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Double Decaff and a Digital Film Course Please

Coffee drinkers in Cumbria with filmmaking interests can now satisfy both their passions in one cosy cafe.

The Nest is a cafe run by Steve Wharton in Rawlinson Street in Barrow in Furness, but this is a cafe with distiction from the rest. Menus chalked on the boards are not for mocca, mountain kenyan or columbian, but for filmmaking courses. You can forgo a burger and chips for a very tasty video camera workshop costing just £60. If you are after something lighter, for starters you can taste an introduction to screenwriting for just £40.

FLEDGLING MEDIA 

The Nest cafe is a fledgling business in more ways than one, because Wharton is the leading light in the Fledgeling Media Company. He also teaches screenwriting at Lancaster University, but he's a long-time participant in low budget filmmaking in Cumbria. In 1997 he helped found The Gatherers, Barrow's first digital filmmaking group and project-managed for Shoreline, another local film company.

Fledgling trains people in low budget filmmaking and also makes films in partnership with local companies and organisations, school and community projects. Whorton says "Demand for film and video skills is growing apace, from ordinary people now that there is so much easy-to-use digital technology to film with, including mobile phones."

BUSKING IT 

Whorton's screenwriting courses cover character development, make use of case-studies exercises using case-studies, creating dialogue linked to character and three-act structures. Aside from screenwriting and training he's also planning a full feature with a £10,000 budget. It's about the adventures of a busker in both Poland and Britain.

The Nest cafe, complete with cyber centre in the back-end, becomes a training centre at weekends, with a bookshop opening downstairs quite soon.The proprietor has few concerns that with his teaching and training interests as well, he might spread himself too thin.

“When I told friends about the coffee bar idea, many of them thought I’d gone crazy and was biting off too much.However, to support my studies in Carlisle I’d worked in café bars and restaurants, moving into management and eventually ended up a manager for the new Costa Coffee stores in Cumbria.”

Whorton believes the future for filmmaking in Cumbria is bright.with increasing demand for access from the public.

“There is demand round here for the courses from the general public. Making short films with a group of friends is going to be the next interest. There are people out there wanting to know how to make films; films for instructional videos, or for family documentaries they have decided to make.

“Everyone has their own story to tell. In the same way we had vanity publishing and self publishing, it is really going that way with films as well.”