Written by Thomas Leveritt and directed by David Mackenzie (Perfect Sense, Hallam Foe, Young Adam), You Instead is rock and roll love story filmed entirely on location during the unique atmosphere of Scotland’s biggest music festival: T in the Park.

“When I first read the script I thought there was a really interesting opportunity to do something that seemed like great fun and the idea of trying to capture the crazy pleasures of a big summer music festival was something that was very appealing.  It was going to be a huge challenge to try to incorporate the depth and business of this sort of event, giving it the authenticity that it demands, and we decided the best thing to do was to shoot it entirely at a music festival rather than try to reconstruct it. So very quickly we found ourselves with the not inconsiderable challenge of shooting a film in the length of time the festival ran.

This had a huge impact on the way that the film was energised and the way that we shot it because it’s all pretty much for real. Generally, I like to have the possibility of the unexpected rather than everything being pre-visualised and the entire shoot was like that. This film feels like modern film making in so many ways and I found it an incredibly refreshing experience”. – David Mackenzie, Director, You Instead

Shot during the festival in just five days in July 2010, the entire cast, crew and extras stayed on site throughout, camping backstage in a specially designed marquee that provided shelter to over 80 tents.

With most of the scenes shot on handheld cameras surrounded by thousands of festival goers, both the crew and the actors were constantly reacting to their surroundings and to add extra pressure to the shoot, the film had to be edited daily on site due to the fact that scenes couldn’t be redone after the festival had finished. However, despite the challenges that filming at Scotland's largest music festival presented, as producer Gillian Berrie describes, the scope and scale of one of the UK’s largest festivals provided them with a unique opportunity to realise the ambition of Thomas Leveritt’s script…

“To make a film like this in any other way would have meant building an entire festival site, stages, tents, a fairground with a huge ferris wheel, bars, shops and stalls, tens of thousands of tents and of course hiring a hundred thousand extras. T in the Park provided all of this – fifty million dollars of production values and all we needed to do was turn up and roll the cameras”.

The film stars Luke Treadaway (Brothers of the Head, Clash of the Titans) as Adam, one half of globally successful duo The Make. Arriving at T in the Park for his gig, during an impromptu backstage fight, Adam finds himself accidentally handcuffed to punky girl-band The Dirty Pink’s leader Morello played by Natalia Tena (Mrs Henderson Presents, Harry Potter) and they have to spend the following 24 hours inseparably joined together.

You Instead’s cast also includes Ruta Gedmintas (Lip Service), Sophie Wu (Kick Ass), Gavin Mitchell (Still Game) and Alastair Mackenzie (Perfect Sense).

Sigma Films – the company behind You Instead – was set-up by David Mackenzie, Gillian Berrie and actor Alastair Mackenzie in 1997. It’s one of Scotland’s most prolific film companies and has released critically acclaimed films such as Hallam Foe and Young Adam.

You Instead received funding through BBC Films as well as investment from Creative Scotland. It goes on general release in the UK from the 16 September 2011.

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