SMALLTIME

Background

After making about 20 short films on the same few streets of Nottingham, Shane came to realise that most of the people he worked with were all about to start moving away pretty soon. The idea behind Smalltime was to make a longer piece to celebrate their time working together on short films before everyone went their seperate ways.

Shane wrote the original script (originally titled 'Left') during his lunch breaks whilst he was working as a volunteer at Intermedia Film and Video in Nottingham. This was the first time Shane had written a script, and although he enjoyed the writing process, he found it got difficult and complicated as he approached the end. It was at this point that he decided to use improvisation, and what's more, he decided to pretend that he had always intended to improvise from this point.

Shane approached the BFI Production Board looking for funds to complete the film. After seeing just ten minutes of footage, they snapped up the rights to both Smalltime and Where's the Money, Ronnie?



Trivia

The film was originally titled 'Left'. An earlier, alternate cut of the film exists with this name, and may be included on a future DVD release.
Approximately 13 hours of footage was shot during the filming of Small Time. The final cut of the film is just over an hour in length.
The budget for the film was approximately £5000. Funding came from the BFI Production Board who also got the film shown at the London Film Festival in 1996 (complete with the short film 'Where's the Money, Ronnie?').