Happy birthday, Ashes
[Above: On this day exactly 10 years ago, directing with a sprained back. Photo by Jenna Cataldo] Everything is so mad right now, in a very exciting way, but I wanted to make time to reflect on the 10th anniversary of filming Ashes - which was my first time ever directing a professional crew. The subject matter was very challenging, but I didn't let that put me off. We had the tiniest budget and it was very hard to get the film off the ground. I went and got a 'normal job' to help pay the bills, but our location still fell through twice before we finally went into production. Then a back injury left me bed-ridden and I almost physically wasn't able to do the shoot - but we did it anyway. Our expensive rented camera kit failed the night before the shoot - but we found workarounds. Nothing was stopping us by that point. [Note: you can see how difficult the location search was for me in this dodgily-filmed old video diary which I shot at the time: https://youtu.b
