From a £20 Short Film to a Feature: Aaron Truss on Making Films Without Permission

You're now about to do a feature.

What do you think stops filmmakers from making the jump from a short film to a feature film?

I think it's the time, the dedication, the stress, the commitment is a big one.

You know, I've always shot on digital.

I've never known a world to shoot on film.

I've heard Jake West talking about shooting on film and how strict you have to be in things like that.

Yeah, I can imagine.

And it's a discipline that I... you know, one day would love to experiment with, but never for a feature.

I mean, digital, thank God has, you know, it's given filmmakers so much freedom and, you know, shooting in 4k, this will be the second time I'll be shooting in 4k.

So working on short films, you know, there's less days, less blocks to shoot in.

If there's a, someone gets ill or whatever, like your lead actor or whatever, then there is a bit more leeway to be like, right, okay, we just need to reschedule this location and, you know, we're only going to be shooting for a couple of days and there's less time spent on the project in terms of shooting, I suppose.

I mean, I'm just speaking from my experience, but when we did Pareidolia, which was the last short I did, we shot for four days, I think, spread over three months, I think it was.

Two on location in Roberts Bridge, which is this quaint old village in Sussex.

One day on set in a mortuary, um not a real mortuary it was a mortuary set in um south hall uh the hospital studio shout out to lizzie dyer um and the the the other day was just pickups that we needed to get um without the main actress um so yeah i think there is a lot more freedom there's a I think as a filmmaker now, as we speak presently, I underestimated how ready I was.

And I don't think you will ever be ready to take on your first feature film because it puts a strain on whatever relationship you're in with your partner.

It puts a strain on your family.

Especially if you're crowdfunding and you're trying to raise awareness, you realize that you have no time.

how much money are you willing to spend up front just to get the project off the ground because this, for example, Employee of the Dead, we decided that rather than just have a regular crowdfunding video where I'd sit on camera and go, hello, my name is Aaron Truss and I've got this vision.

Here are some storyboards and blah, blah.

I decided that let's shoot some scenes from the film.

We've already got commitments from Danny Harmer and Paul Kassar and Ellie Rae Winstone.

Let's go and shoot.

We have a location.

We have some locations and But just by pure knocking on doors, we managed to shoot some of our sequences in a Morrison's in Kent for three to four hours, with permission this time.

And we figured this film's only going to work if we have a real supermarket.