HAVING finished its rounds on the festival circuit, a Newton Abbot filmmaker’s debut short film bagged the cinephile award after award, with myriad nominations to boot.

Jake Cauty, who has been making films since 2006, shot his debut short film, ‘Bad Beat’, in November of last year at Seale Hayne.

A dark comedy that tells the tale of a pair of rookie criminals, an Irishman and an American, whose plan to pull off a daring bank heist goes south, ‘Bad Beat’ was a labour of love, premiering at Paignton’s Palace Theatre to much praise.

The time soon came for ‘Bad Beat’ to try its luck on the festival circuit, where Jake’s hardwork soon paid dividends: the film won Best Crime Film at the Discover Film Awards, which screened at Londons Prince Charles Cinema on Leicester Square, and Best Director at Italy’s Absurd Film Festival.

‘Bad Beat’ also scooped nominations from several other festivals in as wide a number of catergories; Best Film, Best Editor and Best Screenwriter at The Monthly Film Festival (TMFF), as well as a Best Actor nomination for George Williams, courtesy of Feel The Reel International Film Festival.

‘I didn’t submit Bad Beat to film festivals thinking it would win anything’ Jake said.

‘When you are critical of your own work, you feel as though it won’t be good enough but when the film started to get nominations I thought, okay, this is working.

‘And then some of those nominations turned into wins, which was surreal, especially because it took such a long time to get the script finished, so to win was incredible.’

Bad Beat proved popular among audiences at the various festivals, as well as audiecnes generally, which has prompted Jake to float the idea of jumping back into the world he created.

‘People seemed to really like the characters and a lot of them have asked me questions about their relationship because they enjoyed it so much’ Jake said.

‘I think it would be great to explore that and see how the two central characters became friends, see how they got into the mess that we find them in.

‘I would love to do a mini-series maybe, with five or six episodes, where we can see the moments leading up to Bad Beat and perhaps something afterward too.

‘The characters are so fun to work with and it was a lot of fun to write so it would be great to explore them in more depth.’

• Bad Beat is avaliable to watch via YouTube.