A young Dundee film-maker has won a top prize at New York’s big Mini-DV Festival.
Wayne Dudley’s debut feature film was made entirely in Dundee, essentially by a crew of one and cost only £230 to make.
Despite its low budget, The Hidden Persuaders won best experimental film at the festival and comes just two years after Abertay University graduate Wayne (23) was written off by industry insiders who told him he would never succeed with his project.
The film, which was written, produced, directed and edited by Wayne, used nearly 60 actors one of whom was hauled off a Dundee City Centre street to film scenes during her lunch hour. It will headline next weekend’s event with a screening in Brooklyn.
The award has come as a major surprise to Wayne, as he had almost given up hope of gaining a place in any of the 16 festivals around the world he had applied for, let alone winning a prize.
”It was one of the last festivals to get in touch with me,” he said. ”It’s fantastic and a great honour to be informed that all my hard work, as well as that of the actors, has been recognized and honoured, especially from a festival in another country, and that it will be screened in a city that is known throughout the world.
”Although I can’t physically be in attendance a friend of one of the actors will be so it will be interesting to hear her feedback from the event.”
Wayne admits to a feeling of slight smugness at his award after being met with ”complete negativity” from doubters in the industry when he floated the idea for his film a couple of years ago.
”They told me: ‘There’s no way you’ll be able to pull off a film that size on your own’. Everybody said I couldn’t do that kind of project and it’s great that I’ve proved them all wrong. It just shows that if you put your mind to anything you can achieve anything.
”If I’m being honest I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I am still quite a novice but I’ve always been an organised person and think ahead before I do anything. So I sat down and planned everything I thought could happen.”
Wayne took his first steps towards a movie career three years ago when he joined the film society at Abertay and had to make time to fit in his graduation in Business Studies with Marketing in the summer of 2010 while filming the rock ‘n’ roll murder-mystery thrill ride.
The plot centres on newspaper reporter Frank Cash, who is sent to investigate the apparent accidental death of Processed Minds lead singer Damon DeVille. Written off as a drug-fuelled accident, police are looking at an open and shut case, but Frank is not so sure.
Wayne spent a month filming the movie before, as he admits, the hard work began.
The next four months were spent exhaustively on his laptop, working ten hours a day creating a rough edit of the film, editing the sound, colour correcting the footage, selecting and negotiating the sound track, creating the credits and cutting a film trailer.
He then headed off on a two-month trek to London, Los Angeles and Vancouver, armed with copies of the movie in an attempt to secure a distribution deal for the film and future work in the industry.