“Students are the purest fuel for the film industry and it’s great to be around them” - Heads of Screenwriting, Sophia Wellington & Jonathan Hourigan
Sophia Wellington and Jonathan Hourigan have been popular tutors for many years at London Film School (LFS), so it was no surprise when they were chosen to fill Brian Dunnigan’s considerable shoes when he left this year after 12 years as Head of Screenwriting. We chatted to them about their new shared role, what they love about LFS and how they’re continuing its legacy.
S.M: Could you tell us a little bit about your background before working at London Film School?
Sophia Wellington: I got into film, I think like a lot of people, by accident. I had a temporary job at the BBC, at Television Film Studios, Ealing (TFS) and then whilst I was there I started to follow the camera crew around and went every weekend for about four weeks, going on set and just talking to them. And then, from doing that, I got onto a course at the BBC where I trained in technical production and on studio cameras. I then became a camera assistant on film cameras and then in the cutting room. My training was mainly technical and, as I say, by accident, but that’s how I started. Then, when Avid became very popular, I made that switch to development and worked in development and production as a freelancer, working with writers. And the rest is history!
S.M: You’d taught before, in Singapore?
S.W: I did, but actually the first place that I taught was at the LFS. Like a lot of people in the industry, I thought that once you get to a certain level in your work it’s really important to try and give back. So, I was a mentor here in 2004 and then started as a feature development tutor, around 2005-6. I did that for a year or so and then went to Singapore and taught full time. New York University has a film school in Singapore, Tisch Asia, and I taught there for eight years. It’s a long time to be away from the UK industry, but it was really useful to be in Asia. The training that I got in Singapore made me aware of the different film industries, but also how universal stories can be and should be, and how to approach them and ways of storytelling. When I left Singapore, I came back to work at LFS.
Jonathan Hourigan: I was interested in photography when I was a teenager, my uncle was a photographer and taught photography at West Sussex College of Art and Design. I remember going to a screening there one afternoon and I saw The Spirit of the Beehive, projected on a scratchy 16mm print, literally onto a white sheet stretched onto a wall. And that was the moment I vividly remember thinking, “Oh, that looks like an interesting thing to do, I don’t want to take photographs, I want to do something about making movies.” Then I went to university and did an academic degree, and was interested in the cinema but didn’t really know how to get going. I got very interested in a French director called Bresson and I got in contact with him and showed all his films in London, as you couldn’t see them otherwise, and it just happened that as I was finishing university he was making a film. So, I went and worked with him in Paris for a year, and I came back and thought, “Well, I’m not very enterprising and I know that about myself, so I’ve got to go to film school.” I’ve got very clear views on why you should come to film school, and having come back to the UK after working with Bresson in France it took me a few years to get around to making a film to get me into the National Film School. I went there for several years, then left the National where I studied direction, tried to set things up and I just found I started to get work script reading and got more and more interested in writing. So, I started to write, and do some teaching around that and in fact, Sophia introduced me here at LFS. I was a mentor at some point around 2003-4, just before she went away (to Singapore) and I think I probably inherited her feature development group. I took an opportunity that was too good to say no to, which was to replace Sophia! And the rest is history. I teach here, a little bit elsewhere, and carry on writing as well.
S.M: This is the first year that you’ve both taken over from Brian Dunnigan, who’d headed the MA Screenwriting program for 12 years. Why did you decide to share the role?
J.H: We’ve both worked here for a number of years and feel very loyal to the place. We’re very interested in the way the school works – there aren’t many conservatoire film schools left. We worked with Brian but also with a very good group of other visiting lecturers, and we felt there was something really powerful about that group. When the opportunity came up because Brian was leaving, and the school was looking for a new head of screenwriting, we thought it would be a great opportunity to step up and do something different, slightly change our focus. Job sharing allows us both to share the challenges of doing this job which is great, but also to carry on doing other things so that we’re out in the industry as well.
S.W: I completely agree. I think that from our time here, at the school, we’ve got a commitment to it. We think it works really well, and we’ve got a great core of tutors. And so, when Brian left, there was the risk of somebody new coming in and changing it, or whether we could step up and protect what we have and continue it. And so, I think that for both of us that was a big part of it – trying to continue this great legacy and this great team, and make it as good as it could be. The job share, I think, is really important because this is such an industry facing course, and it allows us to keep links with the industry and with outsiders. There’s a lot of work to do here, and being full time it’s possible just to focus very much on the teaching and the students, which is important, but at the end of the year they do have to go out into the industry. Our connection with the industry allows us to be mindful of that at all times – that not only are we teaching students to be as good writers as they can be, but in a year’s time they’ve got to go out into the industry. We have to make them aware of and prepare them for it, and this job share offers, I think, the best opportunity to do that.
S.M: Has it been a case of taking the baton from Brian and carrying on more or less the same, or are changes afoot?
J.H: As we said, we’ve always felt there’s something very special about the structure of the course and about this school, and so you want to preserve a lot of what’s going on. But we’ve changed a number of things. We’ve got some new tutors involved, because we’re not now doing so much of the frontline teaching ourselves. We do the Work and Research Journal in a slightly different way than has been the case in the past, although funnily enough in a way that’s an evolution that’s in keeping with the rest of what we’re doing. We’re now doing the journal in group sessions, which of course replicates the very powerful feature development group model, and it seems to be working well. It’s a change but it’s in keeping with what’s been going on. But there haven’t been any major ruptures with the past.
S.W: I don’t think there needed to be. The way that the course was run was excellent and incredibly strong. With the two of us, it now means that there’s a little bit of fresh energy, because I would say that we are aware of different challenges facing the course and the industry. So, we have to be mindful about how we’re going to deal with those. One of the challenges that we’re dealing with is, of course, the popularity of writing for mediums outside of the big screen – for television and other areas. And whereas our focus is very specifically on writing a feature script, we’ve also got to see how we can address a changing industry and make sure that our writers have the skills that can transfer into these other areas, while still ensuring that we have given them the best teaching possible. So, while there are no major changes, we are very aware of new challenges and spending a lot of time thinking, “How can we tweak areas here and there to make sure we can face these challenges?”
S.M: Having both worked and studied in a variety of different film school environments around the world, what do you think is special about London Film School?
J.H: In terms of the school, the non-specialisation is really powerful, having graduated from the National myself where you specialise right from the beginning, I think it’s a really interesting comparison. You see people who embrace it and make a strong decision to come here because they really want to experience that whole range of roles involved in making a film. On this course in particular, I think the thing that’s impressive is how collaborative people are. Students are developing their own ideas, about which they are passionate, but there’s a very powerful sense of collective purpose and that they can all flourish equally and so therefore there’s real benefit in supporting one another. Not in a complacent way, because support is often by giving robust challenges, but I think that’s really powerful, that sense of collective identity. They make very different work, but there’s a real sense that they’re a group. They stick together and help one another. It’s impressive.
S.W: Just to go off that, of course, it’s a one-year course. All the other courses I’ve been on have been over two years, so this is incredibly intense and much tighter, by virtue of being one year. We do encourage a lot of that learning and development to come from fellow students, not just from the tutors. Compared to the other film schools I’ve been at, which worked incredibly well for what they did, I think that the way that this course is organised and how we work within small groups and the really great student to teacher ratio allows everybody to be incredibly supportive of each other. It forces a strong community during the year that they are studying here, and it also creates a very creative environment where they are getting feedback, not just from tutors, but from each other. They understand that that’s what they’re supposed to do. So, I think that’s one of the real strengths for writing here. Writing is such a solitary profession, I think it’s fantastic that they start their learning in understanding that, actually, it can be more collaborative. You can get support from others. This is a different way of doing it, it’s not just about locking yourself in a dark room and writing, it’s actually about being supported by other people. That’s a very strong ethos of the school and one of the things that makes it unique.
S.M: How does the school prepare people for life after film school?
J.H: You’ve got to prepare people for moving out and working independently, and it’s a real challenge. We send them out, hopefully, with the capacity to generate good ideas, a lot of powerful transferrable skills as writers, a set of relationships with other writers, the people who teach them and the filmmakers up the road. And, of course, the film industry in London, so a world of agents, producers, other writers who hopefully come through the school and who they meet on their journey through here. The thing that’s impressive in comparison with when I was at film school is that students also come with a lot more enterprise. We don’t have to work that hard to talk to them about preparing for life after film school. I was talking to some of the current cohort, who are only four weeks in, and they’re already thinking about that. They’re more and more proactive and thinking about how they’re going to make themselves employable, without compromising the educational and creative work that they’re doing here. I think that’s impressive.
S.W: It’s always a challenge, preparing students for the industry, and we can talk about the schedule that we have here, the industry guests that we bring in and the fact that all of the tutors are visiting lecturers who work in the industry. So, every bit of their teaching is informed with their industry experience. The students are surrounded by, and their teaching is done by, industry people. For all film schools, leaving is challenging. It’s like being kicked out of the nest, but we provide them with the tools and the skills to get out there and to fly! The other challenge is always to provide them with the confidence to believe that they have those skills.
J.H: We’ve just done a big piece of work on tracking graduates over the last four or five years, and you see a number of trends. A lot of graduates leave, and they probably do other work and build up a portfolio of films, working with filmmakers up the road. Ben Cleary’s is an example of somebody who went out, made a short film and won an Oscar. Alejandro Stepenberg from a couple of years ago I think has about seven or eight graduation film credits, people he’s kept in contact with and is travelling the world, making short films with people. Other people have found themselves doing script editing, we’ve got students from three or four years ago who have got show running jobs in children’s animation series … A whole different range of ways that people find their ways into employment, which reflect their creative preferences, their personalities, their desire to be in a job or working freelance. I think we send them out with the creative and technical capacities, and then they generate and we nurture that sense of enterprise that means most of them find work within the industry. They then have to negotiate where that goes longer term.
S.W: I think that point about having the film students over the road and the ability to work on graduation films is really important, because it’s a step into the industry. That allows them to stay connected for some time. It’s like a lovely transition period where they can work on student films at a high level while still being slightly supported. As I say, because we’ve only got one year, we think our relationship with our grads and our alumni is really important, and how they can support each other. That’s something that we are looking to improve, because so much of supporting people into the industry is the alumni who have gone before. They’re the ones that can help give them a softer landing and a leg up!
S.M: A big part of your job is student enrolment. What kind of things are you looking for in potential students?
S.W: In the interview, I’m looking for somebody who wants to engage with telling stories. Somebody who has some sort of visual sense, somebody who’s interested in people and also has something to say. Someone who has a passion for film and connects to it in an emotional way, rather than just an intellectual way. There’s not one type of student we’re looking for - one of the great things about this course is that it’s incredibly diverse and we have very different people. I think definitely a passion for film and stories, and a desire to play with them. That is something that I always stress in interviews, that they’re open to feedback and ideas and coming up with ideas and sparking conversation. Because, that’s so much about how we teach here – we’re teaching in small groups, so it’s about what they’re giving to that group and what they get back. Anyone with those types of qualities is definitely what we’re looking for here.
J.H: I’d say the same. For me, at interview and once they’re here, it’s about this balance between core point of view, where you feel there’s something about them and that they’re interested in the world, and then around that, in orbit, is that flexibility that Sophia’s talking about. That willingness to balance that sense of real purpose with a willingness to explore the different ways in which you might develop it.
S.M: Once someone’s been accepted onto the course, what advice would you give them to best prepare for their year here?
J.H: What I wouldn’t do is sit and read a load of screenwriting manuals, but I would try and watch a lot of films. Hopefully anyone applying would already be watching a lot of films, but it’d be great if they went and read a bunch of screenplays, that’s also very useful. And of course, keep writing. Keep writing as part of a process. Don’t think you’re getting ahead of the game and nailing your first term’s work – just immerse yourself in a world in which writing becomes a daily practice, which is one of the key parts of the course, to be doing it all the time.
S.W: I would encourage anybody who’s gone through the interview and been given a place to continue that sense of wonder and interest and appetite. I would also stress that coming onto the course is not a time for them to then have to give up any creative thinking, thinking that we will provide lots of answers. Not at all. You really have to come here with an appetite to explore for yourself, and to question and wonder about things. So, you should never think of the interview as, “Phew, I’ve passed that, everything’s fine!” Rather, that work of questioning ideas, what you’re interested in and questioning yourself should continue after the interview and throughout the course. It’s about creating that writing practice. You learn how to write through the practice of writing, and we don’t create perfect writers at the end of the course but rather those who know how to develop and to grow.
S.M: What inspiration do you take from being around students?
S.W: What is great about students is that they think anything is possible. They think that the industry can be changed and that it’s an important place where you can change the world and present incredibly powerful messages and themes and make important stories. When you work in the industry for a long time it can often feel like it’s about money and the economics and everything else, so students give you a moment to breathe fresh air and think, actually, this is what the industry is. It’s a place for art, for exploring ideas and universal questions. Students are the purest fuel for the industry and it’s great to be around them because they have those fresh ideas and that passion that we need.
J.H: Being around students makes me realise how important and worthwhile it is to teach. And you’re right, they do come with enormous energy and enthusiasm, determined to break down the walls. It’s exciting to be part of that and to help focus it.
S.M: It does seem to be part of the industry, that people get to a point where they want to give something back in terms of sharing knowledge.
S.W: Yes, whether it’s a little bit of mentoring or full-time teaching, I think that is definitely built into it. Even within the formal structure of film schools there’s always somebody who is more of a mentor who really is inspiring. I think we all have mentors, within film schools and also within the industry, who have done an awful lot to help us and shape our own passion for film. It’s a responsibility to pass it on to others, so you’re right, teaching is an opportunity to do that.
S.M: Jonathan, you mentioned before that you went to film school after returning from working with Bresson in Paris because you felt you weren’t very enterprising. There’s an ongoing debate about whether writers and film makers need to go to film school or not – what’s your opinion on that?
J.H: For me it was an incredible experience and I loved going there, and I don’t think I would have found my way into being a filmmaker had I not done it. But you have to make a strong choice and have strong reasons to do it. Screenwriting is a little different. Writing is solitary, and if you’re going to do the equivalent of going and doing your first feature, which is to sit at home and write it, it’s very hard to do that first time. I think that at film school, you’re putting yourself in a community of writers for a year with all the benefits that come from that. There aren’t many people, starting out, who would be more productive in a year sitting at home or sitting in a garret in Paris, even, than they would be coming here. I think you learn a lot and you’re encouraged to be very productive.
S.W: I think it’s something that you should think about seriously. Going to a film school is only the start of getting yourself into the film industry. You have to think long and hard about what you want to get out of it and what you expect to do with it afterwards. It immediately puts you into a creative environment that will sustain and inspire you and allow you to continue being creative during the following years. If you don’t have that it’s very easy to slip out of the industry. It also gives you, very quickly, the tools and the skills you need to problem solve when you’re dealing with either filmmaking issues or story issues. You’re given this information upfront in very clear ways. Also, within a film school environment you’re encouraged to work on areas where you are weak, in a way that you might not when you’re working on your own. The other thing I will say about film school, as much as I loved my training at the BBC, film schools are one of the last places where you are allowed to dream and break rules and think as an artist. And you do not get that within industry training. Film schools are the only place, I think, where you are given the time, and the freedom, and the support to do that. That’s where artists come from, and what film schools support.