Indepth Interview with Impact50 Founder Chris Jones on Reviewmyscript.com
16 May 2022 · 1 min read
I recently did a lengthy interview for Reviewmyscript.com and it just went live…
You can read the whole article HERE and below are the first few quesions and answer…
What inspired the Impact50 movement and what kind of impact do you think this film will have for those involved?
Impact50 is part of a bigger project called Create50 which came out of the London Screenwriters’ Festival many years ago. The idea was simple. How can we get as many creative people, specifically screenwriters, a credit on a completed film in one hit? The first feature film that we made using this concept was called 50 Kisses and was completed and released in cinemas in 2014.
The following year we came up with the idea for Impact50 and launched it alongside other create 50 projects like Twisted50 (which is a collection of short horror stories in a book). The project has been extraordinarily successful at many, many levels not least getting thousands of screenwriters writing, collaborating, reading and feeding-back, and then engaging with the filmmaking community.
The project has taken much longer to complete than anticipated for a host of reasons, not least Covid-19. Like so many creative people there are those who actively engage in defining and creating their destiny while others rely on ‘fate and circumstance’ to shape their destiny. My hope and belief is that everyone involved will take advantage of this opportunity and use their credit as a stepping stone on their own creative journey.
I understand you received 2,800 scripts. How did the basic mechanics work in terms of prospective filmmakers making the cut and what were some of the challenges in coordinating such a massive undertaking?
Full interview HERE
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
