‘Blood Sweat and Tears’ by Gingersnap Productions FINE CUT
3 July 2019 · 1 min read
Producer and writer Stephanie Ginger who divides her time between the Algarve and the UK, formed Gingersnap Productions specifically to make one of her own scripts Blood Sweat and Tears for Phase Two of the Impact50 incentive.
Recognising the potential of re-creating Africa in Portugal, she enlisted the help of director Kristjan Knigge and retired Production Designer BJ Boulter who know both Portugal and Africa intimately and are well-versed in ‘film-making by the seat of your pants’!
Watch the new edit below…
In a couple of weeks they managed to gather a tiny team of enthusiastic people who’d never worked together; The Gaffer came back from the Seychelles for the privilege; the Camera Assistant had zero experience before Kristjan gave her a four-hour crash course in film-making the day before the shoot. She hopes that Gingersnap Productions will make more films in the Algarve.
With not much more than a big idea, four amazing actors (the youngest of whom is only five) a tiny crew and bags of ingenuity, BS&T was shot over four days just two weeks before the May deadline in three locations; the hills of Rocha da Pena (which at 34 degrees felt very much like Africa) and in the tiny central Algarvian village of Estômbar. Exteriors of the Ebola hospital were created from an old farm and the interior set built in BJ’s lean-to workshop. The sun shone, the wind blew and there was blood, sweat and tears aplenty. And when we shot the last scene, everybody cried.
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Written by
Chris JonesPassionate about all things film, I have spent my life watching movies, making movies and helping others make their movies too. Most recently I have been directing Splinter Unit on 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning', parts 1 and 2 for Paramount. I also executive-produced 'The Enfield Poltergeist' for Apple TV+. Deeper into my past, my early major projects include action thriller 'The Runner', serial killer thriller 'White Angel' and paranormal horror 'Urban Ghost Story'. I co-created and authored The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook series, published by Bloomsbury. There are now eight books in the series. More recently I have run a series of London-based festivals, kicking off with the London Screenwriters Festival which attracts over 1,000 professional screenwriters from around the globe annually. I also set up and run TEDxEaling, an annual TEDx conference on storytelling and human communication. In 2009, I made the multi-award-winning and Oscar-shortlisted 'Gone Fishing', the whole process being heavily documented on my blog. In 2014 I completed my fourth feature film, the crowd-created 50 Kisses which entered the Guinness Book Of Records for most screenwriters on a feature film. Following this success, I founded Create50 to continue the idea of crowd-created projects. Twisted50, our first book, was published on Halloween 2016 and immediately toppled Stephen King from the top spot on Amazon. Five books have followed in the Twisted50 series and we are working on the sixth now. During the summer of 2016 I trained to become a master Firewalk instructor and now regularly take people across the hot coals for charity. Late 2017 I directed the short film 'Seeing Him' which collected a ton of awards too. Over the following years I continued to make award-winning shorts, such as Meet The Nativity and Never Too Late. In the summer of 2022 I premiered Impact 50, the second feature-length movie from Create50. This time I directed the segment at the start of the film, with Olivia Williams as the President, and written by Joe Eszterhas. In the summer of 2022, I also joined the Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 productions as Splinter Unit director. At Halloween 2023, the Apple TV+ show that I co-executive-produced, 'The Enfield Poltergeist', premiered. I run regular filmmaking workshops for filmmakers both online and in person. Some people ask how I began making films? Like most filmmakers of my generation, it was with a Super 8mm camera, summertime and school friends, usually after watching a behind-the-scenes TV programme on a Hollywood movie like Star Wars. My first film was a zombie horror called Necronomicon, heavily influenced by John Carpenter's The Fog. And I was hooked for life. Contact me at Ealing Film Studios, Ealing Green, London, W5 5EP, UK
