Crew

		JIM GROOM – Director / Co-producer / Co-writer In the summer of 1976, Jim began his career in the film industry working for Rank Film Laboratories. Whilst with Rank Jim gained many valuable contacts with film production and post-production companies and it was in 1979 that he was offered the position of assistant editor with an independent post-production company. The editing experience gained gave Jim the confidence to start up his own post-production company in 1982. After three years he formed a new venture, this time heading both production and post-production. One of the most complex post-production projects Jim undertook was supervising the special photographic effects for Dave Clark’s musical, “TIME,” staged at London’s Dominion Theatre. For over a year Jim worked closely with Dave Clark as they completed the mammoth task in presenting Sir Laurence Olivier on stage in a ‘larger than life’ holographic image at over thirteen feet high! Jim’s first directing debut was for a British cinema trailer called DAY OF THE DEAD by George A. Romero. The original American trailer was rejected by the UK censors for being too graphic and they told the distributor only some of the images could stay, leaving too little for a sufficient cinema trailer. The UK distributor turned to Jim and he proposed shooting sequences with a cinema audience watching the few images the censor would allow. The end result was well received both in the UK and in America and the idea was utilised by George A Romero for his next film, CREEPSHOW. In fact, the idea was again utilised by the distributor for a cinema trailer and book launch for the film, FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, and again the UK distributor asked Jim to direct the special sequences. Always with a wish to direct feature films, Jim and his partner - producer Tim Dennison – independently raised the finance for their first feature film, REVENGE OF BILLY THE KID. Tim and Jim’s flair for providing high quality at low budget was employed to ‘line produce’ the horror thriller, BEYOND BEDLAM starring Elizabeth Hurley. Having completed ROOM 36, Jim is now looking ahead to directing his third feature film, ZOMBIE GOD SQUAD, a comedy-horror which is to begin filming next year.

		TIM DENNISON – Producer / Co-writer Tim has worked in the film industry since 1985. Starting as a runner, Tim worked on the feature film, DANCE WITH A STRANGER, directed by Mike Newell and on John MacKenzie's, THE INNOCENT. From this humble beginning, Tim went on to work as assistant director on such films as PERSONAL SERVICES for Terry Jones, MAX HEADROOM for Annabel Jenkel, WHETHERBY for David Hare, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS for Frank Oz and THE AMERICAN WAY for Maurice Phillips. In 1989, Tim, along with film editor Jim Groom, formed a film post-production company, Montage Films, servicing the majority of the UK independent distributors. During this period Tim also produced his first feature film, REVENGE OF BILLY THE KID, which was directed by Jim Groom and distributed by Medusa Pictures. Tim later acted as one of two line producers on the Elizabeth Hurley thriller, BEYOND BEDLAM. In 1995, Tim left Montage Films to focus solely on film production. Between 1997 and 1999 Tim, together with colleague Mark Leake, produced LIGHTHOUSE, a£1.3 million chiller funded by British Screen, The Arts Council and the international sales agent Winchester Entertainment. Along with producer, Peter La Terriere, Tim produced the £2.5 million feature film SILENT CRY for Little Wing Films. The film was sold internationally by Park Entertainment. Tim's recent film production, EVIL ALIENS, has recently secured international sales and will going on general release soon.

		DAVID READ – D.O.P. / Co-writer David met Jim Groom during their school years and a mutual passion for film-making flourished. Together, they were to make many super 8mm films, including one which was an hour long featurette. David’s first entry into the film industry was working as a film librarian at British Movietonews who, at the time, were still prolifically producing newsreels. It was while at Movietonews that David got his first taste of working with movie cameras, becoming a camera assistant for Movietonews’ production of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s Royal Wedding. David left Movietonews to become an assistant cameraman with the National Coal Board Film Unit in 1980. The unit, which was one of the last great industrial film units, had a reputation for excellence and has been associated with such talents as Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz. David was to work on many training and safety films as well as the very popular, ‘Mining Review’, a regular newsreel for the coal industry. It was here that he was first given the opportunity of film lighting. Leaving the NCB film Unit in the early 1980’s, David became freelance camera assistant and worked on numerous film and television productions including the feature films BRAZIL, DANCE WITH A STRANGER, CHAMPIONS and ANOTHER COUNTRY. All the time David had been working to becoming a Director of Photography in his own right and first started working as a Lighting Cameraman/DOP in the late eighties on such television shows as NEWSNIGHT, WORLD IN ACTION and EQUINOX. It was to be the film, REVENGE OF BILLY THE KID that was David’s debut of feature film lighting, working with his long time acquaintance Jim Groom who directed and cowrote ‘Billy’. Since then David has worked on many television productions from FAMILY AFFAIRS to documentaries for the Discovery Channel such as THE GILDERS CLUB. With ROOM 36 David has teamed up again with Jim Groom again not only as Director of Photography but as co-screen writer as well.

		SCOTT BENZIE – Music Composer Scott began by writing music for the theatre including music for the TROJAN WARS, THE CHERRY ORCHARD and the musical production, AGONY. After his success here, Scott began to realise his true forte, writing and composing music for films starting with short dramas such as THICKER THAN WATER (Simon Ellis) which won best film at the British Short Film Festival and THE PROMISE (Steve Friendship) which won the Flagstaff award at the Arizona film festival. Scott has written and composed the music to several feature films 3 KINGS (Shaun Mosley), DE’JAVU (Biju Viswanath) and has recently finished the score for Jim Groom’s ROOM 36 which was performed by the Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra at Sony Music Studios London and engineered by Mike Ross-Trevor. At the moment he is writing the score for SHOOT OUT (Maikl Hap) a feature film that satirises film-making.