1: Five directors who inspired you on your way to becoming a filmmaker.

Martin Scorsese

Francis Coppola

Steven Spielberg

Ridley Scott

John Carpenter

2: Five lessons you learned when you first started out as a screenwriter/director.

Always stick to the storyboards/shotlist or you won’t make your day.

Cast really good actors and half your job is done.

Do a bunch of screenwriting courses. It WILL be worth it.

Take acting classes. It WILL be worth it.

If you TRULY love cinema and dedicate thousands of ours to it and believe in yourself enough, then you will make a good film.

3: Five freaky creature features you still rate very highly.

The Thing

Alien

Jaws

An American Werewolf in London

Tremors

4: Five people and their role in your STING team you’d like to give a shout out to.

Richard Taylor (Weta) - working with him and Weta was a dream come true and he was LOVELY!

Brad Shield - DOP (first time one of my films has looked like a Spielberg or Fincher movie).

Fiona Donovan - Genius designer. Elevated the material hugely.

E.J. (my daughter) - she did all the ‘Charlotte drawings’ and inspired the Charlotte character (without her there would be no heart to my film).

Jamie Hilton - All the producers were FANTASTIC but Jamie really pushed me to go further (artistically) than I have before on this one.

5: Five actors you’d love to work with.

Tom Hardy

Ryan Gosling

Emily Blunt

Travis Fimmel

Jermaine Fowler (again)