'Love and Hate In Nazi Germany' Book Commercial

  • Jonathan Knowles
  • Gavin Edson

I was hired by USA Today Bestseller Ryan Armstrong (LM Vintage Publishers) to produce and direct the commercial for his acclaimed independent WW2 novel. It was a reasonable but fairly small budget so I covered the art department myself on top of my directing and producing duties. I sourced all the costumes/props and even created the Jewish patches myself from scratch because they are impossible to buy. I'm fairly happy with how this turned out. The only element which bothers me is the location - due to the nature of what we were shooting, our timeframe and our lack of budget, the council understandably rejected our plans to shoot somewhere more appropriate. However, I think the trailer is still cinematic and very well performed by the cast. We later cut this into a short film and it went on to feature as a part of Jersey Shore Film Festival, Västerås Film Festival, Berlin Flash Film Festival, and 60-Second International Film Festival at BFI Southbank.