Red carpet - here we come

A group of Shropshire movie fans have taken their first steps on the road to a career in the cinema business after producing their first full-length feature film. Carl Jones meets the Shrewsbury-based team.

James T Williams was just 13 years old when he decided to turn one of his school homework assignments into a make believe movie script.

"I can remember it clearly - I even addressed the envelope to Mr Steven Spielberg before I handed it in to the teacher," he says. "It earned me an A-minus . . . I'm not not sure why I only got a minus, though! I was very proud of it, and have still got it somewhere."

That's no surprise, because he's well and truly bitten by the movie-making bug.

Now aged 30, the former Meole Brace school pupil from Shrewsbury is part of Shropshire-based film company Mr Glass Productions, which has just taken its first steps on the road to feature film production.

Waiting For Dawn is, the company hopes, a project which will open financial doors and give the producers a chance to turn what is currently an expensive hobby into full-time careers.

It's described as a "metaphysical love story", and centres around the trials and tribulations of a man who goes searching for his girlfriend in a mysterious pub called The Waiting Room where all the doors are actually portals in space and time.

Shot on location in Shrewsbury and the Cardingmill Valley in the space of three weeks (the Telepost Club doubled as the pub), it was done on a shoestring budget of around £3,000 - absolute peanuts in film-making terms.

James is the writer, director, co-producer and editor of the movie, and even has a cameo role.

He says: "Shropshire isn't exactly known as a hotbed of movie making talent, but we're hoping to change that. We had a lot of help from people of the film and media studies course at Shrewsbury Sixth Form College - they helped us, and we gave them valuable experience."

"We're at the Sundorne home of co-producer and fellow member of the Mr Glass Productions management team Anthony Archambault, discussing, among other things, the merits of the latest Indiana Jones film, the Roger Moore era of the James Bond series, and whether 2001 is a great movie or space oddity. Generally, we're on the same wavelength.

Anthony, 31, says: "We're all local people who have an interest in film. The idea of setting up a company probably started in 2001, when we went to the Cannes Film Festival, just to soak up the atmosphere, and came back determined to get a script together.

"We started off making short films, including a series we were commissioned to produce for BBC local TV. We've made 16 or 17 short films now, but this feature film takes us into a different bracket."

So what's it like? Well, Waiting For Dawn is a promising feature debut from a Shropshire company which is clearly brimming with ambitious ideas.

Despite a relatively slow start, and a cliffhanger finale which slightly baffled some of those who watched the film with me, it gives a taste of the kind of creative juices flowing round the company.

The film had its premiere at the Old Market Hall Cinema in Shrewsbury in April, and is due to be screened at the Staffordshire University film theatre in Stoke, on July 2. There are also hopes of showing it at The Assembly Rooms in Ludlow later this year.

James, who describes his inspirations as the "Holy Trinity" of film directors Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch and Steven Spielberg, has several other scripts at the work-in-progress stage. But his main priority now is to get Waiting For Dawn shown to as many influential people as possible.

"Our dream result from this film would be for a movie producer to spot our talent, and give us several million pounds to make another feature, or maybe even see Waiting For Dawn as the pilot for a possible TV series," he says. "We're hoping to book the film into a few film festivals."

With thousands of TV channels now on the airwaves, and amateur video makers bombarding the likes of YouTube, there's certainly no problem putting your work out there.

But James says: "The problem is that it has become such a big market that it's more difficult than ever to get yourself noticed and stand out from the crowd."

• Mr Glass Productions is keen to hear from anyone interested in getting involved either behind the camera or in an acting role, or offering facilities for use as locations. Log on to http://mrglassproductions.now-net.net/ for more details - some of the company's short films can also be downloaded from the site.