History on record

JEANIE Finlay could have made her latest film, featuring the customers and staff of a vinyl record shop, anywhere in the world. But the award-winning documentary portrait director, who has worked in Japan and the States, decided to zoom in on her home town of Stockton.

Survivor: Tom Butchart outside his shop Sound It Out, in Stockton

In a small shop on a small street just three miles away from where she grew up, she struck gold. From the moment her camera started rolling inside Sound It Out, the last surviving independent record shop in Teesside, Jeanie knew this was going to be something special.

Critics and audiences seem to agree. From Tom Butchart, the shop’s owner, to the succession of vinyl addicts who pour out their hearts about who they are and the irreplaceable role music plays in their lives, the characters who inhabit this charming film have touched people’s hearts.

Following its premiere at the prestigious South by South West American film festival, Sound it Out, Finlay’s fourth film, was an instant hit in the States. The New York Times described it as “like a mint pressing in a bargain bin, a rare find”.

The next-to-no-budget movie was also awarded the Cinema Versa Audience Award at the Leeds International Film Festival last month.

“Wondrous and funny,” said the Daily Telegraph, “Lovely, intimate, funny-sad,” said the Independent.

Finlay’s hand-held, casually intimate camera style, focusing on the day-to-day goings-on in the shop, shines a light on a cultural bright spot in the midst of a bleak, recession-hit landscape, full of charity shops, pound stores and windows with Everything Must Go posters.

Despite the fact more than 300 independent record stores have shut in the UK over the past ten years, Tom’s shop manages to keep going.

Finlay, who attended Cleveland College of Art and Design before studying fine art at Nottingham, got the idea for the film when she mentioned to Tom, an old schoolfriend, that she had sold her vinyl record collection to help pay for her wedding. His passionate outburst stunned her.

“Tom went mad and said ‘I can’t believe you would do this’. He was horrified. I decided there was a real story to tell about Tom’s shop, a story about so much more than vinyl.

Records hold memories.”

She could have made a film about this subject anywhere in the world, she says: “But I wanted to make a film in Stockton.” Although she describes it as “like Middlesbrough, only less glamorous” and “like the annoying member of the family you don’t want anyone else to criticise”, she adds: “I love it, I miss it. It’s the place where I grew up.”

Finlay, who was named one of the New Faces of Film by The Guardian this year and a Star of Tomorrow by Screen International, feels sad about what has happened to the high street. “It has declined since I moved away. The recession has hit hard, as it has everywhere. But I’ve still got a lot of affection for the place,.” she says.

In the film, Tom fondly describes it as a hard town, where he sells hard music to hard characters.

“Tom’s shop is unique. I was struck by his devotion to customers and their devotion to him,” says Finlay.

“I challenge you to go into that shop and not come out with something. Tom is like a pusher for music,” she laughs.

“While larger chains have been decimated by digital music, the success of Tom’s shop is down to his passion, which is infectious.”

There are obvious similarities with the Nick Hornby novel and the film, starring John Cusack, but Finlay says: “This is a world away from the snootiness of High Fidelity. Everyone is welcome and there is no judgment about what particular musical taste you have.”

Mark comes in from the pub and sings the record he wants until Tom identifies it. Then there is cerebral palsy sufferer Shane, a middle- aged B&Q employee and obsessive Status Quo fan who has seen the band live more than 300 times and claims: “There is nothing better than playing Quo solid for a week.” He plans to be buried in a coffin built from his melted-down record collection: “He is warm, funny, erudite, hilarious.” says Finlay.

Sam and Gareth are two incredibly articulate teenage metalheads who confess that, if it wasn’t for buying records, they’d have killed themselves long ago. Dance music duo Frankey and John-boy look like shaven-headed delinquents but Finlay hopes the film will challenge viewers’ preconceptions: “When I was a kid, I used to be scared of boys like them. Then you find they are sweet lads who are nice to their mums.”

For many of the customers, the store, which houses more than 70,000 albums, provides a cultural haven, somewhere they can escape day-to-day drudgery and meet like-minded souls.

Finlay’s film, which she shot over 19 months, is non-judgmental. She listens to her subjects, then lets the story tell itself. “I am always amazed people tell me the stories they do. I am asking them about their record collection and they tell me about their lives,” she says.

HAVING studied photography and video installations at art college, she fell into filmmaking accidentally. “I loved talking to the people I was photographing, it was more interesting.

I found the conversations I was having became the work.”

She doesn’t want to make blockbusters, she says, just films that touch people. But she believes big stories are to be found in small, everyday places.

“I collect stories like Tom collects records,” she says.

Now in her 30s, she was a painfully shy teenager and finds being behind the camera a liberating experience. “You get to ask all those questions you never would in polite conversation. I feel like an introvert doing an extrovert’s job,” she says.

She understands the passion for music that drives so many of the characters in Sound it Out. “I was briefly a Goth and into music, which helped me find out who I was. It’s a lifelong passion.”

One of her first films was about Goths and she made an award-winning feature about teenagers in their bedrooms for BBC 4. I ask if she is drawn to marginal characters: “I look for stories I can empathise with,” she says.

Finlay, who describes herself as “broke”, produced Sound it Out on a whim while in discussions about another film. “I was in meetings and thought, ‘This is not filmmaking’. And so she headed to Stockton with two cameras and a sound kit.

“I was totally free,” she says.

Her novel way of financing the film was through a “crowd funding” website, where members of the public donate money, as you would for a sponsored swim. Some gave $5, others, such as a soldier from Nashville serving in Iraq, donated $2,000.

“His brother works in a record pressing plant in Nashville. He liked the idea of a record his brother pressed being sold in Tom’s shop,” she says.

Crowd unding raised $15,000 and the film was cofunded by the British Film Institute. “I am friends with a lot of American filmmakers who have no funding, they just get on with it. You don’t know what you’re making until you’ve made it.”

Married to horror filmmaker Steven Sheil, Finlay, who has a seven-year-old daughter, is currently working on two feature documentaries with Met Films: The Great Hip Hop Hoax, about two British rappers who pretended they were American to get a record deal, and Orion, about a singer briefly marketed as Elvis.

“Making a feature film takes over my life. It’s not coal mining, but it is tough,” she says. The daughter of a nurse and life assurance worker, she says her parents are proud. “They are also a bit bemused”

Sound it Out, is being shown in Stockton this month and Tom will be there on the first night. Finlay is thrilled his shop recently won Stockton’s small business of the year award and she hopes the film will encourage people to shop there.

“You have to think hard about where you spend your money, spend it somewhere that counts. If the shop survives as a result of the film, that would be the best outcome,” she says.

• Sound It Out at the Arc, Stockton December 5, 16, 17. A Q&A with Tom Butchart will take place after December 5’s screening. Call 01642- 525199. sounditout.com, arconline.co.uk