What is your name/age/job title? 

Benjamin Blaine, 34, filmmaker.

What one thing do you wish you had known at the start of your career that you know now? 

It’s easy to find an “if only” in almost every situation, but they never help. You didn’t. That’s why you’re where you are now. Life isn’t a blank page on which you write your story, it’s more like a hard drive full of rushes that you have to edit together – you’ve always got options but some things just didn’t happen and you have to get over it and tell the story with what you’ve got. 

If you could go back and give your younger self any practical advice, what would it be? 

Just because you can see that someone has a talent, if they don’t want to pursue it you can’t make them. 

If someone had told your 16-year-old self that you would be a successful director in your thirties, would have believed them? Or did you have other ambitions?

I’d have been surprised it could take so long but your concept of time is very different when you’re half my age. When I was 16 I was only starting to get interested in film and excited by its possibilities. I’d always seen myself more likely to go into the theatre, either as writer or actor, or into music but I don’t think I’d have been that astonished to find I am roughly who I am today. 

Is there an embarrassing episode from your past that you wish you could edit out?

I remember taking extreme umbrage at a very bad reader’s report for a fairly obscene film script I wrote about a wedding videographer. I was about 20 and thought it necessary to reply, pointing out all the mistakes they’d made. I’ve since been on the other end of those letters and I know that they never make you look right, only deluded. Far better to be wrong than deluded. 

Is there a single thing that you wish you’d had/known about when you started out? Something that has shaped the way you work today?

Wireless laptop screen sharing. It’s how my brother Chris and I write together. We tried all sorts. Sitting in different rooms means you only communicate via the script. Scripts aren’t that great at communicating anything because there’s so much you’re not allowed to put in. I’d write a draft, he’d angrily redraft it from scratch, I’d furiously re-redraft it and then we’d eventually get together and have a row and realise we’d both just misunderstood what the other meant. 

Writing in the room together compresses that process into a couple of sentences; it means every assumption and foggy corner is always questioned and explored before it settles on the page. However, actually writing side by side, there’s a tension over who has the keyboard and it’s a horribly rigid way of spending your time. With screen sharing we’re both able to sit at our laptops, still in the same room, but facing each other and facing the work and we can both type or talk as the inspiration takes us. 

Is there a project of which you are particularly proud? 

We’re currently editing our debut feature film, Nina Forever. It’s a stubborn, difficult, charming, messy, mildly obscene film about death. Though it has cinematic inspirations it is very unlike how films are supposed to be and after all these years of writing unconventionally I’m pleased our first feature is true to that spirit.

Ben will be sharing more insights during the speaker session, “Are We There Yet? The Trials, Techniques and Triumphs of Crowdfunding” at the 2013 Sargent-Disc BAFTA Filmmakers Market on 13 July 2013. Visit the BAFTA website to book tickets.

For more articles, jobs and opportunities, visit our Film hub.