In Conversation with Jamie Benyon, Director of 'Two Minutes'
Jamie Benyon made an impressive debut at the London Film Festival with Two Minutes, a hilarious, yet heartfelt short film about two brothers attempting to rob a corner shop—only to be interrupted by their nan, of all people. The film’s unique blend of humor and heart earned Benyon the Audience Award for Best Short Film at this year’s festival. I had the pleasure of sitting down with him over Zoom to discuss his big win, the making of Two Minutes, his approach to filmmaking, and his advice for young aspiring filmmakers.
I wanted to begin by asking you about your inspirations - where did the inspiration for Two Minutes come from, and is there something in particular that gets you inspired when you decide to make a film?
The inspiration for Two Minutes kind of came from necessity. I wrote this shortly after COVID, in the early parts of 2021, and was really keen to make something that could be achieved in a single day, in a single location, with as few actors as possible; something that I could do with my friends on virtually zero money. I wrote it and I thought to myself, you know, I’ve always been excited and intrigued by comedies, especially crime-comedy. I think crime and comedy work incredibly nicely together, so I just thought to myself what would be the worst but funniest thing that could happen to me if I was going to rob a shop? It would definitely be bumping into my nan. I just thought that as a premise was really funny and super relatable, and I just thought you know what, I’m just going to write it, I’m just going to have fun with it and see what happens. So I wrote a little script, it was about 7 pages long, it really wasn’t long at all, and I showed it to a couple of friends, they chuckled away at it and said ‘Yeah it’s really great’. And I just left it on my laptop for quite a while, and I discovered a script competition called the IMDb Script to Screen Award and I just thought to myself, I'm just gonna submit this script and just see what happens. Again, totally forgot about it until like the early part of the summer of 2023 when I got an e-mail that said the script had been shortlisted. So it got shortlisted and then I went to Bath and there were students from Bath University who were performing the scripts on stage live and we ended up winning the competition, which was really crazy. And we won this cash prize, basically and that's kind of how it all kind of started. But, you know, crime and comedy have always been kind of been my little thing, especially comedy, more comedy than crime - I've kind of fallen into this sort of weird space where people seem to think I'm funny when I'm actually not.
That kind of leads into my next question a little bit because you spoke a bit about the process of writing the film - it wasn't a very long script at all. Obviously, the short film format demands a lot of charity and the run time of the film, it's only 6 minutes, and 18 seconds, including all the credits. What were the challenges of keeping the film so short, yet so succinct? And how long did the actual filming process take?
So in regards to keeping it short, I always knew I wanted to make a short film and again, that kind of came from the necessity of writing it, you know, from the start I didn't want to write like a 15-page script. I wanted the short to be between 5 to 7 minutes long that was, they always tell all filmmakers that that's the sweet spot for short films, like ‘Keep it short, you know, people's attention spans are getting smaller, so keep it really tight, keep it really short’ and so that was there from the get-go. I knew that was going to be the limit. We actually shot this in a day, so there was no hanging around, there was no wondering what to do; it was like ‘This is what we need to do, this is the goal, this is the script.’ We knew the script was X amount of pages and truthfully, even if you condense that script down it would only be like a 5-page script. So it was a very tight script. There's not a lot of dialogue just back and forth back and forth so I knew it could all be achieved in like a single day and you know it was just a case of just getting it done as quickly as possible and making sure that everything was there and that the actors were prepared enough to just kind of smash it out. So I won the IMDb competition, won 7 grand, and used that to kind of fund the whole project. I then obviously brought on board the cast through the help of the casting director and we only had one rehearsal before filming, so we shot on the Thursday and I had a rehearsal with the cast over Zoom, for like literally an hour, just kind of going through the script and talking through everything. And that was on a Saturday, it was just a real case of just trying to pray that one, they understood what I wanted to do; two, that everyone got on well; and three, that it wasn't just gonna completely crumble on the day. This was my first proper project that was funded, everything up to this point had been self-funded or super low budget. I mean, this project is low budget but like even more so so I knew this was like a one-chance opportunity. I knew, like, we've only got this one shot, we might not ever get this large amount of money again. And, you know, 7 grand is an awful lot of money, I wanted to make sure we really pulled it off.
So, we brought on the best cast that we could and it was just a matter of making sure everyone knew the parameters of the day and what we wanted to achieve. You read the script and it is a comedy, it's very clearly a comedy, and I was very explicit with the cast about the direction I wanted it to go. So the nan, for example, is very much the epitome of the comedy genre. And Sam, who plays the driver, is very much the crime-heist genre. And so Ashley, who plays the gunman who actually runs into the shop, he kind of straddles these two genres, but they're very opposing, totally kind of polar opposite genres, they're kind of clashing together and Ashley kind of bounces between the two. That was my clear direction from the start and I wanted to explain it in a way that they could understand, like ‘You’re comedy, and obviously you're like the crime and then Ashely is going to bounce between the two, and that's what's gonna make it all kind of move along and hopefully we'll make people laugh.’ And that was kind of it, as I said, we smashed it out in a single day and it was a really intense day, as they always are. But this was more so because we only had the one day. I think call time was like 7 AM and I think we wrapped just before 7 PM and the scene at the end, when Nan departs, was literally the final shot of the day, we were losing the sun like that take was literally like ‘Right, we've now got the film, we're now wrapped’ because the sun had disappeared. It was a crazy experience but it was an awful lot of fun.
It sounds incredible. So, this was your first film at a major Film Festival. What was that process like, and what did you take away from this experience?
Truthfully, everything I've done up to this point has been nothing like what's happened with Two Minutes. You know, as I said, everything has been kind of really small-budgeted sort of stuff, hasn't really gone anywhere, it's just sort of existed online on my Vimeof. So this whole experience was a completely mad and wild ride. And you know, we got into, like, these really cool little film festivals, and gradually it was building up and building up. We got into a Film Festival in Rhode Island, which was really amazing. and I thought to myself we've peaked, we have definitely peaked, you know, we premiered in America, Flickers' Rhode Island is a BAFTA and Oscar qualifying Film Festival. This is like a really big deal, this is really great. And then I think like 2-3 weeks after I'd returned from Flickrers’, I discovered we got it into London. I was working as an edit assistant down in Brighton, I was in the techroom with all like the other edit assistants and I just literally stood up and went ‘Oh, my God. We've just got into the London Film Festival!’ I was just, like, completely gobsmacked and they were like ‘Oh my God, Congrats!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I shouldn't really be telling you this cause, I've got to keep it confidential, but I just, I've got to, like, tell people’. And you know I get quite upset because it means so much to me, and to get accepted into such a big Film Festival like the London Film Festival, you know, it's the most prestigious Film Festival this country has, everyone knows about the London Film Festival, even if you're not a filmmaker or sort of film inclined. To get into that was like, ‘Oh, wow, we have reached an even bigger peak here, I can't believe this.’ It was so wild and again I thought we've definitely peaked, you can't get any better than this. And then obviously later on down the line, we ended up winning the Audience Award as well, which again was like, what the hell? This is completely bananas. So it's just been a completely wild ride.
And what was winning the award actually like - how did you find out, what did you feel in that moment? It’s an Audience Award so were there any specific themes you wanted to resonate with the audience?
Again, I was at work when I discovered that we'd want the audience award. And again, I stood up and I was like ‘Oh, my God, we've just won the audience award!’ And you know, I had shared the information about voting for us to try and get this award, you know, a few of my family members had been there the night of our screening. And I was like, we'll just see what happens, I very much doubt we're going to win, but at least I can look back and say I tried to get as many votes as possible, you know, and I only had about 10 family members there, so clearly more people outside of my family voted. It was just a really wild and surreal sort of moment. I was just completely gobsmacked that we'd won this award, you know, it was a dream come true to play at the London Film Festival and I know a lot of the crew members felt the same. We all made this film with, no expectations of it ever getting to where it has done, we didn't make it to try and win awards and all that stuff, you make stuff because you want to make stuff. I mean, we all felt very strongly about the script, we all knew this was our one opportunity to prove ourselves after winning that script competition, and as a collective, we were all so proud of the fact we'd even gotten into the Film Festival, let alone then winning. And I had so many of the crew members going, ‘We always knew this was gonna be great because it just felt special’. That's just credit to the AD who created that environment on set and just the way that we kind of operated on the day, we all created this fun environment.
So to win the audience award too, I'm hoping that audiences felt that sort of passion and enthusiasm just for filmmaking. And we made people laugh, that's one thing when you're making a comedy is, when you say to people you’re a comedy director or ‘I've made a comedy’, you’re kind of facing the barrel of the gun because if you don't make people laugh, then you're a terrible comedy filmmaker. So, to then win that again proof that we made something really great and it's actually connected with a lot of people. I feel like the film can relate to anyone because of the nature of the film and how it’s been written; it is about grandparents and their grandkids and what you do for families. OK, it's kind of taken to a very extreme level with, like robbing a shop. But you know you will do anything for your family and you know, my nan passed away several years ago and I know for a fact she would have really loved it because this is how I interacted with my nan. I’ve never robbed a shop but it would have definitely resonated with her and made her laugh, and I'm hoping it made a lot of other people laugh as well. And yeah, it was just completely wild again, I use that word all the time. Wild. The whole thing has been pretty crazy.
When I was watching it, it felt very authentic to me, like I was just walking down the street watching this happen.
You know that actually happened, you know we shot in a residential area and I must give full credit to my girlfriend, Chloe, who found that location. That wasn't our original location. And we found one literally just around the corner, just down the road and we shot it in Tooting, so it was very much London. I showed Chloe the original location and she just went ‘Oh, I don't know if this like the right location.’ It didn't feel recognizable. We scoured the Internet and then she found this new one and so we went there and scouted it. This was like four weeks before we started filming. But it felt so, as you said, authentic and you can just feel that this could be happening down your road; I knew where the car would be and I knew where it would be in relation to the shop and it was just so perfect. The whole street was just spot on and even on the day of filming, obviously, we had to notify a lot of the residents that we were filming on the day we had and we had permits to take over the pavement. People were just kind of coming out and watching, we were actually just making people on the street passing by just laugh because we would tell them what the story was about. And you're trying to do a serious take, but you can hear people around the corner laughing, they're all at the monitors just watching what's happening. That just felt great, like this is kind of working, it has that authenticity, it has that feeling of this could happen down any road and that you could open up your local guardian and you could read this sort of event happening.
I read somewhere that upon leaving university, you made your debut feature film, so you wrote, directed, and funded it all yourself, and now you have this film at the London Film Festival which is just incredible. Do you have any advice for young aspiring filmmakers or filmmakers who are in a very similar position as you were when you started?
It's so cliche, but just go out and make stuff, you have to just go out and do it. I left uni and I made a very, very micro-budget feature, I was so influenced by Bergman and all these big filmmakers. So I made this black-and-white feature of about £500, it was so pretentious, clearly straight out of uni. I shot it in eight days in a single location and it was awful! It was really awful and again we had no money. So the equipment, the sound - it was just all really, really bad. But I learned so much from that. I kept it very quiet, I didn't really tell people that I had done that. I then made another micro-budget feature, slightly larger than the previous one, it was called The Gradisons and it was very much influenced by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is my favourite filmmaker, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. And I wanted to kind of do my own sort of like riff, I was 24 at the time, nearly ten years ago. Again, we had this single location, a big cast of 14 actors, and all kinds of intersecting stories happening across this singular day. And again it was a really fun experience, I wouldn’t say the film is great, it's very much a micro-budget film, but you learn an awful lot by just going out and doing it. Annie, one of the actors who was in The Grandisons eventually became the producer on Two Minutes, so we worked together as director and actor, got on incredibly well, I thought her performance was one of the best ones in the whole film, we just vibed so well.
It took about two years in post to get the film ready, it just took forever because it was just so low budget. We got into a few film festivals, we played in Luxembourg, which was really great. And then we got into some other online film festivals in the UK, but nothing really kind of came with it. But again, we learned so much because we did it. Annie then went off to do a master's in producing and totally changed her career from acting to producing. We kept in contact and she said to me ‘I've just done my masters. I'm now a producer’ and, you know, producers are few and far between, especially good ones and people that you just get on with. And I just thought, great, let's just go make something, and then we worked together on Two Minutes and that’s kind of how it came to be.
You never know what's going to happen down the line. You never know who you're going to call upon to help out and make stuff with. I think that certainly wouldn't have happened unless I'd made that feature and just gone out and did it. You just need to be proactive and just make stuff, and just keep putting it out there. That's the only way you're going to learn and get better. That's the only way that things could build up to something like getting into the London Film Festival.
And finally, I just want to know if you have any exciting projects coming up that you can share or are you happy to live in the moment of this incredible achievement for a little while longer?
We are certainly cracking on with a variety of projects, some other crime comedies that we're working on. I'm writing a feature film at the moment, I'm really keen to go back into features. You know as we've just discussed, I've made two very micro-budget features and even before Two Minutes I've been saying to my little team ‘Let's try and do a feature, we've got a core group now of a cinematographer, Kit, he's really great. We've got a producer now, we've got, like, our own little team, let's just go shoot a feature film’ and everyone was like ‘No, you need to do a short. Let's just do shorts.’ So now that we've done Two Minutes and it's done, you know it's done alright. I'm really keen to now move into features but everyone is still saying let's just do one more short and then move it into the longer format. So we're actually in a space of just trying to enjoy what's happening with Two Minutes because I don't know if this is ever going to happen again. I'm really trying to just enjoy every sort of moment with this, trying to get something else made, and then eventually moving into longer formats. I really want to step away from shorts and do a low-budget feature or move into like a BBC Three-type comedy show that I could really sink my teeth into. When that will happen, I don't know. But you know, you just got kind of keep chipping away and seeing what happens.
I was just going to say I don't think I've stressed enough how grateful I am for the people who helped get this film made. One thing that students will find as they kind of get into this career, some people can become quite egotistical and kind of a bit, you know, full of themselves. And it's always great to remember who's helped you get to where you are and the people that are around you who facilitate what's happening around you. Wouldn't have been able to have done Two Minutes without the crew that was on board. I was being mentored by a guy called Tom George, who directed This Country for the BBC and eventually, he ended up winning a BAFTA. I was being mentored by him. He was quite instrumental in bringing on board the casting director that we had, Jess; without Jess, we wouldn't have had the cast and without the cast, the film wouldn’t have been half as good. And the crew that we had, I shot it with my mate Kit, he brought on his mate. We're all kind of part of the same circle, these people knew that it was a very low-budget gig, but they wanted to do it, they thought it was a lot of fun. We also had support as well from the Genera Film Fund, they really loved the film and they supported us by giving some more funds. We also had an executive producer help us out because she really loved what we had done. All of those people helped us get to where we are now. I just want to just take the moment to say thank you to everyone. Literally, everyone who has helped us and supported us. It really has been a massive team effort and you know, it's been, I'm just so proud, and grateful, that everyone's work is being appreciated in the way that it has. It's really a team effort and I wouldn't be here without them.
You can find Jamie Benyon on Instagram here.
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