[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What’s it been like to make your jump from shorts to feature filmmaking?
Blake Ridder, Filmmaker/Writer/Actor/YouTuber: I think it’s a very scary feeling for some people when they think I’ve got to work a lot more days and paying a lot more.
And then there’s the other side of people thinking feature films are easy.
It’s just a lot of short films putting together.
I think either of those arguments aren’t entirely correct depending on your experience.
Yes, feature films are more challenging.
You will face a lot more problems that you never would have faced on the short films.
But also, if you’ve done a lot short films, that really prepares you to do a feature as well.
It’s like running a half marathon and then running the full marathon.
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It’s kind of similar but not the same.
But yeah, features also from a story point of view it’s very difficult.
Sometimes I still struggle how to hold an audience’s attention for 90 minutes.
I don’t know how people feel like sometimes when they write a feature they feel like they write too much they have to cut down.
I have the opposite problem because I’ve made so many shorts I feel like I’m struggling to make a feature longer enough to really make an official feature.
There’s that issue for me as well.
Film Courage: You’ve made this decision that you don’t want to do shorts [short films], it doesn’t mean you won’t return to them at some point.
Is there a liberation that you feel? Now I get to tell a much more intricate story?
Blake: Yeah. It’s not just about telling an intricate story.
It’s also about, at least that’s how I feel, when you make a feature, you’re a real filmmaker.
When you make a short, you’re still not amateur-ish, but you are still at the beginning…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Blake Ridder is a filmmaker, writer, director and actor, born in Shanghai and raised in the United Kingdom from the age of nine. He began acting in 2017, then wrote and directed his first short a year later. His feature debut, Help (2021), picked up multiple festival prizes and marked him as a fresh voice in contained psychological thrillers. Ridder’s horror follow-up, Manor of Darkness, was released in December 2025, while his third feature, the California-set suspense thriller Spill, is completed and heading for festivals/distribution. Across more than 70 shorts he has written, directed, and appeared in award winners such as The English Teacher (2020). He founded Ridder Films, an independent production company operating in Los Angeles and London, and launched the Ridder Film Festival in 2024 to spotlight emerging genre filmmakers. His behind-the-scenes filmmaking content has attracted an online audience of over half a million followers. Ridder speaks English and Mandarin fluently.
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