So this is a shameless mutual fan club love-in.  Probably my most consistent and longtime collaborator has been the actor-director-writer-producer (not necessarily in that order) Oliver Parker (Othello with Laurence  Fishburne & Kenneth Branagh, An Ideal Husband with Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Rupert Everett).  We’ve done plays, movies even musicals.

He is a phenomenal director of actors – truly gifted at gaining their trust, nurturing their talent and shaping their performance.  He is, also, a rock of positivity, of good sense, good humour, unwavering enthusiasm for telling stories on screen (large and small) and on stage.   He wants to help people do their best – and we need as much of that as we can get in this bizarre industry that we work in.

He knows that story is almost everything when it comes to creating a great movie.  In any movie’s birth, it’s getting the story right that is the toughest challenge and takes the longest proportional amount of time to achieve.  What gets your story a green light is what the SAI is all about.

With this in mind, I’m doing a series of short workshops as a taster of what we do.  Oli is one of our governor/mentors and at least one story from these workshops will go forward for one-to-one meetings with Oli and with Harriet Spencer, Development Executive at Working Title Films.

Go to this link, below, for details:

“Steve May is one of the sharpest story minds out there.  You’re lucky if you get to work with him.” – Oliver Parker

http://www.thescreenartsinstitute.com/working-title-workshops-october-2014/

Oliver Parker is lined up to shoot “Dad’s Army” with Bill Nighy and Toby Jones in autumn 2014 and “Dunkirk” next year, with Working Title Films producing.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0662529/news