John McPhail

Born in Glasgow, John McPhail is a Scottish movie director, screenwriter and editor. He graduated with expertise in cinematography from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He worked as an assistant camera operator for the first few years of his career with his project being the space sci-fi film “Battlestar Galactica: By Your Command” (2008). He also shot the sixth season of BBC TV’s nine-season series “Waterloo Road” (2006) and Zam Salim’s film “Up There” (2012) before starting his own production house, Worrying Drake Productions, in 2013. The company’s first set of productions was a trilogy of short comedy films of ten to fifteen minutes, all directed and written by McPhail. The movies were produced by Andrew Lanni and starred Tyler Collins as the lead actor, both of whom were close acquaintances of McPhail from college.

The trilogy’s first installment, “Notes” (2013) focused on two roommates who write post-it notes to each other through which they gradually develop a romantic relationship. It was succeeded by “V for Visa” (2013) and “Steve and Doug’s Big Holy Adventure” (2014). Notes and V for Visa won him the Best Director awards at the Ayr International and the Bootleg Film Festivals respectively. His next three-minute short film “Just Say Hi” (2013) presented a love story between a boy and a girl who meet on a bus daily. The film was highly lauded by the viewers and screened in more than a hundred cities in over twenty-three countries by the Tres Court International Film Festival. It was nominated for seven awards at the Cluj Comedy Film Festival and bagged three of them, including the best film, supporting actress and background score.

For his next film “Where Do We Go from Here?” (2014) which was his first feature production, McPhail collected over ten thousand pounds through crowdfunding. He directed the movie in sixteen days in the summer of 2014, traveling all across Scotland for shooting. The film was nominated for five awards at various film festivals including those for best film, director, comedy, editing and People’s Choice award, out of which it won four. McPhail collaborated with Naysun Alae-Carew and Nicholas Crum to direct their production “Anna and the Apocalypse” (2017), starring Ella Hunt Ella Hunt is an English actress and singer, who is >> Read More... . The film revolves around the central character of Anna and how she and her friends struggle to survive during a zombie apocalypse on Christmas. It was nominated for the best feature film and best actress (Ella Hunt) at the British Academy Scotland Awards in 2018.