Jessica Ferguson is one of London’s new generation of filmmakers. She is currently studying film at the London College of Communication. Jessica told Arts Hub that she “rolled up with a portfolio filled with glitter and pestered the tutors until they let her on to the course.” Jessica Ferguson has just completed her film Mysteries of The Supernatural, a dark comedy of errors set on the spooky and windswept coast of Kent which portrays one family wracked by superstitions and cabin fever, and she is currently working on a second short. Jessica Ferguson was recently shortlisted for Channel Four’s “Adventures in Recycling” Britdoc competition.
What do you do all day?
I’m a geek. I watch films all day and pull them apart, I read books, I listen to music, I write – sitting in cafes or at home or in the park. When I’m working on a film I just write until I can’t write any longer, and I drink lots of coffee, and I try to avoid smoking too many cigarettes. Sometimes I go and drink lots of red wine in bars on my own and write things and draw pictures.
What did you do today?
I got up at about seven and did an hour of yoga, listened to some happy hardcore and early nineties pop until my iPod ran out, and then met up with Jesse to have coffee and do this interview.
What’s your creative process?
I guess the beginning of my creative process is just to watch and listen a lot: films, people, everything. I read lots too. I take notes obsessively. I like to watch people, how they behave in certain environments, what they do. I write things down in notebooks, I have years and years of notes which I took while I was reading and watching films and just in some awkward situations. They’re funny to look back over, particularly when I was partying all the time when I was nineteen. There’s a line from Howl: “stayed up all night writing lofty incantations which in the morning were stanzas of gibberish” and that’s what a lot of the early notes are like, big illegible scrawls written at raves, clichés that I was realising for the first time. A lot of those books feel like the insides of Athena cards. Since I was fifteen I’ve also written a diary on my computer which I password and no one ever reads and in which I try to be as honest as I can about things that happen, even if the truth is ugly or sounds odd. Its furiously hard to write honestly so the more you can make yourself do it the better. When I’m thinking up a film, character is the most important thing by miles – without that you may as well just write an essay. So I always write a lot about the worlds of the characters before I begin anything.
What’s the best thing about what you do?
The best thing is that you just look at everything quite clearly beyond what its surface appears to be. You have to x-ray everything, and everything and everyone suddenly becomes very interesting.
And the worst thing?
See above.
How did you get into it?
I was living out in a warehouse in Seven Sisters and there was a boy living there who was doing film at the London College of Communication. He’d sit in his room writing scripts and I was massively jealous of him. At the time I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I suddenly thought “if I’m so jealous of what he’s doing, I should just go and do it.”
What’s been the biggest achievement in your career so far?
Managing to convince the London College Communication to let me on the course.
Where do you go from here, career-wise?
I really want to go to and study at the National Film and Television School.
Any advice for someone trying to get into filmmaking?
Just do it, don’t faff around. Go and study film-making and watch as many films as you can. Don’t try and be a runner at a production company and hope someone hands you the camera. Don’t listen to people who are pretentious, don’t be pretentious and don’t treat anyone as anything more or less than a shitting, pissing, human being who makes love and makes mistakes and gets hurt.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a car designer. My dream was to go on Clarkson and drive one of those glossy red Ferraris with magnolia leather interiors. I used to sit around with felt tip pens, drawing cars with big fat spoilers and elevated wheels.
Where do you look for inspiration?
Everywhere.
Which other artists do you look [up] to?
James Joyce, David Lynch, Derek Jarman, Chris Cunningham, the Monty Python crew, Kubrick, Elem Klimov, Stan Brakhage, Jan Svankmeijer, Chris Marker, Shakespeare, Ginsberg, Aphex Twin, Henry David Thoreau (who isn’t really an artist, but who is my hero), Roald Dahl, Jean Paul Sartre, Magritte, Andreas Gursky, Egon Schiele, Ricky Gervais.
What constitutes a successful work, for you?
Something which you love but cannot easily to explain why you love.
Mysteries of The Supernatural will soon be available for viewing on Youtube.