NEWSLETTER

HOW TO MAKE A FILM

WORDS BY ALEX GODFREY

Photos courtesy of Momentum

Dominic Murphy is a British commercials director. He met Vice co-founder Shane Smith a decade ago, and together they’ve made a great film called White Lightnin’, which is just out on DVD and totally deserves your attention. Set in West Virginia, it’s a story about a very troubled man, Jecso White, “The Dancing Outlaw”. He is an impulsive force of nature who lives life to its fullest, whether he’s dancing, drinking, fucking or fighting. Budding directors take note: here are Dominic’s top five filmmaking tips.

LET YOUR IDEA BOIL
Dominic and Shane developed the story for years before being satisfied enough to begin production.

Dominic Murphy: This all came about because Shane had got fascinated by Jesco through documentary material, and he went down and met him and they bonded. Shane was excited about this guy, interested in his extreme personality and his whole culture. He reimagined Jesco’s story and came up with a more extreme version of what might have happened to him. Shane sent me this monologue, the story of Jesco White. At first I thought he was a fictional character, but the story had an integrity and made sense to me.

BE PERSONAL
Dominic went to West Virginia to meet Jesco himself, but was determined not to let him influence their own ideas too heavily.

Meeting Jesco didn’t make us change the script much, we were pretty faithful to our original idea. There was this short story that we had that was a narration of his life and we had to build it into a screenplay, and we kept faithful to that. As a director, or creative person, writer, whatever, you’re kind of writing about yourself as much as anything else. There’s an emotional dynamic or awareness going on in the story, and that in a way is the most important thing.

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