We're producing TICKER, a short film which takes a glimpse at the life of a rural, mature gay couple as they face the uncertainty of illness
by Margaret Milner Schmueck in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, United Kingdom
Any extra funding will allow us to promote the film more widely, increasing its film festival and subsequent audience reach. We'll also look to put on screenings of TICKER local audiences and engage in conversations about rural LGBTQI+ issues.
We need your help! Our rural, LGBTQI+ genre short film TICKER has been green lit by a major national funding body, but now we need your support to get us over the line.
Think God's Own Country meets Super Nova: TICKER represents an opportunity to put older gay characters on screen and reveal the lives that are so often lived behind closed doors in rural Britain.
Howard drives his partner Joseph to hospital to undergo a high risk operation and the intimacy of the car, alongside a long forgotten mix tape, sees the masculinity of their forty year relationship start to yield.
Older LGBTQI+ characters are infrequently seen on screen and we'd like to change this. If you think you can help us, please read on.
In order to finish the film we're asking for your support today on Crowdfunder. We're also looking to partner with an Executive Producer to lend their name to the project and are happy to discuss this directly. Get in touch on the feedback form or through our Instagram page.
Joseph and Howard. Two men who have spent a very private life together behind closed doors in a rural Staffordshire farming community. Life partners. And life means life: secret lovers as twenty-somethings, covert house sharers in their thirties, tentative adopters of a civil partnership in their forties, and then a dawn of confidence in their fifties as they marry. But now, a few years further on, Joseph suddenly finds his health in jeopardy and their future together is uncertain. We join these men on the short drive from home to hospital as Howard takes Joseph for major surgery.
Thom came into the film industry after working in healthcare in the NHS for over a decade. He grew up in the rural North-west and now lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands. He subsequently trained as an actor at LAMDA and has worked in film, theatre and audio. He is building a slate of films as writer/director under Lost Northerner.
Thom's debut short as writer, CHACONNE, directed by Francesca Brill (The Drowning, Channel 5), won Best Short Film Screenplay at Amsterdam IFF and also screened across festivals including Underwire, Bolton, Kinofilm, Kerry, Jukebox, BZN and the International Sound and Music Festival. Thom's second short film, BEFORE HE, as writer/director, was shot in Manchester as an ambitious single-sequence 9 minute film and to date has screened at Bolton, Kinofilm and Manchester Lift Off.
Check out Thom on IMDB.
Margaret Milner Schmueck is from Cork Ireland and has to date produced a number of award winning short live-action and animation films along with one feature film INBRED. Margaret has enjoyed a recent hiatus in her producing career due to the adoption of a sibling pair that has kept her very busy for the past few years. Margaret now has a small focused slate of projects in active
development in her production company Split Second Films which she co-founded. She lives and works in semi-rural Northamptonshire in the East Midlands. Margaret also works in creative advertising as a digital producer of digital type projects.
Check out Margaret on IMDB or her production company Split Second Films which will be handling production of TICKER.
Thom Petty-
This is a story of people that we don’t usually see: a rural, same-sex couple living together and facing the same day to day challenges (in this case health) that we all encounter.
For a long time I’ve felt that older LGBTQI+ voices have been under-represented in film, especially rural stories. I grew up in (and have recently moved back to) this community in the Staffordshire Moorlands, but I've seen it so rarely represented on screen.
We’ve had brilliant work from Francis Lee charting how young love is stifled in the farming community and I’m interested to interrogate the private lives of older rural characters. It so often exists behind closed doors. Section 28 was in place from 1988 to 2003 in England. During this time, several generations of LGBTQI+ people lived through an atmosphere of shame and mistrust, just when their “straight” peers were forming relationships, falling in love and starting families. The emotional hangover for these queer generations can not be underestimated, even after Section 28 was abolished. "Pride" is a difficult thing to navigate.
In TICKER I also want to explore the masculinity that impedes a same-sex relationship between two older men. What do decades of misplaced communication do to a partnership when its existence is threatened by ill health?
Margaret Milner Schmueck-
We're already well into our production with all locations, vehicle (and dog) secured! Filming is set for late November, 2022. We have Matt Sheppard (Boiling Point, The Beautiful Game) as casting director and are currently appointing HODs. Right now we are in discussion with potential cinematographers and are making approaches to cast.
The film will be submitted to festivals on both the LGBTQI+ and “mainstream” circuits. It’s important that a wider audience identifies these characters as potentially living amongst them, and recognises that they experience the same life events that affect us all.
We want to make our film as environmentally responsible as possible. We're collaborating on Zoom, using digital workflows, minimising unnecessary car journeys and drawing on local Midlands crew. Most of all, the beautiful location we're filming at in North Staffordshire will be left "as found".
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