From Five Minutes to Five Cars… A Create50 Success Story by Mark Hampton
24 June 2022 · 2 min read
This is a follow-up to a earlier blogs about Life’s A Beach, my short film entry to The Impact, which had its world premiere on 31st May 2022. Other posts HERE and HERE.
When I directed Life’s A Beach in 2018 I had a few short film credits as director and plans for features were in the distant future. I was thrilled with the 5-minute short film that I had delivered with a tiny crew and an iPhone, and I was so excited that it would be seen on the big screen.
When the pandemic struck and The Impact was delayed (for what turned out to be several years) it seemed like a blow. We didn’t know when or even if we would see the final movie-version of The Impact. If you’d asked me then if I wanted the film to be released sooner, I would have said ‘absolutely!’, but any comedian will tell you that timing is everything. Its remarkable how events can play out in ways you never expected because of a change in timing.
Cut to: Present Day
This last month I have been promoting a Kickstarter campaign for my debut feature film. It’s a contained heist movie called Five Cars. Anyone who’s run a crowdfunding campaign before will know the importance of maintaining audience and building enough credibility to convince backers to put money into your project. You need a constant flow of news, stories and content to feed to your prospective backers.
With the release of The Impact and the fantastic red-carpet screening at the Genesis Cinema, I suddenly had a great story. I was now officially a feature-film director (along with forty others) with a credit on IMDB and even a world record! Not only was great for my credibility as a filmmaker, but with the red-carpet photos I had some great content for the social media channels. Everyone who attended there was there because of the work they had put in over many years to help make The Impact a reality – but to an outsider, red-carpet pictures are a sign that you’re successful, and to be able to put that in front of potential backers of my film, that’s gold-dust!
If you want to learn more about Five Cars, or have a few quid to contribute, check out the Kickstarter HERE:
And next time you are hit with a delay or an unexpected change – just remember that it might all pay off in the end.
Mark Hamton
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
