Every project has a story to it's creation, and Dungeon Boys was quite a roller coaster!
At Ravensbourne University London (where I graduated with a BA Hons in Digital Film Production), one of the tasks for our final year was to create a short film based on a brief, a Final Major Project (FMP). I won't bore you with the details of the brief but being a "gen-z" student in 2023 meant that of course I was a little late in picking a project. I chose my major to be directing, and I was set to direct a project I was very excited about with a good friend at the time (who shall remain nameless as all members in this story shall be).
Because of the timing of our dissertation unit and the FMP's being too close together, I decided it would be best to pause the development of our project so we could focus on getting the dissertations done. It made sense to me because we didn't even have a producer yet at the time, but it was a huge mistake. While working on my dissertation I had received an email from my new producer which my friend had found! I thought "Great! We can actually get this thing made!". The email discussed that the project was going to take a new direction, but it was roughly the same concept. I was fine with that, except when it finally came time for me to get to work on it, the new story was wildly different, and only shared a few vfx ideas with the original. What made it worse was that the new producer hadn't actually run the new idea by our tutors before starting development on it, which could have had us disqualified!
Nevertheless I continued to work on the project, I outlined the script with my notes, I worked with our chosen DOP, and overall worked tirelessly to get this project working, and work with our new producer who clearly would have rather chosen a different director.
My association with that project ended when the producer fired me for not being enough of a creative lead on the project. Despite me working on storyboards and script annotations and directing packs for the film until 5am the previous night.
I immediately contacted my tutors to say that I had been fired and was left without a project! They were absolute guardian angels throughout the process, and one of them knew that I was currently playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with a few friends of mine, so they suggested that I come up with a poetic documentary (as it was one of the options for our FMPs) about the players! I worked tirelessly on Dungeon Boys as the deadline for our FMPs was coming up fast. I frantically posted about crew calls, delegated with the kit store and location hire, organised shoot dates with crew members, created call sheets, storyboards, scripted moments, shot lists for the DOP. I was Producer, Writer and Director for this whole project, and given I only had just under a month to get the thing done, I think we all did a good job.
The experience of being fired from that previous project was devastating and a little traumatic, but overall it was a very teachable moment. And as of writing this I'm currently working on my first fully funded project out of graduation, and so far being a director and writer of the project I've managed to keep working as a creative lead. It's been very exciting and I can't wait to share more with you all.
Dungeon Boys: Why We Play focuses on a group of Dungeons & Dragons players, delving into their attachment and love of the game. The documentary also aims to relieve some of the negative stigma surrounding the popular Table Top Role Playing Game (TTRPG), in a light-hearted and entertaining poetic documentary.
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