Maria Gray in a scene from Your Sin, filmed at York Theatre Royal
INDEPENDENT film director and screenwriter Miles Watts first met movement director, actress and voiceover artist Maria Gray while walking their dogs in Barton-le-Willows, near York.
Maria needed to make a show reel, calling on Miles’s filmmaking skills. “Maria mentioned she’d never made a feature film. We bonded together and set up Outward Films, agreeing to make a film with no budget,” says Miles, best known for his Zomblogalypse horror/comedy web series.
As the company’s profile puts it at mileswatts.com/work/outwardfilms: “Outward Films is a creative partnership dreamt up by writers and filmmakers Miles Watts and Oliver Semple and actor and writer Maria Gray. All three unsavoury characters reside near the hazy metropolis of York, UK.
“Between us, we’ve written, produced, directed and acted in plays, series and films our whole lives, and have joined forces to create an ambitious slate of new work including feature films shot on iPhone, micro-budget movies for international audiences and a stack of screenplays across genres”.
If you look at the logo for Outward Films, designed by Miles’s partner Vicky Parry, you will note it resembles a tatty luggage label bearing the image of a scruffy person – not even slightly based on someone she knows – looking out at the big wide world and daydreaming of stories and adventures.
“That’s our entire ethos,” says Miles. “We’re small-town creators with ambitious dreams. Maria is making her break into features with our first iPhone movie, Your Sin, a theatre-set drama-thriller which she wrote and stars in.”
Your Sin is now in post-production for the rest of the year after eight days of filming, wrapped at York Theatre Royal on June 16. “I once shot a film in only six days. That was my second movie,” says Miles. “There are so many limits to film-making, so this time we thought, ‘let’s get our iPhones out’, as there’s a renaissance of this form of film-making.
“Like the indie horror film Obsession, which was made on a budget of under $1m in 20 days, has been outselling the latest Star Wars at the box office!”
The poster for Maria Gray and Miles Watts’ debut film for Outward Films, Your Sin
York Theatre Royal came on board to permit filming in The Studio, such as for a nightclub scene in its guise as The Old Paint Shop cabaret club, and in the Main House too, and further locations included the Brew & Brownie cafe at 7.30am one morning, Kirkham Woods, Howsham Wood and LazenbyBrown in Shambles.
“We told actors there was no money for the film, but they wanted to audition anyway,” says Miles, whose principal players are David Ajao, Kate Hampson and Liam Wilks, alongside Maria.
“A lot of the ladies in the film are students from the film and acting course at York St John University who are making their own iPhone movies.”
Maria adds: “We couldn’t believe how many people came forward to audition. From 10am to 4pm over two days in the Keregan Room at the Theatre Royal, we saw over 30 actors, and we received lots of self-tapes too.”
Miles Watts, second from left, filming on iPhone at York Theatre Royal
Written by Miles and Maria, Your Sin depicts a troupe of actors making a movie for a notorious director in a theatre with a ghostly legend. However, as the filming begins, there are more skeletons in the closet than ghosts in the shadows.
“It’s a film within a film, with the film. Very meta,” says Miles. “A film about making a film about people making a film! Then the film has a ghost element where they think a ghost is having an influence on the film and everyone starts thinking about how every theatre has a ghost – or not!” Should you be wondering, the film within the film is called The Sinful Virgin.
“It’s the first straight drama I’ve ever done, so there are no jokes,” says Miles, whose horror films are usually laced with darkest humour.
Maria, who plays an aspiring actor called Maria, fell pregnant during the film project. “We’ve now written Maria’s pregnancy into the story, with a story strand about the mistreatment of actors who are pregnant. We wanted to show you can work with pregnant actors,” says Miles. “I said, it’s not a problem; in fact, let’s make a virtue of it’.”
A poster image for Outward Films’ thriller Your Sin
Maria says: “The whole concept of the film is to consider how much should an actor say No to something; how much is the actor’s responsibility for their safety and wellbeing if they’re not comfortable with doing something? How much autonomy do they have? How much pressure are they under to say Yes all the time?”
Filming on iPhone has its advantages and one disadvantage. “The biggest problem is running out of storage,” says Miles. “But filming on iPhone is way more accessible. Everyone has a film camera in their pocket – even my mum has one and she’s 80. If you can learn how to use these things, anyone can make a film.
“Using an iPhone makes film-making very liberating, where I’m more in control than working with a cameraman.”
Maria takes on the role of producer for Outward Films’ next iPhone feature film, Drop Dead!, a horror mystery that “looks back to 1999 with its promise of cinematic DIY freedom that’s experiencing a renaissance in 2026”.
Your Sin’s principal cast and production team in tandem at York Theatre Royal
“We start production for film number two in Harrogate in under a week’s time, with the last day of filming set for September 8 after two blocks of three-day shoots,” says director Miles, who has written the script with Alan Melikdjanian.
The cast will include Tom Mordell, Juné Tiamatakorn and York Theatre Royal pantomime star Tommy Carmichael in the tale of six friends deciding to capitalise on the DIY filmmaking boom in 1999 by making their own horror movie, but the forces of evil have other ideas.
