I finished writing the script for Addiction towards the end of 2017. I had just graduated from film school earlier in the year, and I continued to progress my writing skills in a short form. It had been difficult to find a job in the industry, but I was still hungry to make more films and material.
I still felt a strong connection to the characters in my first and graduation film, Forgotten, and I wanted to dive deeper into what may have happened to them previously. The film serves as a prequel to Forgotten, and there are hints throughout that connect the two while standing on their own, so it doesn't confuse the viewer watching. I wanted to tell this story from a visual view, as if we're in the eyes of this person, and use music as dialogue to allow the audience to feel what he's going through.
There was a struggle to find a producer who was willing to give up their time to help me make the film, as I already had the money but wasn't confident to do it on my own at the time, only being twenty years old. I met great people that year and thought I found someone who would be perfect to fit that position, but sadly they dropped out for their projects which they were trying to get off the ground. At a loss, I believed the film would never get made until the Director of Photography, with who I also worked on Forgotten, encouraged me to carry on, so we could make the film the following January. I then found a mentor, who is a family friend, and they guided me through the production process, both pre and post. I wasn't at film school anymore, and I needed to treat it as if it wasn't just some other student project.
It brought new challenges to face, bringing back some cast and crew from my first film to my home town, in the North, a different territory to London where we collaborated again and filmed in Yorkshire. It was a four-day shoot and a difficult one, especially on the first day, but we pulled through, and I took a lot of what I learned from my experience and have used that knowledge since.
Drug abuse is a sensitive subject matter, and it was something that I had the misfortune of witnessing in the summer before I wrote it, and I saw how it ripped one family apart. Although, the story is fictional and one that I invented. I showed the film at HOME Cinema in Manchester as part of a double viewing with another short film based on the same themes, where some people who have suffered from addiction were present at the screening. They spoke with me afterward and came away feeling positive, knowing that there are people out there who can get an understanding of what they've been through, even though you're not an addict yourself. Their words were kind, and they have stuck with me since.
I'm glad to have made the film, and whenever I watch it back, it reminds me of the work that went into making this a reality, also learning more about addiction and what the individual goes through, and I am grateful for the response the film received. I hope others enjoy it just as much we did making it.
Lewis William Robinson.
