Practice English Listening C1 Exercises – Meet the Director

A

5, 3, 6, 2, 4, 1, 7

B

1 c   2 a   3 b   4 b   5 a   6 c

C

1 a   2 f   3 d   4 e   5 c   6 b

Director:   The name of my movie is Rot. And essentially it’s the story of a man who is dying of this flesh-eating disease, who, uh, before he dies, goes out to this cabin to be alone and to reflect on his life and his . . . his past mistakes and his regrets.

The idea of the movie was just to . . . to make the most moving, engrossing story I could. I wanted it to be touching. I wanted people to really connect with the story and the characters. And basically, it’s a story of lost love – very universal themes that, uh, that I feel have been done before, but I wanted to do them in a more original way that they weren’t as formulaic and as clichéd as stuff that’s already been done, so, you know, I wanted to kind of give a fresh take on the same material.

It started more as just ideas that I’ve had. Uh, some of them go back over a year ago – just like a small, little idea that I thought was good, but not great, to actually pursue. But I knew it was a decent idea, so I held on to it, and then other ideas came. And finally, one day it just connected, you know, all the ideas.

The idea of a flesh-eating disease came about, and I thought that was a great metaphor for just what’s going on with him, you know, through this . . . this really dark time in his life. And when I started telling people about it, they thought that it was such a good idea that I really had no choice but to make the movie, because everyone knew that it was . . . it was a really powerful idea, really moving.

I’ve just always . . . I’ve always wanted to direct, and this was the idea that I felt was the best and actually worth doing. I started scouting locations, talking to people, trying to raise money – doing all these things as I was still writing the movie, so I was still in the process of writing it. So I would give it to people, and at this point it probably wasn’t that good because I was just, like . . . the first draft, and . . . like, alright, here, you know, here’s the idea. And slowly it would form and become more of a tighter movie, more compact, and . . . and much better.

Obviously studios aren’t going to give me money to go make a movie. An up-and-coming director – it’s just not going to happen.

The first part of Rot I, uh, funded myself with all my money. And unfortunately, when we got back in to complete it, I didn’t have any more money, so I had to turn to crowdfunding to raise the rest of it. And I thought that it was just going to be family and friends. But surprisingly, a lot of people did donate to the movie, that just came across it and . . . and just thought it looked cool. They liked the idea, and they believed in it. And that’s the only reason that they donated their money.

So many people did believe in the idea that it was easy getting help from so many different people. Everyone just kind of jumped on board and really connected with the idea. And people really believed in it, and they believed in me.

It used to be such an expensive proposition to make a movie that it was just impossible for . . . for up-and coming filmmakers like myself. But now, uh, through crowdfunding, it’s really, uh, it’s really made it easier for people that really have a strong idea to get in there and raise money, uh, and get people to believe in the project.

I want to put the movie in as many film festivals as possible. I want to use it as a calling card almost, so from there I can get my next movie made. You know, I want as many people to see this movie as possible. Now, obviously, I know that might not be the case. It might take some time to get it going. There’s so many filmmakers out there right now that it’s, it’s really hard to get your movie noticed. But I feel that with the right idea and the right story, there’s no reason why you can’t do it.