raindance.co.uk: Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary

Q. Is it true you didn't set out to make a movie?
A. Yes, absolutely. In 2002 we made a promo tape for a TV microdrama - a video diary that would play every night for just a few minutes a day. It was about a woman who tried her own reality TV experiment based around phone dating, and got involved with a TV producer who very subtly and probably unwittingly pulls the levers behind the scenes. In the end, it all goes disastrously wrong. The material we shot with Posy Miller (the actress who played Sam Jackson and was in fact our entire cast) was just little fragments of this much bigger script to sell the concept, and was never intended to be seen by anyone except TV execs and development teams. We tried to get high production values (within believable video-diary constraints), but we didn't give a second's thought to copyright issues, for example. We always intended to reshoot everything, but only for TV, and only in a pure video diary format.

Q And how was your promo tape received?
A Pretty well. People liked the idea, the character and Posy, who really did have star quality (more than one said "where did you find her?!"). What they didn't like was the format, ironically as things turned out - 4 minutes a day is a scheduling impossibility, which was naive on our part. We'd just started working on some new format ideas for the character when tragedy hit. Posy died on Christmas Eve, that same year, of acute leukaemia.

Q. Didn't you worry that making a film based on what you'd shot for something else would be seen as exploitative?
A. Not at first. There was no question of us doing anything anyway, it was impossible. We just didn't have enough stuff to tell our story. And initially I didn't much care about the project anyway, I've never known anything like that grief. It was totally numbing, so unbelievable that she'd just gone... this person whom people met and just seemed to fall in love with. In the end though, I suppose that propelled me to come up with this new story idea, I couldn't let what we had go to waste... it was too precious. And when I had the idea, and her family supported it, I didn't care about what other people thought. I knew why were doing it, so did her friends and family, so sod everyone else! Between the three of us in our tiny production team though, we did have big rows about this issue. It was a very sensitive time, we actually split for a while.

Q. So was is the actual film about? And how did you try to make it work?
A. The new story was to do a fictional documentary about the search for a missing person, after a friend discovers these fragments of secret video diary... will it lead them to the truth about what happened? It really was a bolt from the blue - I knew immediately it should be a metaphor for our own loss, and touch on deep issues. But writing it was, predictably I suppose, a nightmare. We were warned not to do it, we'd never make it work. We ended up shooting twice what we thought we needed, which totally saved us in the edit, and oddly became more like editing a real documentary, using all the same manipulative tricks real editors do! It always felt like a delicate house of cards... telling Sam's story through the diary, and the contemporary story of the missing person, so there was the right balance and connectedness between the two. How much humour should we use, since a lot of Posy's stuff was funny but the themes now so dark? Portraying hidden motives became critical, and how to achieve that subtly but clearly. Then we had to keep three different timelines clear... I describe it as reverse engineering a giant jigsaw puzzle - you have some of the pieces already and need to actually cut and print the rest to fit perfectly! It drove me nuts, but it became immensely rewarding. In the writing for example, we were missing a crucial bit of Sam narrative, and at one point I really thought "that's it, we're screwed, reshoots are beyond impossible and there's no writing around it". Then I remembered we shot the scene in question as Posy's audition... I dug up the tape, and it was an amazing performance. Real hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff... we always had just enough to make the new story integrate, for some reason.

Q. How did the British Independent Film Award nomination happen?
A. Raindance accepted us into their 2005 festival, which was a fantastic boost. By that time I'd been through 12 different cuts of the film, I'd almost given up thinking I'd ever make it work, a noble failure if you like. But something happened at the end, and it all sort of came into focus... we all suddenly felt it gelled, and then it was a fantastic boost to be accepted into Raindance. But I then had only a matter of weeks to technically polish and finish the film, and it all became a bit of a blur. The festival screening was pretty emotional... Posy's parents were there, watching their beloved daughter on this huge West End screen, three years after she died, playing the lead in a film she didn't know she was making. It was surreal, but wonderful, really... suddenly it was all worthwhile. Anyway, the nomination came right of the back of that, all Raindance films are eligible and we were picked out. I owe Raindance a huge debt, I think! If it wasn't for them, I'd probably still be editing it in an institution....

Q. Why release as a pay-what-you-like download, 2 years later?
A. Firstly, we were stuck with commercial music rights issues. We had stuff embedded in Posy's footage which we had festival clearance for, but no rights beyond festivals, so no-one would touch it. After 18 months of tortuous negotiations, we had it sorted due to the immense kindness of many in the record industry, and we had Robbie Williams, Nelly Furtado, A-ha and even Radiohead themselves on our soundtrack. But by this time, a bit more of my sanity had gone in a morass of legal paperwork and I was very anxious to just get it out there... I didn't want to wait another year or so to get some crappy small DVD distribution, the realistic fate of the small Brit indie-filmmaker. Then Radiohead stunned the world with their pay-what-you-like download model for the In Rainbows album, and the penny dropped. We could bypass all the gatekeepers and take it straight to the people, for however much the people wanted to pay - they wouldn't face an unrealistic price hurdle. I was totally enchanted by the idea, and timed it for the 5th anniversary of Posy's death. It just felt that was quite long enough for her to wait.

Q. Are people really paying? And how much?
A. About a third are paying I think, about the same proportion as Radiohead's album, though that figure seems to be actually increasing for us at the moment. We're donating 20% to Leukaemia Research in Posy's memory, and Missing People, a charity that helped us in production. I think this helps people see we're not in it to get rich or anything (some chance! Clearing debts still seems a Herculean challenge). But people have really responded, at the moment the average amount for those who pay is over £5 each. That's better than Radiohead's £2.90 per album! If that figure is sustained, it is real money and could be something really significant in terms of independent film. You can watch it here.

Q. Where can they get the film? Isn't it complicated to download and watch?
A. It's really simple actually - you can get it from our site at www.samjacksonmovie.co.uk - there's also pictures, a trailer and more info there too for just checking us out. You can also get a real, actual documentary about our experience. Then you just choose whether you want the movie or the documentary, pick your amount, pay through PayPal's secure servers (you don't need a PayPal account, any major credit or debit card works), then click on the link to download. If you have a decent reliable broadband connection, it only takes about 15 minutes... as opposed to typically 2 days and finally realising you've downloaded dodgy porn instead with peer-to-peer! You can watch on pretty much any modern computer, or even better any DVD player or media centre which is DIVX compatible. These are pretty ubiquitous and cheap to buy now. You can watch it here.

Q. Do you think this could be model for independent film?
A. Yes I do. Make it genuinely pay-what-you-like, don't set a minimum. If it is appropriate, think about giving something away as well, I really like the element of the production giving as well as the customer, it seems very much in the spirit of the whole thing - share the love! Also, choose your hosting company carefully, and get in a web-scripting guru to make sure it works technically, it'll be a lot harder than you think. As always, do your homework. But it's got to be the future. I know people now who don't watch any TV or DVDs any more, it's all downloads now. Just as MP3 has changed music forever, downloads are changing film and TV. This is the ultimate bridge between the filmmaker and the audience - you just get Googled and downloaded like anyone else. PR concerns aside, it's a level playing field. And don't forget, you'll be in charge, no middlemen, no VAT if you are as small as we are, no BBFC costs, no duplication or printing costs. For a small filmmaker, it's manna from heaven.

You can watch it here.

Guy Rowland started writing film scripts in the 1990s, eventually getting one developed with Living Spirit Productions. He then formed Molehill Productions with Deborah Garrett in 2000 to co-produce the drama feature film Something For The Weekend - however, the project collapsed when one of the financiers went into receivership. In 2002, Rowland directed a promotional tape for Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary - a TV video diary drama. Following the death of Posy Miller, the leading actor, the footage was later used in a new film of the same name, which became Rowland's producing and directing film debut in 2005. The film premiered at the 2005 Raindance Film Festival and was nominated for the British Independent Film Award's Raindance Award. He followed this in 2007 with the feature-length documentary Beyond Fiction: Posy Miller and the story of Sam Jackson's Secret Video Diary, and the short film Psycho Aliens (produced by Michael Sanders).

He has a long-suffering wife, two children, a dog, two gerbils and lives in Tonbridge, Kent.

Samantha Jackson disappeared in August 2003. Following the discovery of tapes Sam made for a secret reality TV project, a documentary crew follows Sam's friends and colleagues in the search for clues. Will the tapes lead them to the truth? What really happened to Sam Jackson?

Director Guy Rowland took the unthinkable step of casting Posy Miller as Sam Jackson after Posy's tragic death in 2002. Using fragments of promotional tapes filmed for an unmade TV project and casting her actor friends, the movie became a British Independent Film Award-nominated tribute to a remarkable woman. It is out now, released as the world's first ever Radiohead-style pay-whatever-you like movie download. In Posy's memory, 20% of everything the makers get goes to Leukaemia Research and Missing People UK charities.

You can watch it here. Remember to make a donation!

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