21 May Guest Blog | Fred Rowson, Filmmaker
Our new grants and mentoring scheme, KSF Artists of Choice, is open for applications from 1 – 29 May to UK and US artists across the disciplines of dance, theatre, musical theatre, music and film. Over the next few weeks, we will post guest blogs from some of our previous grant winners about how they used and were impacted by their KSF grant.
Name | Fred Rowson
Project | Woodhouse
Year Awarded KSF Grant | 2013
The Kevin Spacey Foundation provided funding towards my short film, Woodhouse. Woodhouse was a passion project of mine, written between other jobs on music videos and shot in the summer of 2013. The story was one that I’d wanted to tell for years, about a mysterious creature living in a suburban nature reserve, and the people nearby who became obsessed with the story of this animal. I used to work at a short film festival, and during my time there, I watched a lot of short films. So, when it came to me writing my own, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to make: a film that was like a puzzle box, bursting with mysteries and information, with a very specific tone of surreal observations and wry humour.
Once we’d shot Woodhouse and nearly finished in post-production, we realised that we’d need to raise more funding if we were going to be able to screen the film in festivals around the world. Woodhouse was always conceived as a film meant to be seen on the big screen, but the cost of submitting to festivals and then shipping the film around the world was proving prohibitive.
That’s where KSF came in. The money that they provided allowed us to give the film a full festival life, screening it everywhere from the Leeds International Film Festival to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, as part of Hollyshorts Film Festival. The result was a reaction that I’d never expected, and by the time that the film went online, I was in touch with people around the world who had seen our story in the cinema.
All of this was thanks to the support that we received from KSF, who saw in Woodhouse its potential to connect with people and gave us the means to achieve that. KSF Artists of Choice is providing a great opportunity to give even more support to projects in need of funding.
The success of Woodhouse has led me on to writing a follow-up short, continuing to develop my abilities as a writer and a director, which will hopefully lead to even bigger and more exciting projects. All of these, though, will lead back to that first short film Woodhouse, where it all began. You can watch that, here: https://vimeo.com/90480436