Miles Jay won First Prize in the Broadcast NA category, with Blanket – Bedtime; Second Prize in Short Film NA with The Statistical Analysis of Your Failing Relationship and was shortlisted also for Broadcast NA with This is Baseball. That’s quite a handful of awards.
What impact do you feel winning at the YDA has had?
The YDA’s are a great platform for young directors to get noticed. I feel lucky to be represented by some incredible people at Smuggler, OPC and ICM.
What were the main challenges of making the World Vision films?
The biggest challenge was creating the environments for the impoverished children to work in. I wanted to find something as real as possible. But, without being able to shoot in a sweatshop or brothel we had to find the next best thing. I’m after shooting something as real as possible.
What’s the best film making lesson you’ve learnt?
Be nice to people. Inspire your crew to do their best work for you.
What is the wisest quote about film making?
The director who stops developing stops working.
Your worst nightmare production story was when….
I was shooting in Mexico last year and we were staging a slave cocoa plant. Somehow our local production team didn’t notify authorities that we would have fake weapons, so our crew was surrounded by dozens of Mexican military with machine guns. They held us at gunpoint until they realized we had replica weapons. After being detained in a jail in Ghana while shooting a documentary, I wasn’t going behind bars in a foreign country again.
What would be your dream directing job?
Directing a Charlie Kaufman script because Spike was unavailable.
