Polterheist director David Gilbank: ‘Bradford has everything’

Polterheist director David Gilbank: ‘Bradford has everything’

by James Collingwood

Polterheist is an exciting new comedy horror film shot mainly in Bradford and released in the next few months. The original 20-minute film won best short film at Bradford’s Drunken Film Festival and the 90-minute feature was nominated for Best Feature Film in the British Independent Film Festival. It’s about gangsters who kidnap a psychic. I spoke to co-writer and director David Gilbank about Polterheist.

Hi Dave. Can you tell me a bit about the development of Polterheist and how you made the film?

Well, it started life as a small film. The 90-minute feature was filmed in 2016 and that was based on a screenplay that both myself and my writing partner Paul Renhard wrote in about 2011. A short film screenplay. It was meant to be a quite high concept kind of idea and we were going to film it, but we realised we just didn’t have the actors to do it. A few years later we set up our own business Tadah Media and we came across a group of really good actors and we thought - you know what, let’s just give it a go. We got them in to do a bit of workshopping and it worked. It was just a matter of getting a camera and crew and filming the script. The finished short film did really well on the film festival circuit all over the world and off the back of that we got a bit of interest off some private investors. Some of our friends and associates put in some money and we started filming the feature.

The original film won a lot of awards didn’t it?

It’s won over 30 awards so far. We’re proud of it. Essentially, we wanted to make a short film as a shop window to lead to a feature. It served its purpose

Was it always planned to film in Bradford? Was the original short film filmed in the Bradford area?

The original short film was shot entirely in Bradford. The feature film was shot I’d say about 80% in Bradford. The rest of it was shot in studios in Keighley where they shot Peaky Blinders, Limehouse

Golem and the like. We also used an up and coming set builders in Keighley, staffed with Bradford people, called Norse Sky. They build the set for the seance scene for example. They made a whole lot of contraptions for us from a car park meter to a vomit machine!

You’ve got a good group of actors for the film. Sid Akbar Ali and Jo Mousley for example. How did the script develop?

Sid is the only carry on from the short film. We got really talented actors to work with us, such as Jamie Cymbal, Sid Akbar Ali, Pushpinder Chani and Jo Mousley. Jo is a well established and well-known stage actor. Pushpinder is excellent in a classic gangster role. An Asian gang leader who enjoys killing people with cricket bats! The original script was written by myself and Paul and we wrote the first draft of the feature. We used a Leeds-based playwright called Gemma Head. She added some real sparkle and really touching moments that give a real heart to the film. Based on that I was able to add a bit more when I directed it. We also cast Gemma in the film as a secondary character important to the plot.

Your background is in radio advertising and media I believe?

It is yes. I’ve been a journalist and copywriter most of my life, written all types of commercials for TV and radio and done sports journalism covering Rugby league for example. In the last few years I’ve teamed up with Paul Renhard and it’s gone on from there.

Were you always a big film buff? What were the influences on this film?

I remember one of the first films I saw was One Million Years BC in Australia when I was a kid. Growing up in the 80s and 90s it was films like Bladerunner and Alien. 70s films as well. The biggest influences on this film were the likes of Get Carter and also the Exorcist and the Omen. Our film is more gangster than horror. It’s a black comedy.

What sort of locations did you use in Bradford specifically?

We filmed in Saltaire at Salts Mill. We also filmed in Thackley and in and around Lumb Lane and Bowling. The locals would be very interested in what we were doing when we were filming, sometimes doing handbrake slides for the cameras! We also filmed on the roof of the Rio Grande and viewed the Bradford skyline from there! Bradford is the central character really. We had four living central characters, but we had Bradford as well. It has everything you could ever want.

More films are made in Bradford now?

There’s been a resurgence over the past year with a few bigger budget films. Nothing beats a good screenplay, and nothing beats a good script. Hopefully some sort of film industry will develop in Bradford. Events like the Drunken Film Festival run by Jax Griffin build a great community. People like her put time and effort into trying to build something!

Have you yourself got any future projects coming up?

We’re filming something in the US at end of year and we’re filming some of that in Bradford We’ve also got an international love story about an Indian cricketer who falls in love with an English girl. And a Heavy Metal comedy which will be set in Bradford as well. We like to mix genres. For us script is king. If people are investing their time we want to make it worthwhile. Also, local themes about human issues can cross universal boundaries