‘Make stuff on your phone or whatever, just use what you have around you’ – that’s the advice to budding directors offered by a Letchworth filmmaker whose work featured at a short film festival in York at the weekend.

The Comet: Poster for Letchworth filmmaker Robbie Gibbon's film Hand it Back.Poster for Letchworth filmmaker Robbie Gibbon's film Hand it Back. (Image: Archant)

Robbie Gibbon, who spent much of his childhood in the Broadway Cinema, contributed to brand-new superhero blockbuster Doctor Strange as assistant editor.

And this week his film Hand it Back – which he filmed and directed in Letchworth with local actors – was shown at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival.

“It was really fun seeing a ‘cold’ audience who didn’t know anything about the film,” 29-year-old Robbie told the Comet.

“Hand it Back has been a labour of love, and so many people in and around Letchworth have been so fantastic in helping us realise it.

The Comet: Ben Witham, Nathan Allen and Rob Fletcher in Letchworth filmmaker Robbie Gibbon's movie Hand it Back.Ben Witham, Nathan Allen and Rob Fletcher in Letchworth filmmaker Robbie Gibbon's movie Hand it Back. (Image: Archant)

“It got some laughs and some really good cheers up in York, it was really good fun.

“It was great to meet other filmmakers whose work I really enjoy when I was up there. It’s good when you get feedback from people you admire, and they want to promote you as well.”

Robbie is now part of the team working on the sequel to the 2015 film Kingsman – and among other things he runs a YouTube channel called Pigwash Entertainment, which has also used Letchworth filming locations such as Norton Common.

He has also worked on Doctor Who and with big names such as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

In Hand it Back, which premiered at the Broadway last year, two of Robbie’s main actors – Ben Witham and Nathan Allen – are students at Baldock’s Knights Templar School. A third, Rob Fletcher, goes to John Henry Newman in Stevenage.

And the director advised youngsters interested in getting into filmmaking to ‘just get out there and do it’.

He said: “Don’t be overwhelmed by thinking you need a lot of cast and crew and stuff.

“Just use what you have around you. That gives you the fundamentals and proves to people that you can do it.”

To find out more about Robbie and his work see robbiegibbon.co.uk.