The art of adapt­ing short films into fea­ture-length movies

The short form is the pri­ma­ry cin­e­mat­ic blue­print and foun­da­tion for emerg­ing film­mak­ers to make their first steps in the indus­try and hone their direct­ing skills before tak­ing their sto­ry­telling to the wider fea­ture-length for­mat. Often­times, short films wear their fea­ture-length aspi­ra­tions on their sleeve as proof of con­cept, and can be ripe with the poten­tial and scope of transformation.

With the right amount of fund­ing, a short film with a tan­gi­ble vision can spend a bit more time in the movie-mak­ing oven, under­go­ing recon­fig­u­ra­tion and adjust­ments to accom­mo­date a larg­er cin­e­mat­ic endeav­our. British direc­tor Eddie Stern­berg spoke to us about super­siz­ing his heart­felt 2015 short I Used to be Famous into his first fea­ture-length ven­ture. The film fol­lows a washed-up for­mer boy-band mem­ber who pines for his pop star glo­ry days, find­ing cre­ative inspi­ra­tion through an unex­pect­ed friend­ship with a young autis­tic drummer.

LWLies: When did you first realise you want­ed to turn 2015’s I Used to Be Famous into a fea­ture? How did the oppor­tu­ni­ty come about?

Eddie Stern­berg: It was as soon as Vince first popped into my head before I even made the short, and before the rest of the char­ac­ters and sto­ry even came togeth­er. I found the idea of this for­mer pop star walk­ing around town, try­ing to fill the void of his glo­ry years with uncooked music to be such rich ter­ri­to­ry. Then after devel­op­ing his rela­tion­ship with Ste­vie, and then actu­al­ly see­ing the reac­tion once we had made the short, it reaf­firmed the idea that this was very much a proof of con­cept for a wider story.

The pro­duc­er of the short Christo­pher Pen­cakows­ki and I decid­ed to go full steam ahead to start work on the fea­ture. We then teamed up with Zak Klein — my super tal­ent­ed co-writer and the very impres­sive up-and-com­ing pro­duc­er Col­lie McCarthy to start the jour­ney with us. After near­ly 5 years of devel­op­ment, with lots of ups and downs, and near miss­es, Net­flix picked up the project for their UK Fea­tures Film Slate and the rest is history.

Is there ever an impulse while mak­ing a short film that there might be scope to expand it to fea­ture length? Was that ever the case with I Used to be Famous?

In my opin­ion, it’s usu­al­ly quite appar­ent whether a cer­tain sto­ry needs to be told in one for­mat vs anoth­er. Some sto­ries either work beau­ti­ful­ly in short form where­as oth­ers demand a longer run­time. With my first short film (Out of Body) it was only ever going to be a short. The nature of the sto­ry and what we were try­ing to achieve wouldn’t have worked with a longer run time. Where­as I Used to Be Famous always felt like a longer sto­ry. There was so much to delve into, so much to unpick and explore, so I think it always depends on the nature of the nar­ra­tive and type of story.

With this task of adap­ta­tion and expan­sion ahead of you, what were your first steps from a writ­ing per­spec­tive? Was it easy to build new char­ac­ters, sub-plots, sit­u­a­tions with­out cor­rupt­ing the orig­i­nal concept?

When Zak and I sat down to start writ­ing the fea­ture, we’d already chat­ted through our indi­vid­ual ideas as to where we saw the sto­ry going. We then researched the sub­jects and themes in the film, vis­it­ed music ther­a­py class­es and spoke in depth to my cousin Saul Zur-Szpiro and his mum Susan about the por­tray­al of neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty. Zak’s ideas and expe­ri­ence as a writer were exact­ly why we brought him on board the project. So hav­ing already talked at length and researched, we then went straight into the beat out­line, where we con­tin­ued to devel­op and expand the sto­ry as we went. The key thing for us was to stay true to the very spe­cif­ic dual-tone qual­i­ties of the short with­out ven­tur­ing too much into com­e­dy with heart, or dra­ma with grit, but hit­ting the sweet spot of both gen­res. And cru­cial­ly, ensur­ing the por­tray­al of neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty was as authen­tic as possible.

Were there any drafts of the script where you took the main sto­ry­line into rad­i­cal new ter­ri­to­ry? Or maybe pushed it to a place where it didn’t feel right?

In the ear­ly dis­cus­sions, we tried a many of dif­fer­ent routes to find the best sto­ry we could. Once we were at script stage we had the main sto­ry­line laid out clear­ly but some of the big details and sup­port char­ac­ters changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from draft to draft, espe­cial­ly once oth­er trust­ed read­ers had their say like Chris, Col­lie, my agent Kel­ly and our fan­tas­tic script con­sul­tant Ed Clarke. For exam­ple, in ear­ly drafts, Austin was more of an antag­o­nist. But it became clear that if Austin was actu­al­ly a pret­ty nice bloke, feel­ing guilt from essen­tial­ly tak­ing Vince’s place as the break­out solo star of the band, then it would hit much hard­er for Vince. It felt more fresh. Then as we got into the lat­er drafts and we were get­ting strong reac­tions from the indus­try, that’s when we didn’t want to tweak too much! Hav­ing said that, once I was on set, direct­ing the film, I liked the free­dom to tweak the dia­logue with the actors, as and where need­ed, so that we had as free and nat­ur­al per­for­mances as pos­si­ble throughout.

Hav­ing made both, what do you think are the key dif­fer­ences between shorts and fea­tures with regard to how they are able to com­mu­ni­cate an idea to an audience?

It’s a great ques­tion. The clear key dif­fer­ence is sim­ply hav­ing the time to real­ly delve into your char­ac­ters and ensure they are as three dimen­sion­al as pos­si­ble. But on the oth­er hand, there is a free­dom in short films to com­mu­ni­cate your ideas that you aren’t always guar­an­teed when giv­en the back­ing to make a fea­ture film. Luck­i­ly for us, Net­flix were incred­i­bly col­lab­o­ra­tive and sup­port­ive and I’m real­ly excit­ed for the world to see the film.

I Used to Be Famous is avail­able to stream on Net­flix now.