Ruth Campbell talks to North Yorkshire butcher’s son Jamie Swarbrick about Oscar’s Hotel, his first foray into filmmaking with the stars

A BUTCHER’S son from North Yorkshire, who started out making short films with budgets of a couple of pounds each on YouTube with three friends from university, has been flown out to Hollywood by a top film director to make a new series. Jamie Swarbrick is one of four innovative young film makers behind the fantastical new show, Oscar’s Hotel, made on location in Los Angeles and just launched on video website Vimeo’s On Demand service.

Backed by movie mogul Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13, Oscar’s Hotel is based on a surreal short story by 24-year-old cinematographer Jamie’s friend PJ Liguori. Top stars, including Alfred Molina, Patrick Stewart and Elliott Gould, are the voices of some of the weird and wonderful characters in the show, with costumes created by the Jim Henson Company, best known as creators of the muppets, which is also backing the project.

The series takes place in a whimsical universe where Oliver, a 20-something manager’s assistant, finds himself the temporary proprietor of his uncle Oscar’s magical hotel. Molina and Stewart play two Repo Fish who come to repossess the hotel. Gould plays a speaking sirloin steak.

PJ, James and co-makers Louis Grant and Sophie Newton, who met at university, started out making short films on YouTube together, creating their own sets and costumes and using friends as actors.

“We had budgets of just a couple of pounds, so it was all done in a makeshift way, with costumes botched together from second hand clothes. And we used a lot of cardboard,” says Jamie. But as their popularity grew, they were commissioned by companies including Krave and Oreo to make online adverts.

They soon came to the notice of director Ron Howard, who runs the New Form Digital company, and initially backed the team to make a £10,000 pilot of Oscar’s Hotel, before flying them out to LA to produce their own six-episode series, described by one critic as "one of the most exciting new series to emerge from YouTube’s creative community". What Culture calls it: “A marvellous cross between The Mighty Boosh and Guest House Paradiso, a trippy, highly entertaining new age comedy that demonstrates an amazing imagination doused with just the correct amount of eccentricity.”

Jamie, who left Ripon Grammar School in 2009, never dreamed he would work in Hollywood. “It was intimidating and crazy and different all at the same time,” he says. “We wrote the show and created it in the UK, then flew over in July to shoot it both on location and in the studio. We were there for about a month. Everyone on the team has their specialities, but we all do a bit of everything too. As a team, we are all the producers and creators of the series.”

After an art foundation course at Harrogate College, Jamie studied film production at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey: “At school, I wasn’t the best student in the world, I was always kind of day dreaming most of the time. I wasn’t always as attentive as I should have been.”

He did get an A in his A Level art. “That was my biggest influence. Painting made me understand a lot about light and composition and that shows through in my work," he says. "I don’t have a canvas and paintbrush anymore, now I have a camera and editing software.”

He fell into films making short, experimental art films to begin with. “I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I did the degree in film production because I wanted to find out a bit more about it," he says.

Jamie, who is living at home for now, is hoping the team will go on to make a second season of Oscar’s Hotel, and would like to work on a full length feature film eventually. But it still all seems a bit surreal, he says.

His father Andrew, who runs AA Swarbrick Butchers in Ripon, recalls his son cutting the lawn for an elderly neighbour the day before he flew out to LA. “Cutting grass today, Hollywood tomorrow – that’s what Jamie said at the time,” he laughs. He and mum Rae have both enjoyed watching Oscar’s Hotel. “It’s brilliant, very colourful and amusing and a bit Monty Pythonish I think,” says Andrew.

Jamie and brother Alexander, 27, who works as a set designer at Harrogate Theatre, were the first in the family to go to university. “We are enormously proud of both of them," adds Jamie's dad.