Lee Plummer spoke with the 2011 winner of the Enter The Pitch competition

Tim Basford

The Pitch is an annual competition to pitch your short film idea and win a budget of £25,000, production support and advice from top industry professionals. The unique challenge of The Pitch is to come up with a contemporary film drawing upon the Bible for your inspiration. Once you have won and completed the film, you and a friend or a family member get to be flown out to Hollywood and you meet film industry professionals; watch your film and get hints and tips on taking your skills to the next level. Lee Plummer spent some time with the 2011 winner Tim Bassford.

Lee: Tim, you are from Nottingham is that right?

Tim: That's correct.

Lee: And you are a design and video production man?

Tim: That's right

Lee: Have you always been into video production?

A still from the film

Tim: Yeah, I guess so. I came into this by studying art at university and as part of that I loved messing around with video cameras. Then I went into a job doing mainly graphic design, but I always kept tinkering away with making short films and loving film. I won a few grants from the arts council and also won a few short film national competitions. I guess that's always been my passion. Then as part of my work I try and get as much creativity out of the video production that we do, but I'm sure you can imagine working with corporate clients, that there's only so far you can go in terms of being creative with that.

Lee: I understand that you entered a short film idea to the Enter The Pitch competition in 2010 and you were the runner-up that year.

Tim: The competition is such an incredible prize and such an incredible concept of bringing biblical stories into a contemporary age. They call it the Sherlock Holmes factor, where the challenge of the competition is taking a story that's based in another era and bringing it forward to today like the Sherlock Holmes TV series. The previous year I did a short film called the Havala project, which is based on the story of Joseph and was centred around world food shortage, so set in the future like a sci-fi movie. That got me through to the final three of Pinewood studios, but I was pipped at the post that year. After being completely devastated by that I thought, well I got that far last time and I know what's involved now, so I thought I'd give it another go.

Lee: So you entered a short film called Samson and you won?

Tim: That is correct.

Lee: So tell us about Samson. What's the movie about?

A still from the film

Tim: It's obviously a contemporary telling of the story of Samson and it's a psychological thriller set in the city of London against a backdrop of global finances and corporate intelligence. It's based around the central character Sam Walziak who is a phenomenal business analyst and stock investor, who is incredibly successful in the business world and in that respect, is a very powerful man. Without giving too much away, it's the battle between him and a rival corporation who attack him in a very personal way and his response to that. There are a lot of twists and turns and it's quite a fast moving thriller. You can view it at www.enterthepitch.com\past-entries.

Lee: You have been spending the last year making this short film, is that right?