Following the world premiere of ‘Turn Up the Sun’ at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the Welsh auteur discusses grief, collaboration, and why locking dialogue on the page is like “creating a great Rothko and then writing down instructions on how to recreate it”.

In an age of meticulous pre-visualisation, storyboards, and studio oversight, Jamie Adams is doing something radical: he’s making films with no script. Not loose scripts or minimal dialogue – no script at all. Just a story outline, a handful of actors willing to take the leap, and six days to capture something alive.

The 44-year-old Welsh filmmaker has built an extraordinary career on this high-wire act. Since his 2014 debut, Benny & Jolene, made for £15,000 in five days, Adams has directed 17 features. Yes, seventeen; each one entirely improvised, each one shot at breakneck speed, and each one attracting the kind of talent that most indie directors can only dream of. Cobie Smulders, Haley Bennett, Martin Freeman, Simon Pegg, and now James McAvoy have all signed on to Adams’ particular brand of cinematic alchemy.

His latest, Turn Up the Sun, which premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November, sees McAvoy playing a revered but troubled photographer who clashes with a pop star (Aisling Franciosi) and her partner (Lucas Bravo) at a countryside estate. Described as “an existential happening presented as a heated thriller,” it’s an allegory for artistic ego, which makes it fitting that Adams created it using a process that requires actors to surrender their egos entirely.

The film marks something of a departure for Adams, who’s best known for intimate dramedies like the BIFA-nominated Black Mountain Poets and She Is Love. This is darker, more psychologically taut, yet still unmistakably his, observational, naturalistic, and shot with the urgency of someone who understands that life doesn’t wait for the perfect take.

FROM CONTROL TO COLLABORATION

Adams’ path to becoming British cinema’s most prolific improviser began, paradoxically, with an obsession with control. “I was an insecure working class kid at film school, surrounded by these metropolitan student filmmakers who were mostly a bit older than me, they were naturally cool and full of ideas and super smart,” he recalls. Armed with work experience shadowing directors in Wales and a head full of Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino manifestos, young Adams believed that “the vision is key, that it’s the detail of the execution, that a director needs to be so pained about their preparation and making sure that everyone followed this vision to the letter.”

It was his tutor at Royal Holloway, filmmaker Gideon Koppel, who first challenged this approach, observing that Adams was getting too attached to visualising things in his head and frustrated when people couldn’t execute his vision. But the real catalyst for change was far more profound.

“My Mother died, my whole World shifted, became more fluid, structure and safety all but disappeared overnight,” Adams explains. “I didn’t want to feel isolated and alone with my dreams anymore. I needed collaboration, discussion, a collective vision.”

Koppel introduced him to Mike Leigh, whose rehearsal-based method initially captivated Adams. He loved that “the prep work was about discovery with others involved; there’s still a responsibility of the filmmaker to have their vision, but it’s one informed by collaboration from the very beginning.” Adams had found his path: he “relinquished the whole pressure of the singular voice and vision for something much more co-operative and connected.”

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WHAT DIES ON THE PAGE

But working with Leigh’s method in his twenties revealed a crucial tension. Adams discovered that the authenticity and excitement generated in rehearsal didn’t translate once Leigh went away and wrote the full script. Something essential was being lost in that translation.

“Spirit,” Adams says simply. “It’s disingenuous I feel to the spirit of the improvised endeavour to encourage a collective discovery and then try and create a prescriptive document, a script, to then use to shoot the film in the formal way.”

He reaches for a striking metaphor: “That’s like creating a great Rothko or Pollock and then writing down instructions on how to create a Rothko or Pollock and then getting people to follow those instructions… it’s prescriptive and performative and leads to a representation of something that could’ve been original and alive but is now theatrical and rigid and ‘locked down’… so dead maybe, or dying. An object and not a living creation.”

It’s this conviction that improvisation captured in the moment is fundamentally different from improvisation recreated from notes that underpins Adams’ entire practice. He wasn’t interested in rehearsing to create a script. He wanted to capture the discovery itself.

THE SCRIPTMENT: A MAP, NOT A PRISON

So what does Adams’ process actually look like? It begins, he says, with “concerns with life and living, the pressures and strains, the unknowing of it all, the existential dread. But then also the joy and hope and love that can shine through. Usually it’s an emotion that leads to a thought that leads to a discussion.”

Those discussions happen first with his wife Zoe and daughters Jasmine and Ffion. “Once I think I’ve exhausted discussions with my wife and, now, my daughters about whatever subject is on my mind I’ll start writing a story outline that will have action in there and bits of dialogue, usually 8 pages of me getting down on paper what characters might be interesting to create in order to explore this particular beginning, middle and end.”

Then comes casting and character conversations with key actors, which lead to a forty-page “scriptment” – scenes described without dialogue, sometimes just “dialogue or a stream of consciousness set of thoughts.” This isn’t a blueprint so much as a departure point. “On the day we enter into the scene knowing the minimum about it and we genuinely discover more about what its use is as we play it out.”

And then something remarkable happens: the film writes itself as it shoots. “If it’s interesting, we’ll stay there all day, if not, it may have offered up a new path, so we follow that. At the end of each day I sit down with my first AD and we figure out what we have and where we might go next. And then, I have a discussion with individual cast – they would have their own thoughts. From these discussions each evening of the shoot I’ll write up scenes to explore the next day.”

It’s a process that requires complete trust – trust that the film will reveal itself, that the actors will find it, that structure will emerge from chaos. “Going in, we all think we know what the ending is,” Adams says, “but most of the time we find it as we shoot.”

DIRECTING WITHOUT DIALOGUE

On set, Adams has developed a distinctive approach to directing improvised scenes. He tries not to call cut, instead holding the action mid-flow: “I do say ‘hold it there, let’s wind it back to talking about the Uncle and how he likes his tea, but this time you’re upset about it, action!'”

Crucially, he shoots chronologically, so actors always know where their characters are in the story. The first pass of a scene can run up to 45 minutes as actors find their way in. “I try not to interject but then, in the follow up takes (passes), they’ll hear my voice more as I guide the scene to where it can work narratively. So, when we arrive on their close ups they have a clearer idea of what’s working and what’s – not so much.”

With around four passes per scene and many variables within each pass, Adams is essentially creating multiple takes within takes. And crucially, he’s editing in his mind throughout. “My developmental years were spent in many incredible cutting rooms learning what will work or not and so I’m always editing in mind as we go and once I can see how the scene will come together, I know we can move on.”

Those years as an assistant editor – ten to twelve of them – prove essential. Adams worked with editors including Justine Wright, Mags Arnold, and John Richards, learning that “the rhythm and pacing of a picture was an extension of the editor.” He absorbed influences from Godard’s jump cuts to Nic Roeg’s existential montage to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction dance sequence at Jack Rabbit Slims. “Influence is everywhere,” he notes. “Cinema is a young language with much opportunity to evolve.”

THE VIDEO SHOP KID MEETS THE ARTHOUSE

That magpie approach to influence reflects Adams’ own evolution. “I’m an 80’s video shop kid, I watched a lot of movies, some that I really shouldn’t have seen!” he laughs. “And then this video shop kid goes to film school, his mum dies, and now he’s an arthouse film student, so these films, they bring together my video shop kid element (story, character and plot) together with my arthouse loving elements!”

It’s a perfect description of his work: films that have the emotional rawness and improvisational spirit of Cassavetes but retain the accessible, character-driven storytelling of mainstream cinema. They’re intimate without being precious, observational without being formless.

In the edit, Adams assembles first, creating rough cuts that he describes as “long,” before bringing in “incredibly confident and like-minded editors who are enthused by the artistic nature of the films.” His editors, he says with characteristic self-deprecation, “make them watchable!”

Despite shooting at high speed, only six days for Turn Up the Sun, Adams generates only about 30 hours of rushes per film (which typically run 70-90 minutes). Some edits have taken a month and remained close to his initial assembly; others have taken years. The structure, he notes, is “happening from the story outline onwards and throughout, coming together in the structuring element of the edit. Which continues throughout the edit and might change even during fine cutting.”

THE COURAGE TO JUMP

With 17 films under his belt, Adams has built something rare: a community of actors who trust the process and vouch for it to others. “I don’t pitch exactly,” he explains. “I say this is what we’re doing, this is what we’ve done, some are great films, some not so great (!) but the experience is always rewarding – it’s something original and challenging, if you’re available for those few weeks of prep and shoot then we’d love to collaborate.”

That honesty, acknowledging that not every film succeeds, is disarming. But the track record speaks for itself, and the experience is apparently transformative. “Often actors come to the process with an open mind and they have such a great time exploring and building together. it’s such a unique experience for them, one that puts performance at its heart.”

Adams has observed something interesting about who thrives in this environment. “Generally speaking, from what I’ve experienced, in the first instance female actors tend to be more open to being courageous and having faith in the process at hand,” he notes, before carefully adding that there are exceptions and he’s recently worked with male actors who’ve been “just as courageous and sincere.”

But the observation runs deeper than acting. “For me it’s simple, in everyday life, in existence, I feel as though women are built to be courageous, to be a woman unapologetically in a patriarchal world means to be courageous first, which isn’t necessarily true of a man.”

Having daughters has sharpened this awareness. “Seeing the world through their eyes has made me acutely aware of the strength and courage they need to just take the train or a taxi or go for a walk on their own… so maybe the idea of lowering defences and jumping off into an improv-led process takes more courage than a script-led process would and women are more prepared for such an undertaking.”

ARTISTIC EGO WITHOUT THE EGO

Turn Up the Sun, with its exploration of artistic vanity and creative rivalry, might seem like a risky proposition for a set built on collaborative trust. But Adams is quick to distinguish between the characters and the people playing them.

“There’s a clear distinction between character and actor. Also, we’re dealing with quite distinctive flavours here, these aren’t well balanced individuals – they’re all vain and hurting in some way and fortunately, improv collaborators tend to be some of the most grounded and secure people around.”

The film, shot in six days with McAvoy, Franciosi, Bravo, and others, became an exploration of “a beautiful sense of confluence as each character reveals a new truth, or a shade of an existing truth, that sets off the energy of another – in a new way. It’s truly organic and fluid and freeing.” And then, occasionally, something more: “When we’re lucky, the magic strikes and that feels life-affirming, like anything is possible.”

THE RELENTLESS PACE

Adams is currently editing two films simultaneously – par for the course for a filmmaker who’s averaged nearly two films a year since 2014. That extraordinary pace isn’t about ambition or ego; it’s about something more fundamental. Losing his mother at 19 changed his relationship with time. As he told an interviewer in 2019, “Life doesn’t feel like a marathon, life feels pretty much about today.”

That urgency manifests not just in his prolific output but in how he shoots: fast, collaborative, capturing something alive before it can calcify into something merely representational. It’s a response to grief, to impermanence, to the knowledge that structure and safety can disappear overnight.

Looking ahead, Adams is planning “an extended exploration of existential dread, midlife crisis phenomenon, and search for hope – maybe this is everyone’s post-pandemic quest! It may take a few films to manage the thoughts at play, but certainly, in the end, I’d love to return to more obvious comedies – romantic comedies.”

A few films. For Jamie Adams, that might mean six months of work. For most filmmakers, it would be a decade. But then, most filmmakers aren’t trying to capture something that dies the moment you write it down. Most filmmakers aren’t racing against the knowledge that life is fluid, that safety is illusory, that the only thing you can really trust is what happens in the room when actors are truly present and the camera is rolling.

Adams has built a career, 17 films and counting, on embracing that uncertainty. On being “out there without a net,” as he’s described it. On trusting that if you create the right conditions, if you cast the right people, if you stay open to what wants to emerge, the film will find you.

It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. And judging by the talent queuing up to work with him, it’s irresistible.

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Turn Up the Sun is set for UK release via Altitude and US release via Vertical in 2025. Adams is currently editing two films and preparing his next project.