Gavin Hopkins - Filmmaker

Gavin Hopkins is a Glasgow based filmmaker and a recent graduate of the University of the West Scotland’s Filmmaking and Screenwriting course. Gavin has started 2013 with a bang and has challenged himself to make a film a week for the entire year, posting his short films on his Vimeo page.

Hi Gavin, tell me a little bit about yourself?

I think the best way to describe my self is as a filmmaker who is working in and around Glasgow.

How did you become a filmmaker? Did you study filmmaking?

I started very young, I really liked making films with my friends, progressed to a night class, then on to a college course where I got a lot more of the technical basics and then onto University where I learned to work under pressure to very tight deadlines and progressed from there. I made some contacts, since graduating I’ve gone freelance and worked with a lot companies and carried on from there.

When did you realise that you wanted to be a filmmaker?

When I was 15 I think and I started making films with my friends and we all really enjoyed it. I seemed to enjoy properly planning it and making it more than they did and I sort of gradually took over doing all these short films. Gradually I forced everyone to be more organised and took control of it and organised everyone into groups to do different jobs.

I always wanted to be an Egyptologist when I was younger; I loved history and medieval history as well. So I wanted to be an Egyptologist or an archaeologist and suddenly it switched. It’s very difficult to describe how it happened. I suddenly decided at a young age and funnily enough it hasn’t gone away.

A few of your previous films have historical or militaristic themes running through them. Why do you think that is?

My Dad. My dad is in the RAF and I don’t want to sound boring but I’ve always had a fascination with that lifestyle, I’ve lived that lifestyle in a way. He had a lot of books in the house that he had for work such as books on Russian submarines and American warships.

He loved to watch history programmes and I would watch them with him and I’ve always had a love of history that I got through him and a fascination with the military. Funnily enough I don’t think he would describe himself as having a fascination with the military having worked for them for so long, he’s probably pretty bored of it. Having partly sort of lived that life but not having lived it but being on the outskirts I’ve always had a strong fascination with it and I think that’s where it’s come from. Also on a practical level knowing him gave me access to his uniforms making filming easier haha.

You’re currently working on a project, which is to make a film a week for an entire year. Where did the inspiration for that come? And where do you get your ideas from each week?

The inspiration was from friends and people that I’m following on social media, within film and out with film, that like me had a creative void in their life and wanted to be constantly be working on something creative in their life. When you’re making videos for clients it can actually not involve a great deal of filmmaking or creativity but can involve a great deal of organising so I wanted to do something which meant that I was constantly being creative. It’s part of a programme I’ve got to be more creative so I’m going to start doing a lot more writing and hopefully the filmmaking and the writing will hopefully fill that creative void that I have a little bit.

In terms of the ideas I think the easiest way to get the ideas is to look around me and see what I’ve got going on in my life, so as an example week 5 Revolutions was shot down at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome. I found myself to be down working there already and it seemed that to make a film when I was down there on my break was the best way to be do it, so that’s what I do and at the moment it seems the best way to prevent it from being a project that takes up all my time but make stuff that inspires me in my day to day life and it keep it simple.

So you’ll obviously be continuing with your film a week project but do you have any other projects coming up in the near future?

I’ve got a trio of short films that I’m working on with two friends of mine from University and we’re hoping to keep generating content. Since leaving university it’s been quite difficult if you don’t have the deadlines that the university provides to stay motivated, so we’re trying to motivate each other. We’re each going to write one of them, direct one of them and we’re all going to help each other make them. Obviously I’m continuing the film a week project and other than that I’ve got a couple of larger projects that I’ve got at various stages of development that I’m writing and researching.

If people want to find your work online, where can they go?

The best place to find me is vimeo.com/gavinhopkins and then from there there’s a link to twitter and tumblr where I’m constantly talking and writing about what I’m doing.

Cheers Gavin.

G