Three years after his short movie Goodbye, Cruel World debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, Vito Rocco will get the chance to move into features after winning the first MySpace MyMovie MashUp Competition. Vito triumphed over Cubs director Tom Harper and Hard To Swallow helmer Mat Kirkby to win the prize of a £1million budget and an instant greenlight for his comedy Faintheart, set in the world of Viking reenactments.

"I said in my pitch that I wanted to make people laugh and cry, ideally at the same time," 35-year-old Vito says, a day after discovering that he'd won the competition. "I want to celebrate the eccentricities of Britain, and that's what Faintheart does." Read on to find out more about the director, who followed the award-winning 2003 short Goodbye, Cruel World with work on TV series The Last Chancers (2004) and Suburban Shootout (2006).

Tell us about your filmmaking roots...
I originally wanted to be an actor but realised that I wasn't good enough, so turned my attentions to the other side of the camera. I got interested in how films were made and studied a little film theory, so picked up a camera, got hold of some film and started making films. I knew some actor friends - some of whom have gone on to become quite famous - and made some very silly films with them. We ran out of money quite quickly but I was lucky enough to be asked to make a music video, and that led to another one. I managed to keep going until I made the short film Goodbye, Cruel World, which was funded by Film London and Screen East.

Can you drop a few names of these actor friends?
Fortunately I probably can mention them because they're still doing silly stuff. There's one guy called David Walliams who was in an early film I made called Visible Panty Line - I think he was doing something with blow-up dolls on motorbikes in my film, but he's gone on to do far worse things than that. Katy Carmichael was in Spaced on TV, and there's also Simon Pegg... I knew those guys from my days in Bristol.

You made Goodbye, Cruel World in 2003 but it's taken four years to get your features break. What happened in those four years?
Immediately after we made Goodbye we got into some traditional festivals. The film premiered in Berlin and after that showed in Korea and America, and did fairly well, winning a few awards. But it's been tricky... it's always hard making a living as a filmmaker. I don't know how many people do manage to do it in this country, but nobody asked me to do this job so I'm certainly not complaining.

You've got £1 million to make Faintheart. What are your thoughts on the budget?
Well, when you think that we didn't have any money to make the movie a week ago, it's tremendous - it's like winning the Lottery. I hope that people don't think, 'Wow, they've got a million pounds, they can do anything with that!', because we're still at the lower end of low budget movie-making. Goodbye, Cruel World cost £20,000, but that didn't pay for everything - everybody worked for nothing and the budget only covered food, transport and film stock, all of those things. We hope that people will understand that it is a collaborative process and that British films don't really have enough money to pay people properly. I've met a lot of 'Vikings' and we'd love it if they could be involved in the movie, but they're not going to be turned into millionaires from it! I don't think any of us will. We really will make the movie by goodwill as much as anything else.

How long had Faintheart been in development prior to the competition?
I've been working on the script for about a year now. I'm working with David Lemon and we've taken it quite a long way. We're not quite there yet but with input from people on MySpace I think we'll be in a good position to shoot this year, hopefully before the summer runs out.

You had a great Faintheart pitch on MySpace where you shot footage at a Viking reenactment meeting. Was this something you shot specifically for the competition?
Partly, but also it was for me to get to know those guys in the reenactment society. I've been to events for the past year - the Battle of Hastings last year, one in Derby, one in Leicester, and I've just come back from the Isle of Man, where they had a week-long Viking festival where 'vikings' camp on the beach in a specially constructed village with longhouses, a forge, and all kinds of things. It's been part of my way of getting to know the Viking world. And next week I'm going to Iceland - which is actually where my family is from - but I'll be doing some research into where all the bloodlust comes from.

Tell us a bit about the story in Faintheart...
It's the story of Richard, a guy in his mid-30s who's a DIY storeworker by day but a mighty Norse warrior at weekends, and he has a wife and 12-year-old son. He misses an important family event once too often and his wife kicks him out. He has to grow up, become a man, and win back the love of his wife and son, who's starting to be bullied at school. It's a sort of romantic comedy with Viking helmets. The family life of this guy Richard is mirrored by the family life of the Viking reenactors, they really are a very strong community. I hope by the end of the process we'll have swelled the numbers of Vikings within the UK, if not the world!

How far down the line are you with the casting process?
We've not done anything yet. I'm just starting to talk about cast and that's one of the processes that we'll be using MySpace for - people will be able to send in audition tapes and be considered for roles. As you can imagine there are lots of parts for Vikings, but for the main parts we're just starting to work on that now.

If people have got something to contribute, fantastic, let's hear it

When filmmakers receive notes, they're usually given in the privacy of an office. What are your thoughts on receiving such public advice from MySpace users on how to make your movie?
I'm really up for people making positive contributions, but I'm not interested in people slagging the project off or venting anger or bitterness. If people have got something to contribute, fantastic, let's hear it. I guess there will be a lot of comments and opinions... that's why we have film critics, because everybody's got a different opinion on movies. It'll be up to me to decide how I want to make the movie. It's daunting, but exciting.

Goodbye, Cruel World helped you triumph in the competition. How do you regard the short looking back on it now?
I'm still very fond of it. I wish we'd had the money to make it on 35mm, that's my biggest regret. I can see the flaws in it - narratively there's something odd about the doll being in the old man's draw, I don't really explain that. But in terms of the film, what I enjoyed about it is that it felt very complete and was the closest that matched up with what I had in my mind. I hope I can do something similar in Faintheart.

You can follow the progress of Faintheart on the MySpace MyMovie MashUp pages over the coming year.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 19 July 07

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