- Fat Chance

Best Short Film Nominee, Rushes Soho Short Film Festival 2001
Kodak Cinematography Showcase 2001

In 2001, we were commissioned to direct Fat Chance as part of Film Four's Short Cuts initiative. We'd penned the script a couple of months previously, based on a real location in South London.

"Round the corner from my flat ran a parade of shops, book-ended by a pair of the most desolate drinking holes. In here it was possible to find at opening time the usual handful of regulars, demarcated from the rest of the clientele by the the earned spurs of years of arm-to-arm combat with alcohol. These old hands would blur away the hours from 11am onwards, concentrating on either hurling abuse at themselves or each other, or myopically scanning the day’s racing form. The naps and tips taken, the facts accumulated, they would shuffle down to the rundown family owned bookies at the centre of the parade, place their bets, and then get back to the pub, in time to watch the race over yet another double.

Over the course of the day, the pub would start to fill with the unemployed, who’d just managed to negotiate their grant or housing benefit from the inept bureaucracy of Lambeth Council, as well as chippies, painters and decorators who were finished for the afternoon on the local conversion of flats, as well as a clutch of locals in between jobs. By 6pm, the pub would be two-thirds full, the fruit machine already emptied and topped up by the chancers, and old lags half-cut and happy on their winnings, or bilious and maudlin, surrounded by their torn-up betting slips.

We wanted to make a short film that had a dynamic, a sense of growing tension. Raw adrenaline was to be found here during the big races, and we settled on cross cutting between a big race, and the inept attempt of a young kid to try and hold the place up, as watched by a man who’s patently been involved in this kind of scenario before, and was once probably the one who instigated it.

As with our first short, The Cookie Thief, we structured the film based on real time, so the ten minute length of the film is a ten minute slice of life, avoiding the use of flash-backs or ellipsis. We tried to give the range of characters enough shading to come across as real characters, while avoiding going too much into their back history. Equally the film does not attempt to draw a conclusion or make judgements on the character’s actions. Just as the film resolves into anti-climax ,so the film does not try to tie everything up too neatly. This is partly a reaction to the twist in the tale structure of so many shorts today. We’d done that with The Cookie Thief, and while it is an absolutely valid structural device, designed to send the audience out of the room with a sense of satisfaction, we were drawn more towards an “open” structure : the dramatic curve of increasing tension and climax is there in the cross-cutting between the last straight of the race and the finale of the heist, but ultimately, there is no sting in the tale : life simply goes on

The directors were able to work with art director Jane Wilson (set designer for Lynne Ramsay) to create a 360 degree purpose-built set of the betting shop, incorporating floating walls for advanced camera techniques, with Ian Wilson as Director of Photography. The film was completed through Alex O' Neal's company, Wiggin O'Neal films. Fat Chance was nominated for best short film at the Rushes Soho Short Film Festival 2001, and was also shown as part of the Kodak Cinematography Showcase at the BAFTA theatre, Piccadilly. The film has been shown at twenty odd festivals worldwide, and debuted on Film Four / Channel Four in late 2002.

To download a PDF of the shooting script, click here.

To watch clips, and other footage, click on the Watch The Films button in the menu bar on the left.