ABSTRACT
One drizzly evening in October 2001, I walked up a red carpet outside the UGC cinema on Broad Street in Birmingham. People walked past heading back to the suburbs after work, bewildered as to why they had to step over a red carpet and what exactly was going on. Inside the cinema a gang of bemused teenagers in tracksuits were buying tickets for American Pie 2. I stared up at the cinema, which was covered in posters for Large—my first film. The first film ever to be shot and set entirely in Birmingham. With no incentive given to shoot locally and all of the finance coming from outside of the region, we spent one million pounds of the budget in the city. It was conceived as a proudly regional film with locations including the newly redeveloped Brindleyplace and Broad Street.
