Our Best Short Film winner will receive our custom Global Shorts statuette which we ship anywhere in the world, free of charge. The award is manufactured by Society Awards, the same awards company that manufactures the Golden Globe and the Emmy. All winners will receive our Global Shorts Winner laurels in black, white, and gold.
Title: Brilliance
Runtime: 13 min
Country: Netherlands | Poland | UK
Director: Miles Roston
Writer and Lead Producer: Matthew Curlewis
Placement: Award of Excellence
Competition: September 30, 2016
Synopsis: In twelve minutes of real time in and around a city square, six lives collide in a flash of sunshine, bullets and jewels.
OR: What was the inspiration for your film?
MC: Two things: One week a few years ago, my jewelry-dealer partner bought an incredible piece of jewelry at an auction – a real work of art. In that same week I saw a film in which the lead character was a trained assassin, about to complete his last ‘job’. During the film however, the high-powered rifle he would use was shown in beautiful light – it was glamourised and fetishised into being a desirable object – and frankly I came out of the movie pretty sickened. I thought, do we HAVE to show guns – that are getting used to kill people – in such a glowing, gorgeous kind of light? Doesn’t America already have enough problems with guns than to do this?
So I thought – what if I combine the two things from this week into one story? What if I show a jeweler making an extraordinary, exquisite piece of jewelry – and then somehow use this creative act of the jeweler’s, as a way of overcoming or defeating a bullet and/or a gun? And then add in a few more characters who get caught in the crossfire, so to speak, of these events?
OR: When did you conceive the idea for your film and how long did it take before it was realized?
MC: I conceived of the idea in about 2012, and wrote the script. It wasn’t until April of 2014 that I secured a director to accompany me on the journey. We also then had to secure locations and an associate and co-producer. I live in Amsterdam, but we shot the film in Krakow, Poland, in August 2014. We flew four actors in from London, plus a bunch of us went from Amsterdam. It then took until January of 2016 before we had the final, final version of the film complete.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of working in a short film format?
MC: Trying to squeeze what is probably enough story for an entire feature film, into only 12 minutes! But additionally, because no one expects to earn any money from a short, it’s also hard to raise money for a short – people can’t ‘invest’ in the sense of ‘expecting a return’ – they can only invest because they believe in you and your story and the intention of your project.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of your production?
MC: The enormous burden of financial and logistical pressure. We only had three days to shoot, in a too-large public square with not enough crowd-control, and we were weather-dependent. If things went wrong, my actors had to fly back to London on the fourth day. We HAD to get our footage – that was sure energising and challenging on the one hand, but also very, very stressful.
OR: Do you have any advice for first-time filmmakers?
MC: Make the story you believe in, that if you DON’T make, wont allow you to live with yourself.
I SHOULD say: come up with a smart, unusual story that has a minimal amount of characters and locations, and just get a film made and out there. But I haven’t followed this advice in the slightest. I made a three country co-production that was shot in a country half way across Europe from where I live, with enormous complications and pressures and obstacles and risks. Would I do it again tomorrow? No. Not in the way that I did. But I wouldn’t have learned all the things it taught me without having actually done it! So… do what you believe in!
