And given that has led to lots of music within the film, how did you approach this unique aspect?

Originally, I had intended to use The Untimely Men songs, but as I said previously, they weren’t good enough to base a film around. I knew I had two musical challenges. For the first, Matt and Amy (either separately or together) required several songs which they would perform diegetically on camera. These needed to be original, and largely acoustic in nature. For these I reached out to a colleague from my theatre days – Jason Havard – and challenged him initially to write three acoustic guitar songs for Matt. Work on this started early 2019 and within a week or so he delivered the two songs you see Matt perform in the film as well as the amazing main song – Better By Your Side. He stayed on the project to write the other songs. Since I hate exposition in films, we decided we could use the songs to let the audience know where the characters were emotionally throughout the story – and this is responsible for so many of the feel-good moments in the film.

For the second challenge, I wanted to revisit the idea of nostalgia by using the music of a genuinely 1980s band. It turned out this would be more expensive that I thought it would. I was introduced to Nick Doyne-Ditmas, a London-based musician – who was a session musician from that decade. He had some tapes that had never seen the light of day from 1988 – and three songs from these sessions became the basis for a mythical band called New Town Scene. Nick worked with Bafta-winning composer Sönke Prigge and singer Zoe Gilmour to write three new songs in the same style including the title track of the film.

In terms of filming, we recorded and mixed the tracks in advance - and we used playback on set for the actors and musicians to perform to, which ensured the visuals were always in sync with the music. For the band sequences, this meant dozens of takes to cover all the musicians. I am particularly proud of my editing on the gigs as it looks like they were shot with multiple cameras instead of one.

Getting these types of large productions off the ground can therefore be extremely difficult for independent filmmakers. How did you tackle that?

I had never qualified for any theatre grants and I knew I was never going to qualify for any film grants. I had a great story to tell, and life is too short, so I decided the only way to make this film was to raise the money myself. This is the reason it’s taken six years to complete.

And you mention making the film took 6 years. How did you manage such a long period of production?

I started work on the film in February 2018. As I’d never written a script before, that part of the process initially took 9 months – at which point it went to a script doctor and his first response was “you’ve never written a script before, have you?” He suggested some books and I studied them and then rewrote a new script which is essentially what we ended up filming. By now it was September 2019. Casting and pre-production then started. We also started to record the music in March 2020. I had intended to start filming in June 2020, but COVID delayed the production for a year. We were delayed twice more by positive tests and we crucially lost the summer which we needed for the fete and rave scenes. We eventually finished filming in August 2022.

Editing started in October and the original cut was 2h25. It took several months and some painful cuts to get this down to 1h40 and it was handed over to post-production teams for audio and grade work in May 2023. The Film was premiered in November 2023 and finally finished with changes and fixes in February 2024. Nearly six years to the day! It required patience more than anything. Persistence at times as it would have been so easy to give up. But what was absolutely vital was a clear and unerring vision throughout – I always knew what film I wanted to make and the end result is pretty close to that initial goal.

The filming timescale was actually 14 months during which we had 9 months of delays but the main headache was continuity of the main actors (hairs, makeup etc) and props (Camper van). 

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Can you explain how Covid (and other factors) impacted  the production during that timeframe?

COVID could have stopped this film in its tracks, but in reality it probably helped it more than it hindered. For a start it gave me an unexpected extra year of funding which greatly raised the production levels. Imogen Archer (Amy) and Frederick Szkoda (Matt) spent a year on zoom rehearsing and developing a strong friendship which translates so magically on screen. We’d probably not have benefited this way without the delays. By the time we could get into the studio to work on the songs, they were already recording in character and I knew there and then we were on to a winner.

And so what’s next for the film?

Having taken so long to get this film from idea to completion, I now want to enjoy the journey of taking it to festivals around the world. I especially want it to play in as many cinemas as possible – it looks and sounds so great on a big screen.

Finally, do you have any advice for any local filmmakers looking to start their own feature and the resources required?

Usually I’d be here and say – limit your idea to a single room, 2 characters, keep it simple – don’t be too ambitious and shoot a film within these constraints. But I managed 32 locations in 28 days of principal photography. We spent 15 days in a studio and packed 25 original songs into a film. Compared to the other idea I had at the time, this was far more ambitious. Whereas I learnt how not to make a film on my first, I definitely learnt how to make one with this one. So maybe the key is not to limit yourself. I think it largely depends on how determined you are to make a film.

Having a clear vision is a must because all films – even short films – take a long time to complete and it’s easy to lose sight of what you want to achieve. I had to learn the skills to realise my vision for this film since I often couldn’t afford to hire experts to come in and do it for me. I think local film festivals have proved a great starting place for resources – I prefer to use Midlands crew and cast where I can. They often don’t need hotels, and don’t usually cost too much in travel costs. This, along with catering, accounted for 15% of my entire budget. Local venues are usually more accommodating than you think – by comparison I spent 2.5% of my budget on locations.

Money is of course what holds back most filmmakers. I could literally write a story of the sacrifices I’ve made to save the money to make this over the past six years and you wouldn’t believe it was true. In all honestly, I’m not sure I could make a film this way again and hopefully by pushing this film to the next level we might stand a chance to recoup. At the very least I will have a strong calling card to get me talking to any prospective investors next time.

Thanks for your time Darren and best of luck with the film.

Thank you

Check out the latest news on All Roads Lead to Home here www.allroadsleadtohome.com and watch the film's trailer below