Director Statement: Sat in the shed with a temperature, sweating my tits off and slightly delirious from contracting covid; Happy Meat suddenly popped into my head as an almost fully-formed idea. I knew this was a rarity, so threw everything at it to make this for my debut short film.

Cut to the next year, trying to balance working full-time as a Location Manager, supporting my wife and three children in the day to day craziness of life, trying to find funding from various council bodies and getting absolutely nowhere; I finally decided to just take a gamble on it and remortgage the house to raise money for the film.

I knew I could also pull in a lot of favours, having worked in the world of film and TV industry in the North of England, for the last decade. And on top of an incredible cast and crew, we had amazing support from friends and family. For which, I am eternally grateful.

As a story, ’Happy Meat’ is a critique on the toxic cultures of capitalism and the unchecked exponential growth of big-tech and Pharma. That something as environmentally friendly and morally positive as vegan meat, still has the potential to be exploited. And within this subject-matter, the film delivers a pretty bleak message, with a dose of black-comedy to make it palpable.

Sitting here today, finally sending it out to the world, I feel proud that Happy Meat does what I originally set out to do. And although I’ve seen it a thousand times, I’m still laughing at some of the performances. Which is a good sign I think

My hope with this short film is that it gets investment for a feature version. The world, characters and subject matter has so much to more to explore. But for now I’m just going to enjoy the process of sharing it