protective nonsense that we’d been hiding behind and to really harness the talents that we did have.
You’ll die happy when…
We learn to be content with the things we have done rather than waste our energies moaning about those we never did.
