James Peaty’s short film “APPRAISAL” was the winner of “Best Performances” at the Action/Thriller Festival in February 2017.

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

James Peaty: My main motivation for making the film was to test myself in relation to how I work with actors. In the main, I hadn’t worked with the cast before, which was exciting, but quite scary. I also threw away a lot of what I’d relied on in other shorts I’d made – rehearsal, over planning etc – and just let the performances emerge as we did them. I was also keen on directing the long dialogue scene which is the centrepiece of the film, to try and give it shape and momentum. It was longer on the page and we moved some bits around in the edit, but I think we managed to achieve what we set out to do.

MT:…