THE BSFF

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5Q's w/Jamie Hooper "The Creeping" Director, Writer, Producer

QUESTION#1: Can you describe your film in one sentence?: A concerned young woman moves home to look after her ailing grandmother and soon finds herself fighting a malevolent presence with a dark secret.

QUESTION#2: What would you like the BSFF audience to know about your film that they wouldn't consider from it's title?: I wanted The Creeping to be a much more personal film than most horror stories. A lot of the time horror films have a random family move into a random house and strange things begin happening, but they have nothing to do with that particular set of characters, the scary aspect of the story could happen to anyone. I wanted The Creeping story to be specific to my characters, the darkness haunting Anna is explicitly related to her and wouldn't happen to anyone else.
Although The Creeping is a horror film it’s the characters that carry the story. Family, trust, and the bonds we form are an integral theme of The Creeping. Families are
supposed to protect and love you. When that trust is broken, and you learn dark secrets about your loved ones, how does it change you? This is the journey Anna goes on.
Also at the core of The Creeping is the idea of inescapable evil. Home is the place we all feel safe, a sanctuary from an increasingly scary world. If your home is invaded by a malevolent force then where do you go?
Home and family are universal themes everyone can relate to, and it’s within these subjects I wanted to explore the creeping thoughts that keep us all awake at night.

QUESTION#3: Can you tell us about yourself and your filmmaking career?: I've been making films ever since my Dad bought a VHS-C camera (now you know I'm old) and I claimed it as my own. I found the action of capturing images and using them to tell a story fascinating. I constantly roped my sister into appearing in my early efforts, much to her dismay. Needless to say these early videos have now been consigned to the "don't show anyone except family" drawer.
I worked as a freelance filmmaker for over ten years, directing, filming and editing for corporate and broadcast. I now work as a video editor for a global tech company and continue to write and direct in my spare time. My short films have screened at genre festivals around the world, winning various awards in the process. The Creeping is my feature debut as writer/director/producer.

QUESTION#4: What have you learned in the process of making your film?: All the challenges I found with The Creeping were generally the same as making short films, just amplified by the fact the shoot is longer. On The Creeping we had two weeks of night shoots so the majority of the problems we faced were related to battling the imminent sunrise. Somehow we mostly managed to stay on schedule and capture everything we needed to tell the story, but it definitely tests you as a director when you still have a whole bunch of shots to get and you can literally see the sun getting higher every minute. The best thing you can do as a filmmaker is be as prepared as possible and try to plan to everything, that way if you think of something better on the day you can try it, and if not you have a solid plan.

QUESTION#5: What's does the future hold for this film and you?: The Creeping has screened at numerous festivals around the world and won several awards in various categories, so already it's been a massive pleasure seeing audiences reactions to our creepy film. In the not too distant future we're hoping the have the film released to general audiences and get as many eyeballs watching it as possible, and screening at amazing festivals like Borrego Springs is massively helpful and a real honour.

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