Meet the 46th and Final President of the United States… Filming The Final Address
8 May 2018 · 1 min read
Last Friday we shot the opening scene of The Impact, written by Joe Eszterhas and starring Olivia Williams. We shot in an extraordinary White House Oval Office reconstruction in Norfolk at RAF Coltishall in the sets owned by October Films.
You will know we ran a crowdfund campaign to raise the initial finances needed (but we overspent), and so we now have a stretch goal to cover the additional costs we could not foresee.
You can watch the updated video for the crowdfund below…
This new Presidential scene will be an extraordinary opening for The Impact50 and the cast and crew have truly elevated the whole project, along with all the filmmakers whose films are now coming in daily.
It was a long day, starting at 4am and ending at midnight for me, but what a rush to direct in such an iconic location and with such worldclass talent.
I am particularly delighted with the opening shot, a cinematic and stylised long dolly backwards in ultra slow motion as the president takes onboard that the planet has less than two hours left. It should set the scene with some gravity for the films that follow.
Of course this being the White House set, everyone HAD to have a selfie behind the desk, Omar winning the prize for best photo.
Overall an enormously successful day.
Please do consider contributing to the Crowdfund, it REALLY will make a HUGE difference. And thank you in advance.
More news to follow very soon.
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
