A Crowd Created Feature Film Project by James Lingwood

Filmmaker James Lingwood who is attending the premiere just got some brilliant coverage and wrote an article for his film community below…

A Crowd Created Feature Film Project

Nearly a decade from conception to World Premiere, ‘The Impact’ is a stunning feature film like no other, a Crowd Created Feature Film Project.

The Impact is a crowd-created feature film with multiple stories connected by one thing – a meteor strike. The Impact poses the question: what would you do if you knew that you only had two hours to live? This question was answered by thousands of screenwriters who wrote short scripts that were filmed and edited together to create The Impact.

The Impact is a fascinating tapestry of interwoven stories from diverse voices around the world; at times moving and profound, at others hilarious and irreverent, but always asking ‘what would we do in our final moments?’ A multi-cultural and global reflection of pop culture’s vision of the apocalypse… written and filmed BEFORE the actual covid apocalypse of 2020, and now offering a haunting reflection of where we may be headed as a species.

• 2,800 scripts were submitted from around the world to make the final selected 50 that were released to filmmakers.

• Nearly 100 short films were produced and submitted to be part of ‘The Impact’.

• Over 1,500 new entrant film crew, producers and directors were involved in the process, and from across the globe.

• ‘The Impact’ sets two new world records for the Most Screenwriters and Most Directors on a feature film. It may also set the record for longest end credits.

How the film came about with James….

I was approached by my Producer colleagues, Penny Wall and Richard Stewart of Common Thread Entertainment, who were EP’s on the film to direct a short film for The Impact, a feature film which was going to be made up of a collective series of short films from filmmakers from all over the world. I read the script and asked if it would be ok to make some changes and also to use my own choice of actors and DP.

The themes for the scripts had been sent out around the world and you could buy the rights for each one for about $10. The idea was that as many people could write as many scripts as they wanted to with the final choice coming down to Chris Jones, of London Screenwriting Festival. The shortlisted writers were then asked to engage production companies to carry out the filming and production of the films.

I workshopped the script with Joey Vieira and Ron Kelly, both of whom were excellent. They needed to find ways to engage with their characters who both had completely opposing views about publicizing the fact that the world was going to end in 24 hours. As prominent astronomers, one wanted to let the world know what was happening so that families and loved ones could spend their last precious hours together, whilst the other was mortified by this disregard for humanity and insisted that it would lead to pillaging, chaos and madness in the streets. These opposing viewpoints set up the perfect conflict as both aggressively argued out their respective cases.

We filmed these scenes and a family reunion over approx. 10 hours. Everything went smoothly as we had rehearsed the scene extremely thoroughly. The crew were all wonderful – Penny and Richard put together a great team. Dan McArthur, Director of Photography created an immersive and threatening atmosphere while Bethany Cole made sure the shoot went without a hitch and Bob Blasdall edited the film seamlessly. It was very exciting that the film was chosen to be a part of the final feature film ‘The Impact’ and was the only one out of Australia. The World Premiere of The Impact is in London on May 31st.

View the trailer here: https://impact50film.com/

James Lingwood
jrlingwood@bigpond.com