A FORMER Glasgow bouncer who spent 10 years making his own gangland drama with no filmmaking experience says his hit series has “opened the door” to other independent creatives after its roaring success.
Anton O’Donnell came up with the idea for the six-episode pilot Concrete Jungle, which aired on STV earlier this year, as he worked on the doors of bars on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, talking with his colleagues about other hit shows like The Wire and The Sopranos.
The “gritty” gangland drama tells the story of emerging Glasgow gangster Jamie McGregor, who when double-crossed in a drug deal, must use any means necessary to repay a huge debt.
O’Donnell said he spent all his free time, and sometimes even while working on the doors, writing his screenplay, which took around two years to complete.
The amateur filmmaker said that after he completed the script, he sent it to a few competitions, but after getting nowhere with it he then decided he would film the series from scratch by himself.
“I sent it into the BBC writers' room competition, and a Channel 4 competition, and when I got the replies to say, ‘thanks, you've been unsuccessful on this occasion,’ I was like, ‘no, I'm not letting this one go’,” O’Donnell said.
“Like I do believe in this one.”
Having zero experience in the filmmaking industry didn’t stop O’Donnell from pursuing his “passion project” which he said he was just “obsessed” with and struck an unlikely creative partnership with cinematographer Bryan McIntyre, after putting an advert up on Gumtree.
After taking a week off work to shoot the first episode together, the pair realised that to fulfil O’Donnell’s creative ambition, they would need to enlist more people to get involved with the project, so co-director and editor, Graeme Watt, was quickly involved too.
“Graeme would do the lights. Brian would do the sound. Then Graeme would do the camera. I would do the sound, holding the boom mics and all that stuff,” O’Donnell joked, retelling some of the chaotic beginnings of their first couple of shoots.
Shooting over almost a decade did have its challenges with continuity between filming being one of them, O’Donnell made sure he was “all over it” so that the scenes blended perfectly despite, in some cases, being shot months apart.
“I was all over the continuity in terms of clothing and things like that, but there were challenges because Ryan, who's in the opening scene, had to grow his hair long for a movie that he was in.
“So, he turned up with this long hair and I'm going ‘Oh my, what will I do’, so we had to get him a beanie cap in that opening scene in the robbery.
“So, he's wearing a beanie cap because he's got long hair, and he didn't have long hair in the rest of the episode.
O’Donnell added: “Sometimes you just have to kind of think fast, and then there's actually scenes that get cut out because, like my weight, my weight was just kind of jumping all over the place.
“I was pretty consistent, but some scenes I'm a wee bit heavier, but there were a couple of scenes where I was unwell, and I lost a ton of weight and I actually had to cut those scenes out of the show, because it was so obvious I'd lost so much weight.”
The trio spent around eight years shooting the series intermittently with a budget of only around £5000, with most of the funding coming out of O’Donnell’s pocket.
Concrete Jungle spent 10 weeks in the STV Player's most-watched list, claiming the number one spot when it aired back in March.
The broadcaster picked up the series following a chance encounter between STV’s Jonathan Tate and O’Donnell at the first-ever Screen Writers Festival last year after the Paisley-based filmmaker fielded a question to Iain Smith during a live Q&A.
O’Donnell said he was grilled by the legendary Hollywood producer after he asked: “How do I get it out there? How do I take it to the next level, because I believe in it.”
The exchange caught the eye of Tate, who then approached O’Donnell about the series during a break and asked him to send over the series, as he is a fan of crime dramas.
“As soon as I sent it over, he was like, ‘By the way, I absolutely love this’,” O’Donnell said.
“He said, ‘I'm not gonna lie to you, it's a bit of a gamble for us because we've never had anything this gritty before, but I've watched it, and I absolutely loved it’.”
O’Donnell said he was overwhelmed with the amount of support he has received since Concrete Jungle aired on the STV Player.
“I honestly can't even put it into any words, and I don't even think its sunk in yet,” he said.
The 39-year-old said that he believes that following the success of his series has helped “open the door” to other independent talent in Scotland.
O’Donnell added that Tate is a “huge champion” of Scottish talent and that he is pleased to see STV backing more grassroots productions.
“I've actually seen people who followed me on social media making comments to me saying, ‘you're setting the standard when it comes to filmmaking’ and then a couple of months later, because they're doing their own thing as well, they're saying that they've now agreed the deal to have their stuff showcased in STV.
“I think Concrete Jungle has opened the door for other people to get the stuff on there as well.”
O’Donnell said that he is now putting the final touches on his next pitch, which is to make Concrete Jungle's pilot into a full-fledged series or even a full-length feature film.
He will also be joining Tate this week at the inaugural Glasgow Telly Festival, where he is hoping to retell his story in a bid to inspire more people to “believe” in their own projects like he did.
