Scottish Filmmaker Iain Henderson on his latest short, Farrick, getting his films out to the people, and self funding projects

At a time when the Glasgow art scene is in many ways struggling, Iain Henderson is fighting against the odds as a working-class filmmaker. The film industry is notoriously difficult to get a start in, but Henderson has had a burgeoning career ever since he won a BAFTA new talent award for his student film The Wee ‘Hings which played at the commonwealth games. Since his college days, Henderson has started his own outfit, Sketchy Productions, and become an accomplished freelancer in the Scottish film industry. On Saturday, 25^th April, he invited SNACK magazine to a special cast and crew screening of his new film Farrick.

After being screened at Glasgow Film Theatre, Farrick premiered on the Sketchy Productions YouTube channel.

While I was waiting in line for the screening, a funny thing happened. I found myself standing next to a man named Henry, one of Henderson’s old collaborators. He had taken Henderson to Palestine in 2016 as a filmmaker and worked on several music and activism events there. While we waited for the movie to begin, Henry told me how the work they did in Palestine attempted to inspire and educate local communities.

Later I found out that Henry had alerted Henderson to the Kenmure Street protests as they were happening, which led to a lot of Henderson’s footage appearing in Felipe Bustos Sierra’s award winning documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street.

Before Farrick played, Henderson prefaced the film by giving us a little of his own filmmaking history and showing us another of his short films A Girl Called Bella. After both films played, the viewer could see a voice emerging across them.

Farrick was the more narrative of the two films, but both centered on a lone subject as they went on an internal journey of self-discovery. Music and montage featured prominently in both films and Henderson’s connections with particular bands showed heavy influence on composition. The result in Farrick is a distinct lack of dialogue from the protagonist and finding his thoughts and feelings communicated through music. The decision served to reinforce the message of how this particular character struggled with dyslexia.

I got a chance to catch up with Henderson after the screening. I was interested in how he has managed to become a successful filmmaker at the working-class level. In response, his personal motto seemed to be, ‘If you want to be a filmmaker, you need to make a film.’ And though it seemed as simple as that, his career hadn’t come without challenges.

He had to fund Farrick mostly out of his own pocket. But he managed to crowdsource some money, as well as win some funding from the Edinburgh Napier University’s Bright Red Triangle, a startup assistance foundation for University alumni. He paid for the GFT venue costs by selling Farrick-related merchandise.

Henderson said his biggest help came from the people that supported him, ‘If you’ve got a strong network of people that support you and people that believe in you, it can help bridge that [funding] gap a little bit easier. You can be a little bit resourceful and you can achieve what you’re setting out to. You can do more for less.’

But working in the film industry at this level seems to have given Henderson a certain attitude towards making his own films. He said he was happy he hadn’t released any of the work he did in film school. ‘I’m really glad I made the film now at this stage in my career’ ‘We already had a lot of the production skills to elevate the production level so that the first film came out strong.’

He also felt releasing the film digitally was a better way for it to reach more people. The strategy seems to be working with 18k views in the first week. He compared himself to a band just starting out: ‘Songwriters will release their first song [for free] on SoundCloud or Bandcamp. With Farrick, I didn’t want to gatekeep it. I wanted to give it to the audience.’

It’s sometimes important for a new director to shop their first film around to festivals in order to build a reputation. But Henderson is already building that reputation with his bare hands. ‘When we didn’t get into film festivals, I decided that I’m not going to wait for gatekeepers to decide if my piece is worthy of getting shown. In the future I might adhere to that more traditional strategy of waiting and go through the film festival route completely and then release it online.’ He’s still waiting to hear back from some festivals abroad. We may see more of his films next year in festivals around the world, but for now, he says ‘Just give it to the people’.

That independent spirit seems to have worked well for him. He’s done a lot more work since the viral video days, and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. ‘I had a meeting today with the BBC and I can’t say too much, but there’s some interest there in some of the ideas we’ve got. If you’re making good work and it’s consistent, sometimes people get behind you. Other times it gets slept on, but you can’t let that defeat you. If there’s something inside you that drives you to create you have to throw yourself at it.’

You can watch Farrick here

Henderson currently has several other projects in the works and is always open to talking to people about getting something off the ground. He says he’s currently interested in doing more work in documentary and unscripted films, and open to doing scripted work as well.