Steven Fingleton: From Nolan Fanboy to BAFTA Director - Making 'The Waif' & Going for the Rafters [Podcast]
John Schramm sits down with BAFTA-nominated director Steven Fingleton to discuss his upcoming film "The Waif" (Kinolime's first competition winner), his journey from Christopher Nolan fan to acclaimed filmmaker, and his unique approach to horror filmmaking. Fingleton shares insights about breaking into the industry with "The Survivalist," working with Game of Thrones star Liam Cunningham, and his philosophy of "going for the rafters" - making classics rather than programmers. The conversation also explores the current state of screenwriting, the benefits of working outside Hollywood, and valuable advice for aspiring filmmakers.
Full Transcript: Steven Fingleton Interview
Participants:
John Schramm - Head of Development, Kinolime
Steven Fingleton - Director (The Survivalist, Nightride)
Steven Fingleton: The idea is that you're never trying to make a programmer. You're never trying to fill a slot. You are trying to make a classic.
John Schramm: Welcome Kinolimers. Oh, are we in for a treat today? Guess who we're going to talk to? Steven Fingleton, the director of the upcoming film, "The Waif," which was Kinolime's first script-to-screen competition winner written by Adam Hampton. We have Steven joining us from Northern Ireland. Steven, what's up, my man? How you doing?
Steven Fingleton: I'm very good. How are you doing, John?
John Schramm: I'm doing very well. You know, tell us an update about what's been going on in your world.
Steven Fingleton: Yeah, I was just shooting a section of a film I want to make. It's with an actress-director friend of mine, she's about to make her second feature and we had a window where we could go out there and, you know, shoot something, explore kind of the visual style we're going to tell it in, you know, find out, you know, what works in terms of colors, acting levels and things like that. So it was a very interesting experience. It was my first time in the Republic of Georgia. And it's got a really interesting film industry. It's quite old, but the crew is very young. And the locations are absolutely amazing.
John Schramm: I think I've never been to Georgia, the country. What's the one thing that blew you away in a positive about the country and your experience over there working?
Steven Fingleton: Well, I mean, aside from the people who are tremendously friendly, extremely hardworking, it was the scale of Georgia's history. We went to a very, very rural semi-desert site, so that was kind of like a Monument Valley type setup. And when we arrived, there was archaeological pottery just lying in the ground that hadn't been taken away. And there was actually a massive kind of wine vessel, which is perhaps hundreds of years old, perfectly preserved, almost as tall as me, just lying in the ground that had been dug up. It was like six feet under and somebody dug it up and just left it there. And there's just no interest from archaeologists or tourists. And so to come across a region like this, which is completely unspoiled, full of like human habitat of caves and things like this was just fantastic.
John Schramm: Super cool. So Stephen, this is the first time the Kinolime community is seeing, you know, you talking about yourself and "The Waif" which we'll get into. So maybe give us a little bit of journey about how you got started, you know, you have such a fascinating, I don't wanna call it a breaking story, but just, you know, what got you going? How did you get started? Tell us a little bit about your journey.
Steven Fingleton: So I don't have a family background in film. No one I knew growing up worked in film. It was just something I wanted to do from a teenager. And I saw a film in London called "Memento." And that was one of Christopher Nolan's first films. It was his second film and I thought it was fantastic. And I looked into what he was doing in terms of his career. And he went to University College of London and he did English and went to the film society because English isn't a particularly hard degree if you know how to bluff it. And he would just make films for the three years he was there and he actually made his first feature film using the 16 millimeter cameras there.
So that's what I did. I did English and I started making films with the film society and so that was my kind of first practical experience in terms of making work, you know, shooting in 16 mil, the same camera he used actually to make "Following."
John Schramm: "Following" was his first film, right?
Steven Fingleton: "Following" was his first. He had made like a number of shorts and things. Interestingly, he couldn't get into the national film school in the UK, which I find fascinating. It probably assisted him because he developed kind of a guerrilla filmmaking aesthetic, which even to like "Batman Begins" was influencing it. He actually shot that mainly around UCL.
And so then, you know, I got involved in the making of kind of a low-budget feature film. I wasn't directing it. I was just kind of a writer on it. And I saw my work performed by professional actors. So it gave me a lot of confidence that, you know, I think I can really do this. And after I graduated, I was working like regular office jobs, making short films and writing scripts. And so, you know, how I was tutoring myself was through the process of making films for small amounts of money, taking them on the festival circuit, seeing the feedback, getting better over time. You know, because of my income, I could only make one once a year. You know, so it was always tense like the two or three days I shot something.
And eventually, I actually, you know, I started to challenge myself with screenwriting. So I did a screenwriting MA at the London College of Communication. And that was quite useful. The initial period of the course was really useful because it taught just enough theory and it helped get me over the line. And I also did a course with John Yorke at the BBC. I was an intern. So for a week, I got all the course materials and I learned a lot from British television, particularly popular television in terms of techniques that I use to this day.
John Schramm: So everyone would love to know, Stephen, 'cause it looks like you went to school, you got your theory down, you learned the tools of the trade. What's your big break-in story? How did you officially break into the industry?
Steven Fingleton: I wrote a script that people really liked in the industry. I'd written many scripts, but it was only at a certain stage of maturity, was I able to write something that was good enough really to get made, but also to capture people's attention. And I had structured it very carefully so that it would, so there was, you know, no dialogue for the first 17 pages. It had, you know, a slightly perverse theme. It was kind of an anti-science fiction film and a number of things to kind of surprise readers that interested me, you know, because it was kind of a commentary on the post-apocalyptic genre.
John Schramm: And this is "The Survivalist," correct?
Steven Fingleton: This is "The Survivalist." And so basically that script was sent to a couple of agents and they sent it to other people and it began circling around Hollywood. And so I started getting lots of contact very, very quickly. And then at that point, you know, I got represented, you know, by two agencies and I was getting offers not typically to make the script, but to, you know, write other scripts or could you look at this and, you know, so that was where I stopped being an outsider and became an insider and had access to, you know, production companies and financiers.
John Schramm: And when you wrote it, I believe you put it on the blacklist and it got ranked super high that year, right?
Steven Fingleton: So I didn't put it on the blacklist. At the time, the blacklist was purely kind of industry side. An email go around to executives, what scripts do you like this year? So yeah, I think it got quite high. I think it was like number 15 or 16 or something that year. And there's a UK version of that. And so it topped the Brits that year.
John Schramm: So it was among the most well-regarded scripts of the year, I would say.
Steven Fingleton: Yeah, it's a fantastic read, great film.
John Schramm: So after "The Survivalist," is this the "SLR" phase? 'Cause I have a big soft spot for "SLR" for many reasons. A, it's a fantastic short film, but B, you also filmed with Liam Cunningham, you know, aka Davos from Game of Thrones. So is that the transition from "The Survivalist" to "SLR"?
Steven Fingleton: I had made what I consider my last short film, which I would never say again, 'cause I quite like making short films. It was called "Sharon" and it was a very, very specific kind of 12 minute, kind of black and white suspense film. And I kind of didn't want to make another short film in case it wasn't as good. But the BFI were necessary for support to get "The Survivalist" made, and they suggested I apply to a scheme called BFI Shorts. They're making several, I can't remember how many, maybe 10 or 15 large budget shorts, so in the 50 to $70,000 range.
And I had a script which I couldn't get made, a short script called "SLR," which had a really good premise. It was kind of like a combination of "Blow Up" and "Blow Out" for the internet generation. And so they financed that. And I cast Liam Cunningham, who was very fortunate to star in it. And we made the film. And it did really well online. It got hundreds of thousands of views very quickly because somebody on Reddit posted it. And eventually it was long-listed for an Oscar. So it made the final 10.
John Schramm: Yeah, no, it's a great short. And just real quick for my own interest, how was it working with Liam? Just because he was insanely good on Game of Thrones and he's insanely good in this. So what were your experiences like working with such a fantastic actor?
Steven Fingleton: He was actually shooting on Game of Thrones at the time. And we were shooting in Belfast. So he was in the hotel. And you know, when you're shooting on a big show, you often have gaps between filming, not enough really to do like another feature or another TV role, but often people will do shorts and Liam still does shorts. So, you know, we approached him, you know, got him, and we worked together.
And it was a very interesting experience, partially because I was still quite inexperienced with actors. And Liam taught me a lot of lessons in terms of what not to do, but not in kind of like a paternal way, more in a, okay, I'm going to, I'm not going to participate now because you haven't done this correctly. And that was really interesting. You know, for example, I showed him all my storyboards, I said, look, I've got everything mapped out and his enthusiasm just ebbed. And I've often thought, and I realized later what the issue was is that I was basically saying to him, "You're a marionette to kind of work within my vision," as opposed to, "What are your ideas for how to approach the scene? What do you think about what to do?"
And I've also got a very experimental style, very improvisational, which can annoy actors quite a bit. And so, you know, with this, for example, there's a scene where I shot the film down the barrel. Okay, so to you the actors are looking into the camera and I felt it would help performance if the actor, the person he's playing against was actually looking into the EVF, looking into the eyepiece and Liam wasn't having it. "I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it."
John Schramm: Yeah, yeah.
Steven Fingleton: But you know, you only get better by playing a better opponent and Liam was very, very useful in that regard. I think he's very good in the film. And, you know, everything, every performer I've worked with since has been informed, you know, by, you know, moments like that, working with somebody who's kind of like a thoroughbred actor, who demands and expects a certain type of direction. You have to deliver it. And if you don't, you know, he's not gonna let you catch up.
John Schramm: I love that. And it's such a great learning experience for you as a young director coming up and hearing from the experience of someone like Liam. So that's invaluable. And now, you know, several years later, here we are, you know, Kinolime comes knocking on your door, right? And you're probably like, what is Kinolime? What is going on here? Can you tell us a little bit of your first impression of Kinolime when we first approached you? And also, your first thoughts upon reading "The Waif."
Steven Fingleton: So Kinolime, when I looked into it, it had a really, really interesting model, which was, it was a screenwriting competition. Now, screenwriting competitions can have, you know, a mixed reputation because, you know, you've got stuff like the Nicholl Fellowship, which is highly respected and so on. But there's also people who see the competition as a profit center. And one of the kind of coolest things about Kinolime is it's free to enter. Okay. If somebody is offering to read your script for free for any reason, you know, that is, they're investing. They're investing in reading, they're investing in a search. So that was something that kind of really impressed me.
It was a way of finding new material that the industry hadn't found. Okay, you were drawing people in on the promise that the winning script can get made. Okay, and that can be really, really powerful. My first film I got noticed through a scheme like that. That was the Northern Ireland Screen New Talent Focus scheme, which is a local scheme for filmmakers in Northern Ireland that I think has made like over 10 features. Every year they'll make a feature. And, you know, they only get about a hundred entries. Yet, they make them. And whereas Kinolime obviously is far, far more than that, it's, you know, global in reach.
And it really works because, you know, it focuses the mind, we're going to make something out of this and it draws people in who don't just want, you know, to raise their profile, actually want to see something on screen. So I think that's a great idea.
In terms of "The Waif," I was sent the screenplay by Mike, our producer friend. And I read it, I thought it was very well done. I thought it was this, you know, very grounded take on horror, very character focused. Really strong, like, like second half when the kind of the build up paid off. And I thought, well, this is a movie. This is definitely a movie. I can see this, I can see this on screen, which, you know, doesn't happen a lot with scripts. They often have a lot of kind of issues where you think it's going to be difficult to surmount, but it was immediately clear it was a movie.
And the question that I had about it is, do I have something to offer? Can I make this with a particular angle or a particular voice or a way of expressing what I believe about the story and the characters in a way that's meaningful? And that was the kind of question that we worked through together.
John Schramm: And then in the initial Kinolime interview you had with us, you mentioned about going for the rafters, which got me super excited. What can audiences expect from that approach?
Steven Fingleton: Well, the idea is that you're never trying to make a programmer. You're never trying to fill a slot. You are trying to make a classic. You know, I've said this before, there was a producer I worked with once who I told, you know, we need to make this film a classic. You know, we need to try and they said no, you can't try that. You can't try that. That's ridiculous. You know, it might happen, but that can't be an aspiration and I completely disagree. You need to create the conditions so that you can be lucky. Okay. You need to create as much space where you can make something, you know, bold and new and surprising to an audience and so that's what we're trying to do with this.
John Schramm: It's amazing. I hear that so much around the business. Everyone's just trying to play it safe. They're not trying to do something exceptional. You know, they just want to do the thing, get the movie made and etc. And I love that approach because we got to, you know, we say take big swings. That's the big American saying, they'll take a swing, but I love going for the rafters and I love your style, your approach and like I mean it's to be incredible, you know, what you ended up making and filming on "The Waif."
What makes "The Waif" different from anything else you worked on?
Steven Fingleton: It's a horror for a start. I've done horror adjacent films. My short, "Sharon" is a horror. It turns into a horror in the last 25 seconds. And "The Survivalist" was marketed as a horror. But the truth is they are actually suspense films. Suspense and horror and thriller are often interlinked but not always. "Jaws" for example is fundamentally, you know, it's fundamentally a suspense film.
So what I would say is this is very much, it's not quite a straight horror, but it's very much set in the horror sort of genre. So, you know, when a guy goes to the cabin in the woods, there's certain genre expectations you have to have. Everything has to be heightened. Everything has to have a certain tone. It has to have a certain tone from the beginning. And I haven't done something as embedded in the horror space as that.
And the films I've often really liked have been adjacent to horror rather than full-blooded horror, and the horrors I like are the crossover hits, you know, like, you know, "The Wicker Man," you know, "The Shining," for example, and things like this. So it's quite novel for me in terms of approaching that, but it is something I've wanted to do because horror films these days are usually the most interesting work that you can get into the cinema, because the questions they're allowed to ask, the, you know, the themes, the darkness of the story, you know, for example, "Hereditary," something we talk about a lot in terms of what it's done. And Ari Aster has, you know, largely abandoned, you know, the kind of horror genre. But the fact that he chose that as a vehicle for exploring the things he wanted to, you know, shows he recognized how useful it is.
And that's why I'm interested in "The Waif." What it actually is, is, you know, it's a story about grief. It's a story about someone who can't accept, you know, the death of their family. And which is, which is a very dark concept, people wouldn't go to see that if it was a drama. But if it's a horror, they will expose themselves to more emotional raw material because that's what they've signed up for.
John Schramm: Sure. That's an interesting approach. And for all those who are watching, they're hearing "The Waif" for the first time. If you want to go read the screenplay, you can go to kinolime.com, make an account, go to our archives, download "The Waif," read it, and you can see the amazing film that we're going to be producing and making soon with Stephen.
Stephen, let's focus a little bit now to the industry because there's a lot going on where every day there's always influx of news. What excites you or frustrates you the most about where the current state of the film industry is right now?
Steven Fingleton: It's in transition. So if you're an independent filmmaker, that's a problem because you typically finance your films by projecting revenues in the future and pulling them forward into production. You know, maybe that's pre-sales, maybe that's speculation and if you invest equity in the film makes four times its money, you'll make a profit. And that's very, very, very difficult when the rewards for film are shifting, you know, really fast.
Like on my last film, for example, you know, we had a number of, you know, kind of distributors we'd sold to where market conditions changed. One of the distributors, we had to take a cut on what we had agreed. The other element is the Trump tariff situation is creating a big block in terms of uncertainty as to where people will invest. Uncertainty means there's less money to go around. So that's one of the big negatives.
We haven't yet got to another space where we know how to make things, unless the future is all streaming, which I would really hope it isn't. Streaming is great, but it's a very, very limited kind of art form.
So that's on the kind of the negative side. On the positive side, I think the technological changes that are kind of coming through in terms of reducing costs, I'm kind of interested a lot in AI and what it offers low budget filmmakers. Previously, you've been restricted to very contained stories, threadbare sets, locations you can grab. There's going to be a future where someone can make "Lord of the Rings" with just great actors they know and compete and really compete with, with, with, you know, the biggest contenders. So that's kind of, it's frightening for someone like me who's not native to that technology, but it's also extremely exciting because we're going to see whole new forms of filmmaking. And I think the industry's been quite conservative, particularly because of streaming in terms of the chances and so on that it's taken. So that's something I'm excited about.
John Schramm: Since Kinolime is a story first company, shifting to the screenwriting side, there was this James Gunn comment that came out last week where he mentioned that, you know, he's seeing more and more he's getting sent to him unfinished screenplays, which I find mind blowing as a studio head is essentially getting screenplays to look at that are unfinished. What is the, you know, what is Hollywood, the industry, filmmaking in general? What are they getting wrong about screenwriting?
Steven Fingleton: Television or more specifically, the new forms of television on streaming have had a pernicious effect because of the way they're created. You will often have, you know, writing teams where the writers aren't given the space or the time to properly finish scripts. And you've got a showrunner whose job is basically to continually firefight these screenplays as they go into production. And that's not something that's been typical in Hollywood. In Hollywood, the screenwriters who are hired, they deliver, okay?
John Schramm: Yeah.
Steven Fingleton: They deliver quickly. You bring them in, you're going to get a good job. Whereas the kind of new generation is quite different. A good example actually would be, the deal Amazon did with, I think, was it Phoebe Waller-Bridge?
John Schramm: Yeah.
Steven Fingleton: Which I don't know the truth of that. And I don't believe the trades in terms of what they can say. But it was a massive, massive deal that hasn't, you know, hasn't resulted in any dramatic output. I think it's resulted in a, I think it's a penguin documentary or something. But the challenge is she had a very particular kind of great hit show, writing this one specific thing. And she didn't have a wide gamut of experience going through the Hollywood treadmill, working on rewrites of things that don't go anywhere, working with an amazing director who can teach you 10 things that you couldn't learn anywhere else. That's an experience a lot of screenwriters don't have.
One of the problems, if you're an outsider and you're not working with professionals or you don't have access to really experienced actors to give you feedback, is getting better, is getting better. And this, I feel screenwriting culture has softened significantly. Partially as a result of this kind of massive outputs on the franchises, the idea of the, you know, the great 105 page screenplay, you know, that you can set down and it's bulletproof and it's ready to go. You typically only get those from older writers now.
What you get instead is younger writers who've got like a kind of like a good idea, a bit of panache, but it lacks finesse and producers are like prospectors sifting for gold and thinking, well, actually once we get somebody else in we can make this really good. There's been a number of projects I've been involved in where part of my job as a director, the first thing I have to do is I have to say, "Well, look, it needs to be rewritten or more accurately, it needs to be finished. It needs to be ready for an actor."
John Schramm: But that's what made the project galvanize. But that's what I would think of it, too. We see that firsthand, too, with the Kinolime competition. We've had 1,000 entries. And kind of like you said, a lot of really good concepts, very few, or I would say finished, or close to that. It's hard. It's a muscle that a lot of people don't know yet. But it's interesting how it's shaping out.
And you mentioned before about outsider. As someone who lives outside of the US, do you think that distance living in Northern Ireland gives you a different perspective, a sharper perspective on Hollywood really or cinema in general?
Steven Fingleton: Well, I've lived plenty of different places and I was living in Ukraine for a while. But for me, the main, yeah, it's good being outside of Hollywood, obviously, because it's a small town, a show everybody thinks is important there. Even in New York, for example, can have no significance elsewhere. It doesn't really land. What you're trying to do is write stories that find a universal audience. So that they'll resonate across cultures ideally. And that can be quite difficult when you're in a bubble. Okay.
So for me, when I was working in an office, looking at how people respond to the media, what films they talked about, how they reacted to different shows. That was like a massive lesson because you realize how small a part and how passively received a lot of culture is and how much harder you have to work to earn their respect, earn their attention. I think that's definitely something I think.
And the other thing about that is it really doesn't matter what the industry thinks. It doesn't matter what they think is important. What matters is the public. So that's why, for example, the disparity in Rotten Tomatoes between kind of critically lauded but frequently in my opinion, soft films and audiences I think is really, really interesting. There shouldn't be that big of a gap.
John Schramm: That's exactly why we created Kinolime for that very reason, to give the audience kind of a bit more of a say and like, "Hey, what do you all want to see?" There's so much great content out there. I shouldn't say content. There's so many great screenplays out there that just are not getting the light of day, giving the audience a bit of a shot.
So this is when you're on set, and there's something not right. And you're pressured. And somebody says we can fix it in post. You frequently can't. And if you want to adjudicate, whether that's the case, you need to know every department. Okay, so there are occasions when I know it's possible, but there's others where it's not. So that's an easy one.
Second one, dream actor you'd currently love to work with living and dream actor you currently would love to have worked with if they were alive. So living I would say Anne Hathaway, just a performer who gets more and more interesting the older she gets. I think she's absolutely fantastic and I think the way Nolan used her, not to sound like the Nolan mega fanboy that I am...
John Schramm: I mean you did follow his footsteps, yeah.
Steven Fingleton: Well for example like working in "Interstellar," you know, it's effectively a minor role in terms of it's not the most major role but the precision and the depth that she's able to reach very quickly is a
