'Accidents' Director’s Statement by Martin Smith.

In 2005 after years of making music videos for people like Arab Strap, The Delgados and loads of record companies down south I had reached a point where I was bursting to get back into drama. I had developed a number of feature film screenplays and one, ‘The Black Death’, had been picked up by Glasgow’s Sigma Films and Scottish Screen. They were really keen to see a short film from me and after years of avoiding the short form I had a number of ideas that I wanted to take further. The first, ‘Accidents’ came about from a variety of sources, my own school days, sessions helping kids with their own film projects, and working with kids in some of my own music videos. I wanted to make a very simple film that basically wasn’t about the huge melodramatic moments in life. I wanted to focus on one young boy who goes though a number of small events, that lead to him not getting a phone call from his mates and missing out on a party. He takes to the beach on his own and meets a girl, and the little bit of attention that she shows him lifts his evening. It was very much about the small, insignificant things that can seem very big and intense to someone. It was also about the gaps between things, the things that are not said, but that mean a lot.

One of my main objectives when developing and casting the project was to improvise around the scenario to develop the dialogue and construct a screenplay that is naturalistic and reflective of the situation. It is of vital importance that the script wasn’t too dialogue heavy, and had a significant attention to the detail of the kid’s physicality and the way that is imposed to command power and influence. As a counterpoint to this the project had to skip with a natural humour.

In 2005 I was developing the project and wanted to pick someone’s brains about using non-actor kids in the roles. I had done it before and I was keen to take it even further. I’m not a particularly shy person and I contacted Ken Loach’s production company hoping, but not really expecting any contact back from him. I had always been a fan of his work and really respected the way he had developed a reputation for working with non-actors. I had a few ideas of my own that I had developed over the years and I was keen to hear if they stood up. The next day I got a phone call from Ken Loach, which was a real surprise. We talked about his working methods and where I was going with my own ideas and my project. This was a major catalyst for me, because apart from the ideas I was able to get from Ken about his own working methods, it also reinforced ideas I had of my own, and things I wanted to do that were completely new. Another amazing thing that Ken helped me with was bringing my attention to the casting director Kahleen Crawford who he had worked with on his feature ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ (and has since worked with Ken on ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’ and his latest feature ‘These Times’).

I worked with the Kahleen to find non-actor kids for the roles of the children. We cast around schools, the street, many different places to find the right kids who had the correct look, energy and attitude to carry off the parts. There was a big emphasis on finding the Marko character in the film. He was the lead and was going to have to be hanging around a lot, sitting in his bedroom waiting for a phone call that wasn’t ever going to come and I was looking for someone a bit different, with a certain type of intensity, a bit of a coiled spring, but who also could make you laugh if you met him. During casting Ryan Wallace came in and waited quite some time before we met him. We videoed him waiting there, and looking back at the footage was all that we needed, it was uncanny.

Photography has always been ultra important to me and the look of the film was something I had spoken about with cinematographer and long time friend Simon Dennis over a number of music videos that we had worked on. Simon had always been amazingly encouraging towards me whilst I developed the film and I knew we could make something really special, our working relationship was instinctive.

The project was to be naturalistic, not as flashy as some of my music videos. We were to use a combination of hand held and tripod work, much in keeping with my body of work to date, but also with a bit more intensity, less emphasis on style and more on the story unfolding in a very natural way. The project wasn’t about using big film conventions, we didn’t call ‘action’ or ‘cut’, and we tried, as much as possible to allow events to unfold as they would in real life.

The producer Nicki Young (Sugar Tree Productions) had produced my four ‘My City:Edinburgh’ Channel 4 films that featured Shirley Manson of Garbage, the boxer Alex Arthur and the artist John Bellany. When the project went from my mind onto the page she was the 1st person I though to contact and the shoot was a breeze. The project developed in a very organic way, and there was an amazing team spirit. I’m a big believer that film is a collaborative process and it isn’t just the director who gets a film onto the screen, and this was very much the case here: it was a huge team effort

Overall I’m really happy with the project. I’m incredibly proud of the kids and their performances and the tone and effect of the film are what I was looking for. Once I completed the film I felt that it represented me absolutely as a director, and ultimately that was my goal: to get a piece of work that was totally authored by myself from script to screen. The kid’s performances were amazing and the best thing about the whole process is that it has sparked off so many amazing opportunities for me in film that I can’t wait to take hold of.