Draft:The Fence (2022 film)

The Fence (2022 Film)
The Fence is a British comedy crime drama set in the English city of Bristol during the early 1980's about Stephen Knight, a young man attempting to track down his stolen motorbike. It is based on a 2018 short film of the same name that was popular on YouTube.

Production
Principle photography took place across August and September 2021 with the vast majority of the shoot being filmed on location in South Bristol with a short stint of filming taking place in the Moreton-in-Marsh area of the Cotswolds. The film received a theatrical release on September 2022 with Showcase Cinemas and sustained an 8-week run. The film was later picked up by Cineworld and Scott Cinemas before being signed to Vertigo Releasing who obtained the UK online distribution rights. The film is a low budget, independent production and the directorial debut of William Stone.

Original Short Film (2018)
The Fence was originally a short film created by William Stone as part of his film degree at Bournemouth University. Based on a true story from his father's childhood it too follows a working class boy trying to recover his stolen motorcycle. The short film has a running time of 19 minutes and 41 seconds and was shot during the second week of March 2017 in the English city of Salisbury.

The short film was later uploaded to YouTube on June 5th 2018 on the Youtube channel The Film Graduates. On July 5th 2018 the views jumped from approximately 1,000 to 6,000 before the film was taken down due to a music licensing strike. The film remained unavailable for 21 days until an agreement was reached with the record company to reinstate the video on July 27th. On August 3rd 2018 the film received 53,000 views in a single day and continued to gain views until eventually hitting the 1,000,000 mark on November 28th 2018. As of late 2023 the video has nearly 5,000,000 views making it one of the most watched short films on YouTube.

Reception & Awards
The feature film received mostly positive reviews by both audiences and critics with it receiving three out of five stars from The Guardian and being quoted as having "A screenplay that oozes charm" as well as "A great piece of retro cinema" and being "Ambitious, creative, and funny." As of August 2023 the film has an IMDB rating of 6.5 (unweighted 7.3) and a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 95%.

The film received four BIFA long list selections in 2022 for Music Supervision, Debut Screenwriter, Breakthrough Performance and the Raindance Discovery Award. It was also nominated for Best Scripted at the 2023 Royal Television Society West Awards alongside Stephen Merchant's BBC show The Outlaws.