Carolina Giammetta

Ok, so this first question has a bit long-winded answer but it’s totally how I got here, so thought it would be good to put down!

I’m 2nd generation Italian brought up in Nottingham. My parents could barely speak English never mind try to get me involved in extracurricular activities. I remember putting on my own productions of Grease & Wizard of Oz at primary school, which I designed, directed and performed in as well as operating the music & lights! I asked if we could do something other than the nativity play and they said if I wanted to do it…. just do it yourself.  I still can’t believe the school let me do that at the age of 10 years old. At secondary school I was really lucky to have an amazing drama teacher who told me about the drama groups in Nottingham. When Central Studios was built in Nottingham, they set up The Central Junior TV Workshop (now the TV Workshop). The idea was that they had a pool of kids to cast children’s shows that were being made there, rather than having to go to stage schools. Loads of kids auditioned for it and I was lucky enough to be one of the original 25 that started the founder group. We met twice a week and put on theatre shows and worked on a lot of TV shows, like Murphy’s Mob, Dramarama, Luna, etc. During one session a producer called Peter Murphy from Zenith North came along and asked us if we could have our own TV show what would it be? We came up with a show called Your Mother Wouldn’t Like it (named after a designer label of someone’s dad’s shirt I think). Six of us were picked out of the group to work with the writing team on it. I remember seeing one of my first sketches filmed and broadcasted and it was amazing but I also remember thinking it wasn’t quite how I saw it.

After that I wrote two screenplays/dramaramas for the Central TV writing competition and won it both years that it ran. This gave me a huge amount of confidence as my English was terrible at school, I was dyslexic, in bottom set English and my vocabulary was really poor as my parents didn’t really speak English.  However, when I wrote my scripts, script editors from Central Studios would type them up and sort out all the mistakes. Both scripts were produced on stage and I remember seeing how they had been directed and again it not being how I imagined.

The good thing was that I got moved into top set English, which led to getting onto a A-level English & Drama course and from the money I earned, I paid someone to spell check my next script, bought a moped and a washing machine for my mum & dad. My writing is still shocking but I know how to tell a story and drive a motorbike! 

Jump forward to three years at drama school training as an actress. We did an exchange with the directors at NFTS, them learning how to work with actors, us learning how to work on set. I already knew a lot from being in TV shows as a kid, and my love for working with the camera came back and grew stronger. As an actress I worked mainly in TV & Film with some incredible directors who still inspire me today. From those early days I knew that if I wanted to make anything happen I had to do it myself, there was no point waiting for someone to give me a break or get me a job, I had to go out there and make it happen, create my own work, make my own contacts. As an actress I knew what directors did, that got the best out of me and what the ones did that got the worst. I remember doing table script reads before a job and then when the film/TV show came out it wasn’t always how I imagined, just like when I was younger. 

I started writing plays to perform in so I could work on stage again. I got together with a group of ex-drama school graduates and set up ART THRESHOLD with an ex-drama school teacher which was a non-profit theatre collaborative working out of a make shift theatre in Paddington. We were broken into and a lot of the equipment that some theatres had donated to us was stolen, so Rufus Norris (then an actor) and I both directed our first plays there to bring extra funds. We loved it and Rufus gave up acting and continued directing (now Artistic Director of The National Theatre). But for me screen was more exciting, so I carried on trying to work as an actress and doing a lot of teaching on the side, as well as working as a fitness instructor. I always thought I didn’t know enough to direct my own short, so I co-directed my first ‘zero budget’ 2- to 3-minute shorts with another director and I got the bug! I remember bringing HD CAM tapes home and putting them in my safe like they were blocks of gold. Those early shorts did really well at film festivals. They were really short, didn’t look great at all but they had a voice behind them. I guess it was just me playing around with ideas. I went on to get commissions from UK Film Council (now BFI) and then Film London.

I got the same buzz directing my first commissioned short as I did putting on Grease when I was 10 years old because they both came out as I saw them. So maybe it was always something I wanted to do I just didn’t know it till years later. Ironically, I finally stopped paying my Spotlight subscription and gave up my acting agent a few days ago.