With no film training behind him he is a self taught film maker with a drive built on passion.Stephen has made six short films. The first two of which he made entirely with his own money that he Produced, Directed, Shot, Edited, Scored and starred in, one of which was shown at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival 2003.

Based on the strength of these first films Stephen was awarded the Screen West Midlands/UK Film Council - Digital Shorts scheme for which he was assigned a production company to work with - Antidote Productions. The project: Strive. Boasting a location breakdown of eight separate locations including a hospital, interior passenger Jet, nightclub, sunset beach and a 3,500 full Athletics Stadium - Strive is an action packed mini-feature crammed into just ten minutes!

After Strive came Thr3e. ‘Brummiewood’ (as the scheme is titled) is the chance for graduating students of the Birmingham School of Acting to act for the screen in a professional environment with an established Director to help them gain an awareness of the world they are to venture into. These films were produced by BAFTA award winning production company DREAMFINDER productions. ‘’As a film maker you were presented with immense restrictions. Your cast were chosen for you and your locations were restricted as the film had to be shot in an eleven hour window and there was no budget other than for the crew being paid.’’ Writing and Directing had to be tight and swift and meet all of the criteria,

In 2007 he returned for a best of brummiewood and scripted and directed open call, a short action film involving hummers, a knife fight and gun play. Shortly after he directed some films for fifth gear on channel five and after this went on to write, direct, produce and edit Tomb Raider Ascension a lara croft fanfilm starring anna tyrie.

Stephens style is slick, fast and he manages to produce expensive looking product for and from nothing.

In may 2007 stephen entered pre-production on a fan film based on the popular videogame and movie franchise Tomb Raider here he gives some insight into why he attempted such an ambitious non-profit making project.

From the first Tomb Raider release on the Playstation in 1997, I was a huge fan of the franchise and followed the games religiously for a number of years. Completing the first three games four or five times. I was a massive fan of the games and I knew after playing the first one that we were seeing a new pop culture iconic character that was going to be around forever, in the tradition of any comic book hero or James Bond even.

Whilst working with Anna Tyrie on a previous film I was making, I felt she could handle the physical demands of playing a strong female character and it appeared that she was extremely comfortable firing a weapon. As pre-production went on for the short action film entitled ‘Open Call’, various people training her for the role kept calling her Lara, I dismissed this until I got to the edit and Nat from Aquila pointed out in some of the shots that she had the ‘look’ of Lara Croft and from there we began toying with the idea of doing a Tomb Raider fan film.

As a huge fan of fan films but never really having any reason to make one I started to think about how I would go about structuring such a film with no money to be made from it and no money to make it with. So why do it?

Firstly I am a big fan of mainstream action movies, they are the type of films I want to make eventually. They are the type of films I love. So any reason to make such a film I was going to leap at. Of course I already had a love for the Tomb Raider franchise and felt that outside the realm of the videogame world Lara’s cinematic life had gone a little cold ‘Cradle of Life’ in 2003 and I wanted to ignite a little spark again in peoples minds, reminding them that there is a live action Lara Croft story to be told still. I had recently seen Batman Begins and was starting to take in the reactions from films like this and Casino Royale, that audiences want to see where these iconic figures of popular culture actually come from. Characters like Batman and James Bond all have a beginning and it feels like audiences are really going for that.

With Anna already looking like a young Lara Croft it led me to start writing and exploring Lara’s backstory to show where this character had come from, what drives her and why she is who she is. After writing half of the script I started to scout locations to see if this could actually be possible and when two key locations offered their services (Patshull Hall for Croft Manor and Clearwell Caves for the main action scenes) I completed the script and started to go into pre-production, casting and Anna’s training for the role. One thing I knew we had in our favour that not a lot of other fanfilms had is that we are professional film makers/producers each with having some sort of experience working in the industry and this seemed like an exciting project that was too good to pass up on. With no financial backing we knew that we had to fund it ourselves and for sheer love of film making and a really exciting script I thought what the hell and went and made it!