At the beginning of the month, we were notified that ‘Snug As A Bug’ had placed in the One-Reeler Short Film Competition – a smashing new piece of industry endorsement that came at the same time the film was screening in Toronto as part of the FEEDBACK Female Film Festival…

…at the same time we were being reminded by our calendar-crunching social media accounts that it’d been a year since an I-dotted, T-crossed ‘Snug’ birthed in a central London editing suite… at the same time we realised two years had passed since a script with a different name had risen to the top of a keen director’s slush pile and gotten the whole snuggy, ruggy snowball rolling.

So cheers, One-Reeler! You’ve been added to a growing list of favourite Rich Teaser festivals and competitions: a tacking, broad-sailed “yes-please” on a rolling, wrecking sea of “no-thankyous”. Or something less overtly nautical.

“If you’d told me two years ago I’d be the first man from Greater Manchester in space when I was still clearing up half-eaten plates of sausage and mash in Mecca Bingo in Bolton… I’d have laughed in your stupid face.”

In 2016, we had lots of content, no films, no writing credits (no terribly recent ones, anyway…) and no fast-track plans for demolishing all the insurmountable-looking industry walls separating us from Square 1. Then someone liked something we wrote. Then someone else did. Then the BBC invited us over to Broadcasting House to wax lyrical about our work and tell us we could “absolutely” write for this industry. Then a film got financed and made. Then three more. Then we won some laurels. Then some more. Then something else we wrote attracted the interest of some people we could never have imagined getting close to when we first started. Then that got made too. Then we acquired interest in a feature. Then we began writing a television series.

Then we realised we’d gone a lot further than we’d ever thought we’d get two-point-something years ago.

As planless as we might’ve been way, way back in 2016 (when we toiled in sepia with top hats and smoking jackets…), the greatest favour we did ourselves was to write and write and write. If anyone was to ever give us the time of day, we weren’t going to be short of winning alternatives – after all, the Beeb got us in for a gangster flick then asked where we stood on children’s comedy. Having additional content kept working relationships going past the ends of individual projects and started fresh dialogues with new and interesting filmmaking folk. It kept us invested in our own game, revising, refining, even repurposing material as new enquiries were made and opportunities developed.

We didn’t exactly sit the wrong side of the Square 1 wall praying for a Christ-in-cornflakes style revelation of arcane industry secrets, but we did sit on a pile of finished works wondering how we’d ever get them looked at. Turns out once we got that one important break, we’d already laid the foundations to demonstrate quality, versatility, timeliness and a willingness to adapt: yes, we did have ‘other stuff’ that was just as good; yes, we could have it ready for the end of the day, week, month or Skype call; and yes, we can adjust it to fit all of X, most of Y and enough of Z to tie it all together.

Oh, and that shiny new thing…?

We’ve recently seen the assembly cut of our newest flick ‘Making A Killing’. It stars a critically-acclaimed ‘Bombshell’ actress and comedian and an Olivier Award-winning actor and accomplished nailer of tricky bathroom takes.

But I think that’s all we’ll say for now…

More too on our One-Reeler placing once we know it.