Set and shot in Watershed's very own city of Bristol, 8 Minutes Idle is a darkly humorous look at life in a call centre, where a mere 480 seconds of downtime could lead to dismissal. The hapless Dan, thrown out of his family home comes up with the brainwave of secretly moving in, along with his cat, to the call centre where he works. Add in office romance, the unwanted attentions of his boss, and a cast of oddballs, and life soon gets a lot more complicated.

Bristol producer Sarah Cox is joined by fellow Bristolian and author of the book, Matt Thorne (who also wrote the screen adaptation), Director Mark Simon Hewis, Director of Photography Sarah Bartles-Smith and Montserrat Lombard, who plays the character of Dan's boss Alice.

They talk to Bristol Culture's Martin Booth about book adaptations, shooting on a low budget, locations and locals and how the film only just made it to screen thanks to a last-minute Kickstarter.com campaign.

The film was funded through the iFeatures scheme and funded by South West Screen (now Creative England) and Bristol City Council. iFeatures offered funding of £300,000 for films about or shot in Bristol. 8 Minutes Idle is the third film released as part of the scheme, the other two being In the Dark Half and Flying Blind.

Posted on Fri 14 Feb 2014.

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