FIRST-TIME feature director Andy Wilton had a horrible feeling that life was imitating art. The 28-year-old Newcastleborn film-maker was editing a movie about a hapless film director attempting to make a horror movie.

After six months, he was halfway through the edit when “we managed to lose the entire project in the computer”, he recalls. Even the back-up system did not work and he was forced to start again from scratch.

“It was fairly disastrous,” he admits.

“We’d been laughing at the film gods and their disasters, and they’d come back to haunt us. It wasn’t a very good moment.

“I’d set up the backup system wrong and it wiped out the main computer. It was like I was the commander pressing the nuclear war button.

“By the end of the evening, we’d got everything back on track. In the end, it was better because there was a lot of stuff I missed the first time.”

Now, after four years, Wilton is premiering his film, Behind The Scenes of Total Hell, at Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema.

Self-financed, the movie was produced for only £1,000.

He’s a promos director – on commercials and corporate videos – who was inspired by the documentary Lost In La Mancha to make his own movie. That told of the problems that beset Terry Gilliam when he tried to film the Don Quixote story.

“It was very sad because I like Terry Gilliam, but awesomely entertaining in a sado masochistic way because I’d experienced a lot of those things,” he explains.

“I just thought, there’s a film there, a comedy about the horrendous things that happen on a film set. The other thing that appealed is that I’m a massive fan of film, not only films but the production of them.

I thought I’d never seen a story that covers it from start to finish, from pitch to projection – everything that goes into making.”

The film’s tagline is “from pitch to projection – come behind the scenes of the ultimate film-making disasterpiece”. The mockumentary documents hapless filmmaker Jamie Gunn as he attempts to produce a horror movie.

“We could do it for very little money because it’s supposed to look rubbish; it’s meant to look like a bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing while filming another bunch of people who don’t know what they’re doing.

“It was never going to be hard to fund because we have a great love of the region and wanted to use local locations and bring in local actors, so we went to universities so we could give emergent talent a chance.

“The film was conceived four years ago, took about six months to start producing it and a very, very long time to edit it and try to get proper distribution.

“We shot 125 hours of video to make a 97-minute film, so it took a long time to edit.”

THE film is narrated by Norman Lovett, who played Holly in the BBC’s sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, but most of the film was improvised. “The way I work is I put down a lot of bulletpoints with a beginning, a middle, an end – a sort of synopsis or list of challenges or events that are going to happen in the film. Then build the script from that, all the dialogue in the film is ad-libbed.

“When we auditioned people, we didn’t ask them to read anything, we gave them a page with 24 words on and asked them to pick three words and improvise something around them.

“The idea being it was no good getting someone who could do a fantastic Macbeth, but rather someone who could be naturally funny, think on their wits and just run with it.”

The film within the film, Total Hell, was shot along with documentary- style footage and the two aspects put together.

Actors were mixed with the public in devised situations. “Members of the public thought they were auditioning for a real horror movie.

Actors thought they were in a horror movie, but were actually in our comedy,” he explains.

“Basically, it was playing everyone off against each other. All the conflicts and arguments feel very real because they are with people winding each other up, not knowing that the other knows things. We told them at the end and it was quite shocking.”

GETTING the film made was easy compared to finding a distributor. It’s notoriously difficult for a small independent film to persuade major distributors to release it.

Wilton decided to hold a premiere at the Tyneside, where scenes from his film were shot, and launch the movie himself. “They allowed us to film at the Tyneside. The premiere in the film takes place there, but I hope ours goes a bit better than the one in the film.”

The film will be available to download with plans for a DVD release too. He wants more screenings in the regions, at festivals and online.

“I think that’s the audience that will really embrace it,” he says.

Despite his trials and tribulations, Wilton aims to make more feature films. “I hope to make another in the region, which won’t need to cost a lot of money but will promote businesses and people,” he says.

■ Behind The Scenes of Total Hell is premiered at Newcastle Tyneside Cinema, on Sunday, October 11, at 3.45pm. Tickets are £3. Further information at btsoth.co.uk