Back in 2002, I attended a monthly Screen Writer's Forum at my local Media Centre. One of the exercises we did consisted of everyone writing down a title for a short film. Then we each had to pick someone else's title and write a short film based on the title alone. I picked: 'My Necrophiliac Bride'.

I have a lot of bad feelings whenever I think about the 'necro' shoot now. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with the end result and it's probably my favourite short I've done, but it was one of the most stressful experiences I've had. The cast & crew were brilliant, great bunch, lots of laughs. However, my producer was a nightmare. Lots of things went wrong throughout the shoot. The first mistake was that we only had three days to shoot a 14 minute film in. Compare this to the five days I shot 'Death by Chocolate' - and that's only 6 minutes long!

So we were up against the clock and a lot of scenes we had to rush and when you rush filmmaking, mistakes happen. My producer scheduled the three days, though I should have known it wouldn't be enough time. Secondly, my camera operator pulled out a few days before the start of the shoot. Thankfully, Ben Sampays stepped in and he was a complete professional. Ben is a writer/director himself with loads of experience, I had worked on his short film prior to this so it was great to

have him onboard.

Lots of other bad things happened throughout the shoot - both personal and professional. Like my dog died after the first day of filming. Nervous breakdown time. Then Andy, the actor playing Mike informed me that he wouldn't be able to attend the last day of shooting unless I paid him a ridiculous amount of money for one day's work on a no budget short film. He knew prior to the shoot there would be no money involved and he agreed to the three dates of filming, so this really pissed me off. Andy gives a great performance in the film and I think he's a superb actor, it's just a shame that he did what he did. I had already spent a ridiculous amount of money on the film already, and really couldn't afford to pay him the money he wanted. But what could I do?

And did I mention that my producer was a pain in the ass beyond all reason and logic? Again, should have

strong personality shall we say, and I knew I'd be taking a lot on. But her intentions seemed genuine, so why not? There was only one condition however: change the ending.

In my original ending for: 'My Necrophiliac Bride', Gary proposes to Lucy while Mike is tied up from the ceiling. But instead of Gary slaughtering Lucy to death (as in the final ending), the two get married, happily exiting the church with confetti thrown over them, and Lucy carrying Mike's ashes in an urn. A nice ending I thought. But no, I was told to change it. At one point we planned on shooting both endings, but it was such a ridiculously short shoot that we simply didn't have time.

this film I know it would have been at least 50% better than how it turned out. That's what hurts.

Having said that, I love the film as it is. God knows how we managed it, but we pulled it off. Just about. I like the style of the film, compare this film with 'The Money Tree' and you can see I've grown and progressed as a director. There's a lot of confident camera movements, a lot of handheld stuff, almost reflecting a Dogme film at times. Because of the constant

movement of the camera, that helps to move the story along and it is quick paced and there's lots of different elements - freeze frames, voice over, use of still photos, speeded up footage, pull focuses.

As events for Mike take a turn for the worse, the pace speeds up and it's one shock after another, along with one laugh out loud moment after another. The ending that I didn't want to shoot actually works well - it's so bizarre and is the last thing you expect to happen at the end. Andy, as I've mentioned is superb in the role, as is Rob Leetham. Sue Southall does well in a difficult role. So I really love the film as it is but please don't mention the actual experience of getting the film made to me. An absolute nightmare.

This film was shown at the Birmingham Arts Festival 2004 and I'll never forget it. There was about fifty odd people in attendance and everyone was totally into the film; laughing out loud in the right places and they we're completely hooked in to the story. This gave me such a buzz and it was great to get that kind of reception. Vindication for what I went through you could say. Filmmaking is tortuous at times, but then there are times such as this that makes it all worthwhile.

seen it coming. So it wasn't the best of shoots for me. This was the shoot where filmmaking stopped being fun for me. It was such a bad experience that for months after the film I had sworn never to work as a director again. That's how bad this shoot was. I wanted to quit, and almost did.

Ask any of the actors or crew members and they'll tell you the shoot was a fantastic experience. The worst thing for me was the fact that we had to rush so much that we weren't doing the material justice. I knew I had a wacky, bizarre funny script and a good bunch of actors and if we had another two days to shoot