Future gazing
Film-making is one of the most glamorous industries, but it’s also faced many challenges – from the writers’ strike to emptier cinemas due to streaming. But film producer Tessa Ross believes that it will continue to have a starring role in our lives
Film is wonderful because it encompasses so many art forms: writing, photography, design, sound, music… It has all those different artists woven together, working towards one big, single vision. Theatre was my passion when I was young, and I used to go to see shows almost every night. At university, I directed plays and was president of the drama society. After graduating, I went on to train as a director – the appeal was to be with writers. I completely loved the quality of words, the quality of people’s voices.
A brief stint as an agent made me realise that I preferred to work with the work, rather than trying to sell it. One of my first jobs in the late 1980s was at BBC Scotland, working on The Play On One. I think that’s where I understood I was a good enabler of finding projects and the people who could be helped to tell their stories. In my career, I’ve worked across film and TV – firstly, at British Screen (now the British Film Institute), developing and funding British feature films, and then, later at the BBC, commissioning drama for film and TV. I commissioned films and series such as Billy Elliot and Clocking Off.
I was head of drama at Channel 4 in 2000 when I applied for, and got, the role of running Film4 at a time of great change. It was being restructured, with redundancies of lots of very talented people; I had to restart it. To do that, I had to come up with a different idea of how to make it last. I decided to make films that were bound in to what Channel 4 stood for. I couldn’t spend a lot of money, so it meant being the first to back an idea and then supporting it as wholeheartedly as I could. At its best, it led to films such as Slumdog Millionaire, This Is England and 12 Years A Slave.
Now I run a production company called House Productions, where we produce films and TV including The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh, which is available on Netflix, and our series Sherwood, which is available on BBC iPlayer. Soon, our second series of Sherwood will be on BBC One, while our film The Iron Claw, with Zac Efron, is on release – as is The Zone Of Interest.
AI CAN’T REPLACE STORYTELLING
What appeals to me when I read a script is when the person is telling the story in a way that nobody else could. So, it’s not that every story hasn’t been told or that a lot of people couldn’t tell a particular story but, rather, you want to believe that person so completely and the way they choose to tell the story. What makes a g
