Meet the Beacons makers: Geraint Morgan

In Geraint Morgan’s horror Geronimo, an anxious arcade owner reluctantly tries out a sleeping app, but the soporific voice sends him to a waking nightmare from which he may never escape.

Before the film’s broadcast, we chatted to Geraint about fear and technology, getting festival attention, and his journey from acting to directing.

Hi Geraint, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Right, well… Mum’s from Ammanford, Dad’s from Brighton, I was born in Bangor and I lived on Anglesey for a few years before the family moved to deepest Ceredigion where, initially at least, I found the accent so impenetrable that we may as well have moved to a different country. Oh, also, my dad was my headmaster and my mother was a vicar, so I only ever had one day off a week… I guess it’s no wonder I became an actor. I never thought I’d do anything else until I fell out of love with performing, at which point I felt a little lost. But directing made sense. I understand the acting process (I think) and love the collaborative nature of the work. One never stops learning and being at the heart of a project suits me. The most important thing as a director is to listen to those who know better and those people surround you. However, trying to reinvent oneself in one’s fifties isn’t easy; there are so many talented young people coming through. I think trying to run my own race and develop my own projects is probably the way ahead.
 
Where did you get the idea for Geronimo?
My partner, Rebecca, was brought up in Rhyl and lived above the family’s club (the famous Bistro) and arcade. The Trehearns have a wealth of stories about that time and Geronimo is really a combination of a few anecdotes, one of them being of an old woman who visited the family’s arcade on a daily basis. She would play on the one-armed bandits and shout ‘Geronimo’ whenever she won. I combined this and other stories (told mostly by Peter, my future father-in-law) with my own anxieties about money, growing older, losing control and insomnia, that kind of thing. I’m utterly dependent on sleeping apps to get me to sleep, whether it be white noise or bedtime stories, so Geronimo is something of a soup. I had a great time writing it, during lockdown. I love the short film form. It’s high protein and not as easy as some might think. In fact, the process goes on, well after delivery. There are so many things I would change now!

Have you always been a horror fan?
Absolutely, from the youngest of ages, I think. Beatrix Potter may not be the first name that springs to mind when one considers the genre, but ‘The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly Poly Pudding’ was terrifying/thrilling in equal measure for me as five-year-old and I’m not sure that it would be published nowadays. I moved on to James Herbert, Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe in my teens, causing some concern to my parents. ‘Well, at least he’s reading’ was their pragmatic response. I feel like I’m rediscovering it to some extent and although I’m not sure Geronimo is quite the horror film that it might/could/should have been, I learnt a lot about the genre while making it. I feel ready to make more, certainly.  

The liminal space that our minds sometimes inhabit, fascinates me. What might drive us to commit terrible acts? The merging of humans and tech? The thin line between sanity and madness?

Geronimo has been selected for a lot of festivals; what advice would you give to a filmmaker trying to get their short screened?
After completing the film, I was fortunate to be able to raise enough money to go to Festival Formula, a company who do the festival curating for you. It’s not cheap to go for the full package, but they’re brilliant at what they do. There are over 13,000 festivals on FilmFreeway alone, with many of them best ignored. It’s difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, and Festival Formula really know what they’re doing. It saved me a lot of work, but I’ve learned enough from working with them to be more involved the next time, if there is one. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a say in choosing festivals. I was eager for the film to be shown/seen in Wales and chose some of the festivals myself.

One needs to be realistic. Some of the big festivals receive upwards of six thousand submissions, but will only select sixty or so. This gives you a 1% or less chance of being selected and a lot of very good films will not be selected. If you choose carefully, you should get some selections, but if you only aim for the ‘big ones,’ however one might want to define those, you may well be disappointed. Whatever you do, don’t apply for ‘pay to play’ festivals. They’re a rip-off. Submission fees are different. Each fee is a punt, but that’s just the way it is. Geronimo, I think, sort of falls between two stools on the genre spectrum and it may have done better had I — perhaps — had a clearer vision of what I was trying to achieve as a director. Hey ho, you live and learn. I like to think I’ll be able to do (even) better next time.

What kind of support did you get from Ffilm Cymru Wales & BFI NETWORK?
I think the faith Film Cymru had in the project was the main thing for me. There was an enthusiasm for the script and for the people I brought on board that gave me real confidence as we moved on. I felt they believed in me and the project as a whole. That counts for a lot. There was a lot of ‘to and fro’ about the stuff which I didn’t understand and a willingness to listen and be patient when I was unable to grasp the simplest of things.

What do you have planned next?        
The wisest thing I’ve done recently is to stop playing FIFA! It was my guilty pleasure (addiction), but since one of my sons, Llew, took the machine with him to his new home, I’ve been far more productive. I have a project which I’ve been working on for a very long time and which has taken many forms. It’s been a short story, it’s been a novel, it’s been a TV series treatment; but I now firmly believe that it’s a film. I’m inching my way towards a finished draft and — when it’s ready — I’ll try to raise the money to make the bloody thing.  In the meantime, I’m going to do a bit of acting. I’m terrified; I was always rubbish at learning lines!