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Approx. 12 min read
Welcome to another issue of Lamplight Interviews. I spoke to Luke Blight of Draig Goch Productions, a fellow Cardiff-based production company that makes short films and runs educational filmmaking workshops. We talk about the process of teaching film, hosting an upcoming film festival and our thoughts on the future of entertainment. Enjoy!
First off, what got you started with film?
I think the earliest thing I can remember was writing a script for a Doctor Who fan film when I was like 8. Nothing really kind of went off until I was about 14 when me and my mates spent about three hours making a minute and a half fan trailer on iMovie and when I was uploading it to YouTube, I was like, “Maybe there’s something here.” I ended up going to college and one of the tutors there was really great; she pushed me to go further with it. I just started making films with a few friends and learning through that. After going to uni and now with the USW Startup Stiwdio, I feel like I’ve got enough tools to build some stuff, but every shoot is learning all the time.
It’s great that you had someone inspiring you to get into it. Part of what you do is going to schools and teaching film. Are you partly thinking about how you started off and being that source of inspiration early on?
Yeah, it’s definitely something I want to try and pass on, being that figure that my old tutor was to me and going, “No, you can do this.” What I’m looking to do is work with kids at the 10-15 age-range, one of the reasons being that’s the age I was when I was getting into it. They’re also dealt with two paths in a way and I know some people who have gone down the wrong one. One of the community spaces that I’ve worked with has said that they’ve had youth who act like stereotypical teenagers, vaping on a rooftop, this, that and the other, but when they’ve spent the time to actually ask them what they’re interested in, they pull down that facade of who they think they should be and they’re like, “I’d love to do cooking”, or “I wouldn’t really do music”, just by having a grown-up figure, chatting with them and treating them like a normal human.
Something else I wanted to ask about was Welsh Avengers which is being screened this month. What can we expect from the film and the screening?
The Welsh Avengers are a group of very unlikely heroes; they’re saving cats from trees, helping elderly cross the street, doing all these boring, mundane superhero jobs because they’re at the bottom of the barrel. I’d had the idea when I was a kid of some form of Welsh superheroes and when I was in uni with my friend Aron Mathias-Weston we both had a deep love of the TV show Father Ted and Welsh comedy. We did a pilot episode a couple years ago, and since then we’ve been doing a bunch of short comedy sketches to build up the world. This is like a soft reboot of the Welsh Avengers as a whole with a bunch of comedy sketches attached to it.
On September 16th, we’re at Ye Oldie Butcher’s Arms in Rhiwbina. There’s a lot of great stand-up comedians that go there and it just seems like a really nice place to put on this event. We filmed all around Rhiwbina, so just getting a lot of the community involved with it is really nice. After that, we’ve got an event in the Newport USW campus, called ‘F…, That’s Funny’ on the 23rd of September and we’re showcasing a series of short comedy films from other local filmmakers as well. The Saturday after that, the same event is happening in Penarth Pier Pavilion. In uni we met Robert Llywelyn, who is the creator of an animated series called ‘The Vale’, which was readapted into ‘The Golden Cobra’ for the BBC. He was chatting to us about his Welsh comedy series he did for fun and for his mates, which he then started touring around various pubs, to get local interest and build up a fandom. I just really liked the idea of that and the thought of having it much more relaxed and creating a bit of a community.
Yeah and maybe there’s a little bit of the Welsh Avengers in that itself?
Yeah, it’s weird. I have found it’s kind of mirroring at points, subconsciously. I play Capten Cymru, who’s trying his best to lead this team against all odds. It does feel like I’m trying to lead a team of filmmakers to make it in this day and age. They parallel and I’ve only noticed it in the past month or so and it’s a bit bizarre, but it kind of makes sense. I think as well, with the rebellious nature of the team and the traditional way to get into the industry: you’re a runner, you make tea, you meet people, you chat, and all that stuff, but it’s never been my cup of tea. There’s a lot of stigma about that being the way you get into the industry and it’s a way to get into the industry, not the way.
Yeah. There is also no clear path to breaking into the industry and the role of traditional media is starting to get a bit murky; all of the big TV networks are ultimately just creators of ‘content’, the same way that any YouTube channel is.
It does feel like this generation’s TV is YouTube, which shifts everything. Now if you want people to just see something, you can upload it to YouTube and do that yourself. I do feel as well, in an age of AI, it’s important to show the actual story behind the making of something, not just to show our creative process, but also going like, “Hey, a human made this”. Doing these premieres and being in that space, hearing people enjoying what you’re putting out there is also tenfold more fulfilling than sharing a link on socials. You might get triple the amount of views, but being in that space and that wave of relief when somebody laughs at one little thing. I think there just needs to be more of that and bringing back that community side of things. I also think people are looking for a lot more tangible things. We want to do a children’s TV show with puppets, because there’s so much that isn’t real now and there’s something with the shows I grew up with that’s tangible. You can reach out and touch a puppet, whereas you’ve got so many animation-specific shows that don’t focus on a story and progressing the education side; they’re just a distraction, more so than a show to engage with.
Kind of a visual pacifier, basically.
That’s exactly what it is now and it is difficult to watch parents throwing a phone in their kid’s face. I’m not a parent and I know it’s probably difficult, but I think that’s an extremely temporary solution. Putting on a show for people to come and see and realise that there are people behind this, I think people are yearning for that nostalgia. Puppet shows used to be massive in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, but then they just seemed to have disappeared. There is a bit of a resurgence in them coming back, which is nice to see.
Something else that has changed since we were kids is the role of pop culture. I don’t think pop culture even exists anymore. I always think back to watching the Doctor Who episode ‘Blink’ for the very first time. Even as a seven-year-old I could feel that this was an event and a lot of people my age have that same memory. I don’t think people necessarily have shared things like that anymore, but that’s also okay; we just have to shift our focus. It’s never been easier to make a film, so when it comes to actually reaching out and doing something with an impact, going to a local venue and screening a film is going to mean more to that community than a big TV series, even if the audience is smaller.
Yeah. I completely agree. Going back to what you were saying about Doctor Who; that’s what got me into it. The ‘Blink’ episode ends with a bunch of dramatic shots of statues across Cardiff. I was there as a child, who just watched this and being a little bit scared and I thought, “Wait, I’ve seen that thing on Queen Street. I know where that is. Oh, are they actually aliens?” And it kind of sets in what I like to try and do. We’re filming locations where there’s still that illusion of like, “Wait, that’s real”, or “That was filmed there.”
You have a lot of exciting things coming up. Alongside Welsh Avengers, what would you like to share with anyone who might be interested in finding out more?
We will be making ‘F…, That’s Funny’ a monthly event, with screenings that showcase various genres of short films and double up as a relaxed space for creatives to meet. We have a new series of short interviews from our team and friends that show an insight into their filmmaking process. The next projects that are in production are ‘Welcome to the End’, a dark comedy about the rise of AI, ‘Spider Manslaughter’, a short action fan-film inspired by the ‘What If’ story. We are also attending Swansea Comic Con where we will be filming cosplay showcase videos and other content along with a meet and greet from Capten Cymru and Flames!
Thanks for reading. If you would like to keep up to date on when I will be posting these, I will be sharing them to my various social media accounts and on the monthly newsletter.