Interview with Steve Watts about his recent work on Starrats
Who is Steve Watts and how did the passion for filmmaking began ?
I’m a composer and recording engineer from Sidmouth, about 15 miles outside Exeter. I’ve been involved in the music industry since I worked for Simmons – the electronic drum pioneers – in the 80’s. I’ve played gigs as an orchestral percussionist, a drummer (most famously in The Innocent Vicars) and as a solo vocalist and keyboard player and I’ve performed in venues ranging from my local pub to the Royal Albert Hall. I have run my own recording studio since 2000, although the current studio is much slimmed down version of the original, and I’ve recorded some high profile work including 3 seasons of comedy jingles for “Steve Wright in the Afternoon” and written and recorded music for some Hollywood mainstream movie projects.
I always wanted to make a film since I was a kid watching John Craven’s “Young Filmmaker of the Year” on the telly, but I’ve never had an idea I felt was good enough or at least one I had a chance of executing to any decent standard, so when Steve Liddle – the star and co-writer of Starrats – approached me through our connection on the Exeter music scene I jumped at the idea of a collaboration. Steve is the lead singer of “Diamondogz” - a very popular band down our way and I could see that we had very different skill sets which complemented each other perfectly, and he had this idea for a concept album he wanted help with, but hardly anyone was buying CD’s anymore and barely listening to albums in the old way … you know… beginning to end, and then I realised that a film would be the perfect vehicle, much like Police Squad having to become Naked Gun to be successful.
Can you tell us about your previous work leading up to Starrats ?
Up until Starrats I hadn’t actually made a feature length film. I’ve made a few five-minute shorts in my time – mainly for competitions, but nothing of any substance. As I say I principally work in sound and I think when you’re working with sound-to-picture eventually you get a sense of the timing and pacing in a movie. I’ve had no formal training in film but I felt I had enough confidence in the bits I knew how to do well, supported by the plethora of information on the internet to fill in some of the gaps.
Steve Watts
Composer and Recording engineer in his studio.
CONVERSATION ABOUT: Starrats - An adventure in Space and Time and Rock & Roll
Talk to us about your film ? How was the plot written and the story created ? Any inspirations ?
Steve Liddle came to me with a collection of songs he had written and recorded with different bands over a long time. He also had some bits and bobs of dialogue he had recorded with some friends over the years. What he wanted to do was to put the whole thing together but needed some help. I decided that all the songs needed to be re-recorded for the sake of both quality and consistency – I really wanted the tracks to sound like they were performed by the band in the story. Over a period of many months, Steve and I brainstormed the broad synopsis and made sure it included all the bits he wanted and then we set about filling in the dialogue and the action to fit. The main thing was, we knew we wanted the band in the story to succeed - despite themselves!
Steve and I are very different people… I’m very logical and Steve is much more intuitive. I do remember a particular occasion which highlights the difference in our personalities – I was busy trying to get a couple of lines to work and without any warning Steve said “I think they should find Churchill’s briefcase”. It had nothing to do with what we were working on at the time and I couldn’t see it fitting at all, but actually it turned out to be a great plot device.
As far as inspirations go we both grew up with Star Trek and Dr Who. Steve’s a big fan of Viv Stanshall and “Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters” and I’m a big fan of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” – between us I guess that’s where a lot of the madness in the plot comes from!
Poster of Starrats - An adventure in Space and Time and Rock & Roll
Told through comic strip imagery. This is the story from 1972 of how four oddball test pilots chase their dream of becoming rock stars after an encounter with a time travelling alien aboard a mysterious museum in space!
Would you define your film as a comedic space opera ?
I’m not sure I would go as far as “comedic” – light-hearted certainly. There’s only a few jokes in the film and you’re more likely to laugh because they’re so bad and/or old! If we were also to use the word “opera” it would be a very modern interpretation - there’s no traditional libretto and largely the songs don’t actually contribute much to the plot other than to express the mood or the thoughts of the characters. Also to be truly operatic the songs would have to be performed “in situ” and I don’t think that would work.
What is the target audience of your project ?
I think our prime audience will have been born in the 60’s, grew up in the 70’s and enjoy British rock music from that era. The whole ‘RAF’ thing in the film is very British too and I hope our prime audience in particular will enjoy the language and the accents! I have no idea how well that element translates around the world – in fact the Americans may well have trouble understanding some of the accents altogether. Just how many non-Brits or anyone under 40 know the phrase “on a fizzer” for instance!
How was the comic art style selected ? What is the purpose of it ?
The decision started off primarily as a financial one but landed up feeling “right”. The budget required to pull off a convincing SciFi production was well out of our reach – we were working on practically no budget at all. I was also a little reluctant because one of my all-time favourite SciFi radio series really lost something when it was translated to a television series and ruined it for me, and I wanted to avoid that. Like reading a book, radio leaves much to the imagination and I think this is what I went for in Starrats. By not using live action it meant that the audience are left to imagine what those scenes would actually look like in real life, and I think that’s better. I chose the comic strip style specifically as the whole story feels like a sort of “Boys Own” adventure story. My original idea for the ending was to pull out to reveal the last few panels printed in a comic book and show a young lad reading the last panel before putting the comic down and running off to do something else… to show it’s nothing more than a diversion, but in the end that didn’t work though with the epilogue. The story is ostensibly set in 1972 and in my mind at least the 70’s was the heyday of the comic book and I wanted to take the audience back to that time.
What is the message the audience should convey leaving the screening of your film ?
The only message I suppose is that if you have a passion for something then just keep slogging away at it, and one day, through the most twisted, bizarre circumstances, you might just reap the rewards of your persistence. That’s happened to me so many times.
Mainly though, the film is for fun. It’s there to share and enjoy the experience of these four hapless guys and rock along to some great songs along the way. It’s pure distraction – and best of all nobody gets hurt! Not even the alien!
Did you and your team face any difficulties while shooting your project ?
The vast proportion of the work in this film was in post-production and I completely underestimated the time involved. We had little budget and like so many indie film makers, I had to fit this in around my other work. We were very lucky that everybody involved in the production gave their time for free but that comes with its own difficulties as it’s very hard to get so many people together when they all have their own lives going on. Only a couple of the cast actually had any acting experience and the rest of us had to be coached to one degree or another, sometimes a line at a time - the dialogue editing was a total nightmare. Even the green screen footage provided by a local college fell short and I had to spend an incredible amount of time creating interesting environments for Steve to appear in.
Any future projects incoming ? Along with personal aspirations.
Since making Starrats I have been working on post-production for an independent film due to be released at the end of this year. It’s inspired me to start work on a very meaningful film of my own, which in the early stages of script writing. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away but it deals with the consequences of bullying and could be considered quite dark. It couldn’t really be further away from Starrats and I have high hopes for it as it has a very serious message I want to spread far and wide.
That was the interview with our beloved creator Steve Watts. Our community is rising everyday and new talented filmakers and screenwriters get onboard. Be sure to check the rest of our interviews and why not order one for yourself to promote your work. To order an interview simply submit on the INTERVIEW OF YOUR FILM category on our Filmfreeway page.
