Are you a young as­pir­ing film­mak­er, burst­ing with ideas and dy­ing to get in­to the in­dus­try? Then you should take a page out of Ryan Khan's book. This 28-year-old Trinida­di­an film mak­er sim­ply dived in eight years ago. Khan start­ed in what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty he could, and in our lo­cal in­dus­try that means com­mer­cial work. He was an an­i­ma­tor and pro­duced com­mer­cial clips like the stick fight­ing vi­su­al for Gayelle's On Guard open­ing se­quence and com­mer­cials for Sam­sung for Dig­i­cel in St Lu­cia. He honed his tech­ni­cal skills as a cam­era ed­i­tor and even tu­tored Mu­sic Video Pro­duc­tion and Adobe 8 to stu­dents at the Lon­don Acad­e­my of Ra­dio, Tele­vi­sion and Film. He re­cent­ly worked in the pro­duc­tion de­part­ment on the set of the Nor­we­gian film Lim­bo, be­ing shot right here thanks to the ef­forts of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC).

The TTFC was al­so in­stru­men­tal in fund­ing his first short film, Min­utes to Mid­night through their Pro­duc­tion As­sis­tance and Script De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (PASD), which pre­miered at the 2009 Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val. Mid­night Af­fair, the sec­ond in­stall­ment in his folk­lore noir fran­chise, was just green-light­ed as a part of the TTFC's re­cent spe­cial PASD call themed "Sweet T&T," a nov­el con­cept that will link three short films to cre­ate one fea­ture length film. It is proof that earn­ing your stripes in the in­dus­try first is es­sen­tial to a steady rise to the top. It is al­so es­sen­tial to be able to im­pro­vise while in the mid­dle of film­ing with­out break­ing a sweat or your bud­get. As Khan elab­o­rates: "There were a lot of things that didn't go ac­cord­ing to plan but be­cause of my eight years of ex­pe­ri­ence I was able to adapt quick­ly and keep things on course.

"I must stress it's eight years in the Trinida­di­an video/film in­dus­try, not for­eign, cause it is a dif­fer­ent 'beast' you're deal­ing with when it comes to mak­ing a film in this coun­try, things that a film school will nev­er pre­pare you for. "One par­tic­u­lar sce­nario stands out as an ex­am­ple. My short film has firearms in it, so I re­quired per­mis­sion from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to do this and I was as­sured I'd get it be­cause I put in my re­quest ear­ly. For what­ev­er rea­son the Com­mis­sion­er de­nied it and I didn't find this out un­til the day of the shoot. "This was a key scene in the film and there was no way I could put off the shoot un­til we got clear­ance. So there we were with­out a gun to shoot, lit­er­al­ly. I had to come up with a quick so­lu­tion, which I did and this in turn put the film in a bet­ter po­si­tion in terms of the art di­rec­tion." Gangstas and guns may not sound like the most orig­i­nal premise for a lo­cal or Caribbean film, but what makes Min­utes to Mid­night spe­cial is that Khan has writ­ten in a heavy in­dige­nous folk­lore el­e­ment that per­me­ates every­thing.

Thick Tri­ni flavour in movies

High­ly orig­i­nal char­ac­ters with names like Square Roost­er, Ma­ma Glo and Stink Bull, dark hu­mour and un­flinch­ing bru­tal­i­ty are con­trast­ed against an all too fa­mil­iar mys­ti­cism and shot to con­vey a beau­ti­ful, or­gan­ic feel­ing. It is not your typ­i­cal shoot em' up ac­tion short and speaks to his film­mak­ing phi­los­o­phy. "I hope to tell uni­ver­sal sto­ries with in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal from a Trinida­di­an point of view. "So whether I make a sto­ry about Trinida­di­an folk­lore caught up in a spi­der web of gang vi­o­lence or an Ital­ian bounc­er for a British night club set out on a path of re­venge for his fall­en love, there will al­ways be a thick coat­ing of Tri­ni flavour present." Min­utes to Mid­night is tes­ti­mo­ny to what hap­pens when unique ideas meet with un­con­di­tion­al sup­port. For Khan, the TTFC pro­vid­ed that sup­port through their PASD.

He ex­plains: "It played a ma­jor role in help­ing my pro­duc­tion be­come a re­al­i­ty and it al­so al­lowed me to stay true to my artis­tic vi­sion there­by giv­ing me more con­fi­dence in my skills as a film mak­er. The process was great. There was a list of cri­te­ria and stan­dards to be met but it wasn't the red tape af­fair that some would as­sume it would be due to its pub­lic sec­tor ties. "The Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny staff was help­ful, in­for­ma­tive and what­ev­er they couldn't pro­vide, they'd make an ef­fort to put you in the right di­rec­tion to get what you're look­ing for." An en­vi­ron­ment of op­ti­mism is es­sen­tial for an in­dige­nous film in­dus­try to thrive, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing harsh eco­nom­ic times. The pos­si­bil­i­ty must at least be con­ceiv­able, and for Khan it is.

He shares: "The lo­cal in­dus­try is tak­ing a turn for the good I'd say. Film mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy is grow­ing in leaps and bounds so it's now be­com­ing quite easy to ac­quire the prop­er equip­ment at a rea­son­able price. Par­al­lel to that is the emer­gence of?or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny and Trinidad and To­ba­go En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny (to name a few) that's pro­vid­ing some form of aid or sup­port for our lo­cal artist. "The heat is there, we just need to get the tim­ing right so the bread will rise to its fullest. Too ear­ly, it won't rise, too late, it will col­lapse on it­self," Khan added. Fol­low­ing on the tremen­dous suc­cess of its PASD pro­gramme, the TTFC will be em­bark­ing up­on an­oth­er call in De­cem­ber 2009.