John Reen talks to local Writer Emma Pitt on Maritime Radio about her writing career in film and TV and the release of her award winning film ”The Ballard of a Haunted Man.”

John Reen talks to local Writer Emma Pitt about her writing career in film and TV and the release of her award winning film "The Ballard of a Haunted Man."

Emma Pitt was born in Oxfordshire and grew up in the Somerset village of Stogumber where her parents still live. From there, she moved to South East London to study for a Communications and Sociology degree at Goldsmiths University and has lived there ever since.

Her work mentor once asked her ‘what do you really want to do?’ so with that in mind she enrolled on a TV Script Writing Course at City Lit in Central London. She’d done Script Writing as part of her first degree and often thought about being a writer. Jim Hill taught the course. Jim has a lengthy TV career; he created Boon and directed Lovejoy, Casualty and Minder. 5 minutes into that class, Emma knew this was for her. Jim encouraged her to enrol onto the TV Script Writing MA, which he ran, at De Montfort University in Leicester. It was a 2-year part time course so she moved into a part time role in the Regulatory Performance Team at Kings: a job she is still in.

 

She achieved a Distinction in the MA and won the Media Film and Journalism Prize for Best Project. She then secured an agent, Rebecca Watson at Valerie Hoskins Associates and has since been commissioned to write for Jed Mercurio’s ‘Critical’ on Sky 1 and has had projects in development with a number of TV companies including Red Productions and ITV. She’s also won a number of short play competitions, and one of these plays was a short horror called ‘The Ballad of a Haunted Man’.

 

Emma met TV cameraman Dan Shoring during her MA. In 2017 they decided to turn ‘The Ballad of a Haunted Man’ into a short film. Dan organised the crew and Emma assembled the cast: she already knew Helen Lederer, Emma’s husband suggested Shane Attwooll, who he knew from the local music scene – Shane had just played George Cornell opposite Tom Hardy in Legend. Helen suggested Eliza Leonard to play her daughter. Thankfully they all loved the script. The film was made with no budget and a lot of good will. Emma also directed and co-produced with Dan. It’s now screened at festivals across the world and won a number of awards, including Best Actor for Shane at The Twin Tiers International Film Festival in New York, Best Horror Film at The Mediterranean Film Festival in Cannes and Best Woman Filmmaker for Emma at the Los Angeles Independent Film Awards. In total it’s received 3 Best Actor awards, 7 Seven Best Actor nominations, 5 Best Film awards and 17 Best Film nominations. It was released online on Sat 7th March after a 2-year festival run.

Her new short film, The Boy Who Thought He Could Fly is just starting on the festival circuit. It stars Shane Attwooll, Jenna Russell and Archie Sanders, and is focused around the themes of grief, loss and of how important it is to talk and to listen. It’s already won the Silver Spotlight Award for Best film at Spotlight Film Awards in Atlanta and Best Actor Under 18 at the monthly Gold Film Awards in London for Archie.

 

Emma had a one act play, Invisible String, staged last year at an Off West End Theatre by Get Over It Productions who also staged her short play Ever Changing Skyline at the Chiswick Playhouse earlier this year. Ever Changing Skyline has just been selected by Kibo Productions to be staged as part of their new showcase at the Omnibus theatre in Clapham. She is also developing her own TV project with BBC Drama. Emma is married to Americana/Country singer Dave Sutherland whose music you can hear on both films. The Ballard of a Haunted man has now bee released on Youtube and can be found on the links below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ma19wOk3-o

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