Film Name: Sunday Driver
Director: Mark Lawrence
Writer: Mark Lawrence
Starring: Jacob Ponsonby, Martin W Payne
Bazza’s late for the match again, but he’s confident he’ll get there in time…until he bumps into the
Sunday drivers…
In a new exclusive interview on Blazing Minds leading up to the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask writer-director Mark Lawrence a few questions about his film ‘Sunday Driver‘
Sunday Driver has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea film festival on Saturday 20th January at 12:30pm.
Q. Your film Sunday Driver has been selected to play at Horror-on-Sea Film Festival. Can you tell us what we can expect from the film?
A. It’s a zero budget (and I really do mean ZERO-I think the most expensive thing I splashed out on was half a dozen lunchtime meal deals for the cast and crew) horror comedy short. Shot on an iPhone with clip on mics from Amazon; please don’t expect it to look like Avatar (2009).
Q. What were some of your influences when writing the script for Sunday Driver?
A. My main influence for creating Sunday Driver would have to be the Horror-on-Sea film festival! Back in 2011, myself and my mate Rob Thompson, visited the first Horror on Sea. We had dabbled with the idea of making a short film but we hadn’t completed anything and thought that Horror-on-Sea might inspire us. We watched loads of shorts, attended the Pat Higgins Masterclass and came away from the weekend full of ideas and ready to make movies. And then we did nothing. I came back to Horror-on-Sea every January and at the end of every weekend I would say to myself this is the year I’ll make something…and I did that for eleven years and for whatever reasons I made nowt!
Last year I said to myself “If not now, then when?”. I had an idea for a short floating around in my head from a few years back when I was almost late getting to Horror-on-Sea one Sunday morning. I’ve been to every HoS and not missed a short or feature in all that time (sad or dedicated? – you decide!). My fury that morning as I got stuck behind those ponderous Sunday drivers clearly burned itself into my psyche! I wrote the script then called Rob and asked if he’d be up for finally filming something. Of course he said yes and so here we are.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
A. As an avid film fan I daresay influences from a lot of my favourite creatives (Carpenter, Argento, Tarantino, Benny Hill) have seeped into Sunday Driver subconsciously-I have tried not to rip anyone off too blatantly!
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
A. I had envisioned Martin’s character (Mr S. Lowe) to have a beard as Martin has ALWAYS had one as long as I’ve known him. Four days before the shoot (bearing in mind I only had him for half a day and all of his scenes needed to be shot then) he messaged me to say that he’d shaved his beard off for the movie he was in that weekend. Initially I was gutted as I wanted his character to look older than Martin’s youthful visage (I’ll have that tenner whenever you can get it to me, Martin) but it actually worked out really well. Martin pulled off some top sneers during his scenes which would otherwise have been obscured if he was all beardy. No problems, just opportunities etc Sadly the originally scripted scene involving a squadron of Panzer tanks battling a thousand strong zombie horde had to be dropped due to budgetary constraints.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
A. My favourite moment of creating Sunday Driver was probably the third day of filming. We had the two main actors on set, make up, camera and we were filming in a few different locations. It actually felt like I was “properly” making a movie at last! An awesome buzz and one I can’t wait to get again.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
A. Not really during filming. In the edit we realised some of the dialogue wasn’t as clear as we wanted and we’ve spent the last few months trying to clear it up as best we can. Fingers crossed the audience can make out all the cough hilarious lines.
And in a bizarre reversal of Martin’s beard story, the week before the submission deadline I had an idea for a quick extra scene for Jake. I Facetimed him only to see that he had grown a full beard (he was clean shaven when we’d filmed his stuff months before). As he was quite keen to keep his face fungus we resorted to wading through some unused footage to try and find something suitable. Fortunately we did!
Q. What makes Sunday Driver stand out as something different in the horror genre?
A. Out of all of the 11 minute long road rage horror comedies in the world I’d like to think this is the Citizen Kane (1941) of it’s genre-an intellectual tour-de-force.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
A. Hopefully they will have had a laugh, maybe a bit of a scare and also rediscovered how tasty A Werther’s Original is.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
A. Hmmmm…loads of ideas for shorts, now I’ve got the filmmaking bug I’d like to try and get another one completed this summer in time for next year’s festival. I’m also part way through fleshing out a script for a feature starring a couple of recurring characters from TIS Films Horror-Scopes antholog segments (catch Horror-Scopes Volume 2 at Horror-on-Sea on Friday 19th January at 20:00)…but I probably need to knock out a few more shorts and receive a nice lottery win before that sees fruition!
Q. If someone was looking to get into filmmaking/film what advice would you give them?
A. Don’t wait! As I said I’ve spent the last twelve years procrastinating before finally making Sunday Driver, I really regret not getting my finger out sooner. So go, pick up a pen, pick up a camera and make something, anything! Once you start, you’ll want to keep going. Good luck
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
