ONLY three months after starting a production company, a Teesdale-based director has just “wrapped” filming on his first feature film.
Summerhouse resident Matthew Fearney spent 25 days shooting The King of Spades, a drama exploring friendships, frustration and what it’s like being a young adult in today’s world.
The 23-year-old wrote and directed the film, which was mostly set in Darlington with location shooting taking also place in Yarm and Teesdale.
He said: “It’s hard to give exact locations of where we shot in Teesdale, as they were mainly rugged moor locations, but they were quite close to Middleton-in-Teesdale.” He came up with the idea for the screenplay in December, and after graduating from York University with a degree in film and television production, set up his own production company, Phorescent Films Ltd, in July.
The film follows Aaron and John, played by Joshua Glenister and Luke Thomas C Riley, who are best friends in secondary school.
He added: “Aaron completed a degree, got himself a well-paid job and a nice London apartment, while John dropped out of university, lives at home with his dad and is unemployed.
“The film follows Aaron as he returns to his home town and reunites with John and tries to help him get his life together.”
He said there are plenty of twists and turns in the plot as the pair try to discover who killed John’s dog.
The film, which he admits had a low budget, was financed by crowdfunding online and with help from friends and family.
He added: “Twenty five days is a fairly short amount of time for filming, but I was really aware of keeping the filming within our means, financially.
“It’s a gritty, real-life film, but we’ve tried as much as possible not to make it look like a low budget film.”
Mr Fearney is now looking into funding to help pay for post-production and editing, which he hopes will be complete by the summer.
He added: “Once we’ve got the editing done then I’m hoping to submit it to different festivals next year.
“We’ve been sourcing funding and have got applications for grants to get the money for using editing suites.
“We’ve also put small trailers of the film on our website to keep everyone’s appetite whetted.”
