What did you learn from being part of the Microwave Scheme?
Eran: There's a lot of first-time filmmakers in Britain I think that source funding. They get the money thrown at them but the script is never developed to a point at where it should be moving into principal photography and I think that's a massive problem. I think the good thing about the Microwave Scheme is it nurtured the script.
I knew where I wanted to go with it and it allowed me the time to develop a screenplay so I was nurtured along. I got to work with an amazing script editor by the name of Toby Rushden and I also got to work with the BBC Writers' Room and this was paid for by the Microwave Scheme. So every time I finished a draft it was then given to them and they would help me, taking me through the process of the script.
You know, I was new to filmmaking and I put my hands up to say I didn't know anything about character art, story and narrative and so they very much nurtured me. Then obviously they gave me a director mentor Asif Kapadia who made The Warrior and Far North and again, he was amazing for me because he challenged me. He would read the script and - I don't know if you've ever seen films like The Warrior and Far North - Asif Kapadia will always strip dialogue back.
He will have scenes with no dialogue so he would challenge me and say 'Look I think you've got too much dialogue in this sequence'. What he was doing - he wasn't saying that the dialogue shouldn't be there - he was just making me argue my case. So he'd say, ‘I think you've got too much dialogue, get rid of this dialogue' and I'd say ‘No. No I need this dialogue, it's important to do the beats of the story' and what he was doing was challenging me to show him exactly why that dialogue was important. I did agree with him in some cases and I stripped some of the dialogue out and would think again. That was a really important part of the scheme in that it sort of nurtured me.
In business, if you had a big business operation, you had entrepreneurs coming through. Maybe more experienced business men would give them advice, tell them how to go forward in their business, like The Apprentice with Alan Sugar and I think there's many ways in which we can do that in the film industry, you know, why not? Why can't we be nurtured by more experienced filmmakers? But I think there's something to be said, working as a collective, being able to nurture young filmmakers.