Fond memories of Sheffield for David
IN town this week for an event at the Showroom Cinema, actor-director David Morrissey recalled his last time in Sheffield when he spent time in the city filming on location in the short-lived BBC cop series Out of the Blue.
"I loved that series," he says. "People talk about The Wire and I always felt there were similarities in what we were doing then. Maybe they should release a box set of that too."
Morrissey was introducing a screening of his cinematic directoral debut Don't Worry About Me, a bittersweet boy meets girl tale set in his native Liverpool, and participating in a Q&A afterwards.
Made for 100,000 which he raised from contacts on Merseyside, the film had a couple of screenings on the BBC but Morrissey was keen it should be seen on the big screen and has been taking it round the independent cinema circuit "like a small rock band on tour".
As his acting career burgeons – recent roles include Red Riding on TV and Nowhere Boy on the big screen – Morrissey said he has long been keen to combine it with film-making. To that end he was starring in and producing for Sky adaptations of the first two books by Mark Billingham featuring London detective Tom Thorne.
"As an actor, I have two films in development, Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet and a Jason Statham film, Blitz, about a serial killer in which I play a journalist who is being fed information by the killer. "I have also made an ITV film with Tara Fitzgerald, You Be Dead, based on the true story of a psychiatrist and a stalker."
It's true that in recent years his roles have been more sympathetic but it still tends to be in adult stuff. Earlier in the day he had done another event at the Showroom for children and admitted when asked he had to cast around for something suitable and came up with The Water Horse
"That's why I wanted to do Dr Who, so my kids could see what I do instead of wondering where I have been all day."
- Putting in an appearance at the Showroom tonight, director and zombie fanatic Marc Price will recount how he decided to make a zombie film with a budget of precisely nothing. He inevitably went over budget – but only by 45.
The excess was spent largely on tea and biscuits for his cast of zombies and of course lots and lots of fake blood. An army of volunteer zombies were recruited using social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, but little did any of them realise that they were taking part in a cinematic revolution that would go on to take the movie world by storm.
The film is called Colin and, unlike other zombie films, it tells the story from the perspective of the living dead. We follow Colin through his death and zombie resurrection as tries to come to terms with what he has lost and what he has become.
Colin became a phenomenon at film festivals, winning Best Micro Budget Feature Film at the Raindance Film Festival and scooping a nomination at the British Independent Film Awards 2009.
Sheffield's horror film festival Celluloid Screams is hosting the special screening of the film tonight.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 04 February 2012
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