Koby Adom, who was born on the Ivory Coast and grew up in London, graduated from London Film School in 2016 with the critically acclaimed ‘House Girl’, set in Accra, Ghana, where his family comes from. When we last spoke to Koby at the end of 2017, he had just been selected for funding by Film London’s highly competitive London Calling Plus scheme to make his next short, ‘Haircut’. Now he’s floating on air after winning the London Calling Plus Award, selected by legendary Director of the final four ‘Harry Potter’ films and ‘Fantastic Beasts’, David Yates.
‘Haircut’ tells the story of a middle-aged barber who dreams of escaping his rough neighbourhood and becoming a dancehall star until an encounter with a local drug runner brings up uncomfortable truths about his past and makes him consider his importance in the community.
It premiered at BFI Southbank on Wednesday 23 May along with the 19 other films made through London Calling. The 20 filmmaking teams then attended a reception ceremony, along with industry insiders, where the winners were announced. Of his selection, David Yates said: “’Haircut’ was my favourite. It made for compulsive viewing, was terrifically cast, with a great eye for human detail, with characters you cared for and believed in, and moments of genuine tension. Koby Adom's film was precisely and confidently made, he's a real talent."
We caught up with Koby to find out how it felt to win, and what’s next for this unstoppable force of nature.
Sophie McVeigh: Congratulations on winning the London Calling Plus Award. Can you explain a bit more about it?
Koby Adom: The London Calling Plus Award was Director David Yates’ personal pick, so he chose ‘Haircut’, which was crazy, man! That was out of everyone whose film was funded via London Calling Plus, out of 8 films (London Calling Plus, which is part of London Calling, funds films made by Black and Minority Ethnic filmmakers). I didn’t have a clue we were going to win. At the Film London showcase we watched all the films that had been funded and then there was a closing ceremony. They invited people from Film Four, BBC Films, Universal, all the big players in the game were in the room. We had a reception afterwards where we had drinks and speeches and then they did the awards. The reception that I got at the showcase just blew my mind! People were coming up to me and saying it was their favourite film. After the awards it was difficult to leave the room, I was on such a high! I was on cloud nine. And I made some amazing contacts there.SM: Can you tell us about the making of ‘Haircut’ and working with London Calling?
KA: We got shortlisted for ‘Haircut’ sometime around September 2017 and between September and November, when they make the final decision of who they’re going to commission, you work on the script some more. We shot on the 11 and 12 February and post finished about two weeks ago.
SA: Did the London Calling funding cover the whole of the production?
KA: No, they usually give 15k but this year they gave eight. But Film London helped us find more investors. They started conversations and then Joy (Gharoro-Akpojotor), my producer, took over and negotiated a good deal. Stefan Allesch-Taylor, who finances short films for black and ethnic minorities helped us with the remaining funding that we needed. It’s a Film London and Stefan Allesch-Taylor Presents production.
SM: From when you received the funding, how were Film London involved in the film’s development?
KA: At every stage, from script to edit. You send them every draft of the script and they send you notes and notes and notes – they sit with you, they talk about it, and when they’re happy with where your script is at, they greenlight you for finance. Then they speak to you about how you’re going to approach production, and even before that they send you to classes on things like film festivals – it’s a bit like LFS graduation year! They cover all angles. They’re involved in post-production too, they give you notes on cuts. The beauty of the situation is that they really want you to get the best story possible. The story is king for them. Once they feel like the story is good they’re like, go forth and bring back the finished product!
SM: Did you work with anyone from LFS on the shoot?
KA: Teni (Teniola King), who’s currently working on her grad film, was helping on set as a production assistant. I did some pickup shots for the film afterwards as well, and Mark Kuczewski, who I worked with on ‘House Girl’, who was my DOP and who was in the same class as me at LFS, was second unit DOP.
SM: You mentioned last time we spoke that you were thinking of using half professional and half non-professional actors. How did that work out?
KA: In the end, it turned out that everybody was kind of a professional actor but at very different stages of their careers, which was amazing. We had Robby Gee, obviously, who’s a legend. He’s been acting for over 30 years, he’s been in ‘Snatch’, ‘Desmond’s’, ‘The Real McCoy’ … he’s been in some iconic things, so it was a privilege to work with him and I really felt blessed. His influence on set was huge, but he still gave me so much respect in terms of my process and the material. Basically, he did his absolute best to make what I’d already started even better, which was amazing. And then I worked with Malcolm Kamulete who was in ‘Top Boy’. I’d say this is his next dramatic progress from what he’d done on TV. It was a privilege working with him as well because he’s an incredible actor. He’s going to be one of the next big things in this country, I’m sure. So, I’m lucky to be working with him at this stage in his career, at the start where we can really see that he’s going to make it. I worked with Weruche, who’s a fantastic actress as well, she does a lot of work here and in Nigeria. I worked with a guy called Femi who played the Nigerian barber – he hasn’t got a lot of credits but he’s brilliant, I saw him in a friend of mine’s short film and wanted him to be involved. Everybody is a professional actor, but some people are at earlier stages and there are other people like Robbie who’s been there and done that, so it was really cool.
SM: How much did you stick to the original script? Did you improvise with the actors?
KB: Definitely, I do a lot, I love improv. With me, every stage of the filmmaking process is another draft of the script. So, I’ll do the first drafts, lock it as a shooting script, then I take off my writer’s hat and put on my director’s hat. Basically, every time we have a discussion or a rehearsal, that’s another draft of the script. I’m not a director that tells actors to just read what they see on the page. For me, a dialogue is all about objectives - people doing things as opposed to saying things. So, it’s all about working with the actors in the sense of, what is it that you’re doing here? What do you want? And how are you gonna get that? I focus on that, rather than the words, and on getting them to work off each other. Don’t focus on yourself (as an actor), but what is being given to you by everybody else around you. It creates a sense of oneness, a sense of community and energy, so it’s an ensemble cast rather than someone trying to run off into the hills with their performance! Even after that, as you can imagine, we watched all these rushes and you see beautiful parts, but then it’s about how to carve the edit so that you’ve got the best bits on screen but still link the story together to make it cohesive. The whole process was really interesting. I feel like directing actors starts from scripts all the way through to the edit. Obviously, you work with them on set and have conversations but it’s an ongoing process, even when they’re not around. The edit is protecting their screen time, to make sure that what you see is the best that they offered you.
SM: Did you shoot on location in south London?
KA: We shot it all in one barbershop. Me and the Assistant Producer, Charles, live in the area. We did a lot of scouting and got a list of places we could potentially shoot in. Funnily enough, where we ended up shooting was literally a stone’s throw from my church. I was walking to church one day and I saw this place and it stuck with me. Eventually, we shot it there – it made sense because we were able to get in there on a Sunday and a Monday when it was closed. The Production Designer, Phoebe Platman, did an absolutely amazing job with her Art Director Naomi Block. They really did a fantastic job and I’m really, really happy with it.
S.M: How did you meet your producer, Joy?
KA: When I was making ‘House Girl’ I put an advert up on the Guardian, ‘an LFS short looking for a Producer’. I put a £500 fee and she applied. She eventually put the £500 back into ‘House Girl’. That was us collaborating the first time. It was a blessing because we got to know each other, we saw how each of us work, we made our mistakes and we fixed them. We went through a lot with ‘House Girl’, so collaborating again with Joy was amazing. It felt good - I know she’s got my best interests at heart and we’ve learnt from our past mistakes. I trust her a lot, she’s like a mentor because she’s older than me and she’s like an older sister. On a personal level, she’s there for me, and it just works. It’s the perfect partnership so I really want to build on that relationship.
SM: What did you learn from this project?
KA: So much, man! Directing is not a walk in the park and you’re not going to do well it unless you re-educate yourself each time you have to redo it. So, I saw how I had to push myself out of my comfort zone to get the best results. I was trying new things that made me take risks, but obviously calculated risks because I’d read about it. It was like an experiment, like being in a lab and trying things out, keeping what works and disposing of the things that don’t. I re-educated myself a huge amount – I read books from back to front, I watched workshops online, I watched films to see how things were constructed and what result they had. I really spent a lot of time on it – it was all I did, at one point, literally. I’d be walking in public with a book in my face. It was really cool and I learnt a lot about myself, in a sense. I know what I’m capable of. Joy was saying that she wants to really push me out there, to be exposed to new things, possibly make mistakes and people criticise me but so that I can learn from it. I worked with a new DOP and a new Production Designer, we worked with a Casting Director, Isabella Odoffin, who’s amazing. Everyone that I worked with, the levels just went up times ten which made me have to match that by re-educating myself. It’s not like I let these people with the experience take over what I was planning to do - I made sure that what I was trying to do was enhanced by them. And that starts with me having the confidence of knowing what I want to do. So, I learnt a lot about not being in my comfort zone and always pushing myself.
SM: Have you got any advice for people who want to apply to London Calling? And why do you think your film was not only chosen for funding but went on to win the award?
KA: It doesn’t exist anymore, this is the last crop, but they’ve changed it to something even better in my opinion. It’s called The Film Hub, and they’ve collaborated with BFI network. Rather than having windows of applications that close, they now have a consistent window all year. You can apply for £15,000 no matter where you’re from or what your story is, the whole year round. In terms of advice for people applying, I wrote a script based on something that I experienced myself. It was impossible for anybody else to write that story, for a start, and I feel like it has a lot of cultural identity in it. The more you can focus on a community, and tell the story about a community of people, and in one body of work make people feel a variety of ways, some of which may oppose each other, you’re onto a winner. If you make people feel something then you’re onto a winner full-stop, and I feel like, from script stage, everybody loved it already. I got a lot of good notes about the story that it is. The feedback I love the most, from the people that have seen it, is that they were kept guessing the whole film. They could never anticipate what was coming next. That’s probably why people like it so much. I feel like the development process with Film London is amazing because it sees a body of work and helps to figure out what needs to be taken out. They have a whole development team, Angeli MacFarlane (Head of Development at Film London) is amazing.
SM: The film had its premiere at the showcase – what’s next for it now?
KA: We’re going to be working with a guy called Sebastian Strakowicz, who is a very good friend of my family and I. He used to work for a company called DDA, which is the entertainment PR company that worked on ‘Moonlight’. He’s going to work with us to draw up a PR/Marketing/Festival strategy. Obviously, the aim is to get the film seen by as many of the right people as possible, so we’ve got him on board and we’ve already submitted to one big festival. The good news is London Film Festival choose at least six shorts from London Calling every year.
SM: Probably the winner of the London Calling Plus award might be one of them, then?
KA: (laughs) Let’s cross our fingers! I’d be humbled by it. If I don’t get in then so be it but if I do I’ll be over the moon.
SM: And what’s next for you?
KA: After I finished ‘Haircut’, I was thinking of how to use it as a proof of concept for a bigger project, and currently I’m thinking about turning it into a series surrounding a barbershop in south London. It would be pretty interesting, expanding on that story and going into everybody’s lives more. I’m going to start exploring that soon. I also want to turn my LFS grad film, ‘House Girl’, into a feature. I’ve got a couple of ideas for shorts as well to be working on in the meantime which explore more aspects of myself, like my spirituality. In the same way that I’ve been able to use ‘Haircut’ to explain the dynamics in a working-class area with a high crime rate, I feel like, being a Christian, I’m also in a privileged position. I’ve been on both sides of the fence – I haven’t been the best guy in the world, and now I’m totally planted in Christ. It says in the Bible that ‘it’s because of a lack of knowledge that my people perish’, and I feel like if I’ve experienced certain things in life I should share them. It’s almost like parables in the Bible. I’ve always wanted to find a way to tell a story that gives a message of my life and the things that I’ve experienced. There’s plenty of ways to do that – I don’t always want to focus on black guys that are involved with guns and drugs. What about a guy who was raised in an African household who ended up in a choir, who’s a goody-two-shoes Christian but who struggles with sexual urges? That’s what I want to write next, stuff like that – there are so many stories everywhere that people don’t know about. That’s what I want to build my career on – telling these stories that the masses probably don’t have a clue about, but I’ve lived it.
SM: Last time we spoke, we discussed how you’d grown up around women and a lot of your films told stories from a female perspective. It seems like you’re moving on to looking more at the male, and your own, perspective now?
KA: I liked the fact that I worked with two key male characters this time. As a man, it’s good to have conversations with other men and start being honest with ourselves in order to make these characters as three-dimensional and well-rounded as possible. It was a different experience – I can be myself with women, don’t get me wrong, but as men, we go through the same things, the unspoken things. You can put ten men in a room and, if we’re honest with ourselves, we can agree on something that we’ve all been through but we’re too ashamed to vocalise. You can explore yourself a bit more, what the norm in a society of a man is supposed to be, masculinity … There’s a lot of things to explore when it gets to the whole topic of manhood and what it means. Sometimes I feel that the pressures of being a man aren’t really discussed. This story of ‘Haircut’ to me was interesting because it’s about a 45-year-old barber, a business-owning person who’s cleaned up his act from being a drug dealer in the past, who has to drop his pride for the situation to go the right way. That in itself is a crazy journey to watch. It was interesting to work with male characters while still having that female presence. I respect women so much, I spent a lot of time with my mum and my two sisters growing up. I don’t have any brothers. Having that female character in the barber shop, for me, was hefty – she held a lot of weight and she represented so much. Her role, as subtle as it is, is still very powerful for me. The way I see it, men and women are made individually, but in a way that if we collaborate in a perfect way we’re powerful. That was what I wanted to show – women’s importance even in male-dominated scenarios. The barbershop is a male-dominated world and having a woman that has a lot of presence brings a different energy, so I really enjoyed that.
SM: Has winning this award, and the contacts that you’ve made through Film London, helped towards achieving your goals?
KA: Hugely. I’ve got meetings now that you know for a fact, if you emailed them they wouldn’t even respond, let alone get into the room! Film London literally catapults you to a new level. The eyes that are on it … I mean they got David Yates to give me a quote on my film! That’s insane. It opens a lot of doors, and now I’m excited because everything that I wanted to happen is happening. I do what I usually do, I leave everything in God’s hands, let Him take control and guide me on the path that I should take. ‘Haircut’ was the same, man - it wasn’t part of my plan before, but I sent the first draft to Joy and now here we are, winning best film!
SM: Hopefully it’s a taste of things to come.
KA: I pray so, man! All by the grace of God though, I’m telling you. I prayed over this project with everything inside of me. I didn’t worry ever because of how much I prayed about it. And I guess this is God just showing me, this is what you get when you fully rely on me.
SM: Congratulations, good luck and we can’t wait to see the film!
Shortly after our interview, Koby became one of the eight John Brabourne Awardees 2018 and signed with Independent Talent Group.
Koby is a British-Ghanaian film writer/director who graduated from London Film School in 2016 with his graduation film ‘House Girl’, a short which raised over £10,000 on Kickstarter and screened at LSFF and AIFF. Since then, Koby has worked with Genesis Cinema and the BFI on the BFI Blackstar Season sitting on various panels. After being one of the John Brabourne awardees, Koby is now concentrating on preparing to turn ‘House Girl’ into a feature film, alongside working on shorts, commercials and music videos.
ABOUT THE FILM AND TELEVISION CHARITY
The Film & Television Charity provides advice, support and financial assistance to people who work or have worked in the Film and TV industry in the UK. We offer support to individuals and families working in the industry or who have previously worked in Film, TV and cinema exhibition when facing personal and career challenges. As part of The Film And Television Charity, the John Brabourne Awards - or JBAs - is a talent development programme that supports emerging talent in UK Film and TV with financial assistance.
Photo Credits: (top to bottom) 'House Girl' by Koby Adom, DOP Nathalie Pitters
Written by Sophie McVeigh, @sophiewrites