In the director’s chair

Directing a movie is tough, especially if you’ve never taken a filmmaking class, but Ian Cunningham didn’t let that get in his way. The Mountain Brook resident and stay-at-home dad’s first short film, “The Bread and the Blood,” screened at Sidewalk Film Festival in August.

Cunningham wanted to be the next Steven Spielberg as a kid, but he never got the chance to study film. On the encouragement of a friend who was a screenwriter, Cunningham decided to pursue filmmaking as a hobby. He found a group of local filmmakers who have acted as both mentors and crewmembers.

The other filmmakers in the group have gone to film school, so they were able to teach Cunningham about writing, producing and editing. Cunningham also got hands-on experience by working on-set for other members’ projects.

“I’ve been learning in a very roundabout sort of way,” Cunningham said.

He started with short comedy sketches on YouTube, but in 2013 Cunningham decided to produce his first short film. He wrote the script for “The Bread and the Blood,” which he described as a “fantastical take” on a conversation he had as a preteen with his church’s rector. Cunningham shot the 11-minute film in one day and spent about four months editing it before he submitted it to Sidewalk.

Directing the short film was his favorite part of the process because there was an encouraging atmosphere on set. With a capable assistant producer handling the little details, Cunningham was able to focus on the big picture and his vision for the finished film.

“I had so many anxiety dreams leading up to it for months,” Cunningham said. “They stopped the second I did it. It was so much fun.”

The biggest frustrations in his first film experience were fundraising and sound editing. Cunningham said he was lucky to find actors to work for free and he raised about $800 to cover food for the set and other small expenses. He wants to improve his sound editing skills before his next project, however.

“Most people with festivals or the film community in general will forgive poor cinematography, [but] nobody will ever forgive poor sound quality. They’ll turn something off if it sounds odd,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham said his wife has been “extremely essential” in scriptwriting and postproduction editing, especially for his comedic scripts. His four-year-old daughter, Poppy, has also unexpectedly taken to being a director’s daughter. 

“She knows set etiquette. It’s very strange. She just turned four a couple weeks ago, and she already knows how to behave when cameras are on,” Cunningham said. “She’s made it a really easy hobby for me.”

“The Bread and the Blood” screened at Sidewalk Film Festival on Aug. 23 as part of the Alabama Shorts Block, and Cunningham is still submitting it to other festivals around the country. He is already at work on his next project, a documentary about the Veteran’s Day Parade in Birmingham, and is trying to raise money to produce a romantic short film called “Stick Around.” He’s hoping to collect enough to pay his actors and cover some of the documentary’s costs.

Filmmaking is a fulfilling hobby for Cunningham, but he doesn’t have any Hollywood aspirations. He loves being a father, and he wants to enjoy creating his films without bigger expectations.

“I derive a lot of joy from making things, but I don’t feel any pressure to reach a wide audience,” Cunningham said. “I would be happy if it turned into something, but right now just making them is enough for me.”