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.”
![A COUNTY councillor is backing a campaign to get a pedestrian crossing in Staindrop. Frustrated parish councillors in the village summoned their county council representative Cllr George Richardson to their latest meeting to discuss several issues, including the call for a safe way to cross the A688. Earlier this year their request for a crossing was turned down by the county council’s highways officers. Parish council chairman Jonothan Raper described the reasons for the refusal as “spurious” and called on Cllr Richardson to support their campaign. He added: “One of the arguments they made was there is no clear line of desire when they studied the village – well this isn’t a clear line of desire because there isn’t a crossing, people cross whenever they can. “When the lollipop person was there, one of the things I noticed was people would walk all the way down to the lollipop person to cross the road to go to the shop or to go to the school.” He added a problem of parking at the primary school is exacerbated because people are too afraid to walk their children across the road. Cllr Richardson said he had supported previous attempts for a crossing point with the first being made about 15 years ago. He added: “We went fairly well down the road with that and they looked into it. The only recommended place was where the bus stop is and to get the visibility splays, people on the other side of the road would lose their parking. “That didn’t go down well so it just died a death.” Cllr Raper said he suspected the real reason for the officers’ refusal was the cost of installing a crossing. He added that much of the cost could be recovered from savings made on not having to employ a lollipop patrol. Cllr Raper said: “A lollipop person only provides a benefit of crossing for three hours of the day. You are getting 21 extra hours of crossing time [with a pedestrian crossing].” Cllr Richardson said he would raise the issue with the county council’s cabinet member for highways, Cllr John Shuttleworth.](https://teesdalemercury.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/georgeR-120x86.jpg)
