member profile

biog
Born in Warwickshire, I fell into filmmaking when I attended the wrong public lecture and walked away with applause ringing in my ears for the best pitch of the day.

It was time to study. Sadly, two lectures at Raindance was all the training I could afford, and all I've ever had.

Persistence and a degree of dumb luck got me as far as getting Alex Cox to be the exec. producer for my first short, and a professional TV crew to film it. 'The Apprentice' premiered at Raindance's festival and I got to see it on the big screen in Shaftesbury Ave. London. First go and I was doing okay.

From there, dumb luck got someone to sit opposite me in Starbucks and notice I was talking to the manager about films. She was Karen Bird, a director, and she commissioned my first feature screenplay, 'Expiry Date'.

I then won the opportunity to represent the North West in the ‘Mini Masterpieces'scheme. Aspiring filmmakers shoot and edit a short in three days. The rules were simple - two main actors and locations in Bristol. My film 'Strategy', (still one of my favourites) premiered to a great response at Bristol's 'Brief Encounters' short film festival, and I returned home with the idea of setting up my own production company. The following month, I pitched and won the chance to make my first music video for a Liverpool band, 'The Aeroplanes' .
This is what the Times said about them...

28:10:2005 The Times Newspaper -Review Liverpool Music Week 2005
Quote 'The Aeroplanes are destined to be one of those Great British bands that come along every generation. A Phenomena.
February 2006: I wrote the screenplay for the £200,000 budget, ten minute film that is the centrepiece of the new visitor attraction at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral.

March 2006: Wrote, directed and did the camera work on 'Show Real' for Kimberley Barrett, star of 'Strategy'. In June I entered the Liverpool 48 hour film challenge with 'Benchmark' and got nominated for best script. Later that month I formally set up Fiona Maher Films.

In September I began work on my next feature ‘Blah Witch - The Tree of Death'. Think ‘Spinal Tap' meets ‘The Blair Witch Project' with a sprinkling of ‘Living In Oblivion' ! I needed to gain a lot of interest and create an internet based buzz around the project, so I came up with an audacious idea, and advertised roles in it on eBay! I successfully sold ten places under the banner ‘Bid For Stardom' I’d expected to get laughed out, but so far, all my fellow filmmakers have been enviously wondering why they didn’t think of it first! I was the very first to offer ‘pay to play'to budding actors.
In November, ‘Strategy'screened in Liverpool alongside the critically acclaimed ‘Short Bus' as part of the Outsiders Festival. A day or so later, ‘Expiry Date' premiered simultaneously at both the Leeds and Cardiff film festivals to great interest.
Expiry Date’s a teen schlock horror and centres around a haunted credit card. The victim finds the card with his name already on it. There’s no expiry date and the balance is HUGE? then the expiry date burns in and the interest becomes due - payable only in blood.

After the Leeds screening, my website www.fionamaherfilms.co.uk - had to be suspended when over three thousand people tried to download my movies in one frenzied go! A week later and ‘Benchmark?was screened on the BBC Big Screen in Liverpool city centre as part of the Liverpool Biennial celebrations.
Early May saw continuing interest in Blah Witch from local radio stations, including BBC radio Merseyside, and Fiona Maher Films was showcased at a creative industries event at the Liverpool Tate.

The Culture Show chose my next short 'The Wicca Man' for screening on BBC 2 you can see it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdWY-AMY_zY

November 2007 saw my latest short film 'Ghost Squad - Season Finale' voted runner up in the Halloween Horror Challenge. I currently have an entry in the Bafta/Orange sixty seconds of fame competition with another short 'Tourist Trap' under my pseudonym Scott Watt.
January 2008 and Blah Witch the Tree of Death is almost complete and ready to be sent off to film festivals all over the world!

my links

• Fiona Maher Films
• wirralbiz
• Benchmark