Company Director of Coffee Films

Established as an experimental short film collective playing with camcorders in 1996, Coffee Films incorporated in 2003 and within a year was recognised as one of Europe's most exciting young production companies.

As we enter our second decade we're continuing to develop unique and exciting short concepts with fresh young talent, whilst developing a slate of documentaries alongside some of the most respected names in the wildlife, music and current affairs industries. We're looking forward to continuing to create outstanding and independent thinking films for another 10 years, still motivated by the words of Francis Ford Coppola that set us on our way;

"One day some little fat girl in Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart, and make a beautiful film with her little father's camera corder and for once the so called professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an artform."

Steve has always felt very strongly that young film talent doesn't get anywhere near enough real world advice or guidance, they come into the industry with very skewed perspectives of how it is and invariably disappear into dull office jobs within a few months as a result.

Attendees will hear him talk about the realities of just how much effort, time, sacrifice and personal investment it takes to get into the kind of film making most young people want to; just like the music industry he finds most young people feel that if they have reasonable talent it's just a matter of waiting for Warner Brothers to call rather than the somewhat grimmer reality of many years of hard graft, doing jobs you don't want to and probably ending up in plenty of debt before you get that dream career. He's happy to use himself as a case study and will be mixing in a few more recognisable examples as well.