BROKE '22 - COMPLETE SERIES (2022) #featurefilm

Black Country Drama featuring four interconnected tales of family life in post Covid Britain.

KAI
When Kai is dumped by his girlfriend, he wonders what he's done wrong. Misinterpreting his father's advice, he attempts to win her back in an unusual way.

GRACE
Grace is duped into wing-girling for her friend, Chelsea, who wants to hook up with her classmate, Rob. Trouble is, Grace fancies Rob herself...

DAVE
After losing his contract at a local hotel, tradesman Dave is forced to accept a job from his arch-nemesis, 'Nobby'.

REG
Reg is a veteran of the Falklands War. He's having trouble paying his heating bills, so is persuaded to take up the government's offer of housing a Ukrainian Refugee.

CAST:
Rachel Hassett
Mark Rainsbury
James Talib
Bath Morrissey
James Rocks
Anthony Lee Wallis
Lauren Redfern
Chance Gallagher
Giedre Jackyte
Gandhar Babre
Andy Milligan
Parvinder Kaur

DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY:

TOM RICHARDS began making movies in the late 1990's, shooting short horrors on an SVHS camcorder, which weighed approx. 86 stone.
Throughout the 2000s, he was prolific on the independent filmmaking scene, producing over 100 shorts between 2003 and 2012.
After taking a 10-year hiatus to buy a house, he's now back in the fold, producing the kind of kitchen-sink dramas that had earned him a moderate amount of success with the short-lived Icewhole Film Network.

WRITING
I started writing BROKE in the Winter of 2022, just as the Cost-of-Living Crisis was starting to hit people in the pockets. Annoyed by the Government's inept response, I began rage-penning a screenplay, which would soon become the first story, 'KAI'.

After finishing the first draft, I quickly realised that the project had a much wider scope than a single 15-minute film, so expounded the narrative with additional plotlines and characters.

I'm fairly pleased with the final product. The cast did a great job with the script, delivering solid performances throughout. Chance Gallagher was particularly excellent as 'Reg' - the 78-year-old Falklands Veteran who takes in a Ukrainian Refugee to help pay his energy bills. Even if it's not your cup of tea, it's worth a watch for him alone!

CASTING
I used the StarNow platform to source my actors, the majority of whom were inexperienced or had only ever done SA work in the past, auditioning via Zoom, after finishing my shift at work.

SHOOTING
The film was shot in five days in and around the Black Country and North Birmingham. To help schedule the shoots (which were filmed by 'location'), I created a spreadsheet containing the details of every scene, which I could be filtered by actor and their availability.
Everything was filmed on a single consumer-range hand-held camcorder, (Panasonic HCX-2000) using natural lighting wherever possible. I wasn't too worried about the light levels being a bit off in certain scenes, as I wanted the footage to look 'raw', like a British drama from the 1980s.

EDITING
I edited the footage as I went along, producing a rough cut in iMovie, then applying a simple colour grade in DaVinci Resolve.