Stutterer film producer from Stevenage joins Leonardo DiCaprio in first Oscar win
Shan Christopher Ogilvie and director Benjamin Cleary with their Oscars for the short film Stutterer. - Credit: Archant
Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t the only one winning his first Oscar at the Academy Awards on Sunday – a film producer from Stevenage was also in Hollywood receiving one of the prized golden statuettes.
Collenswood School and North Herts College old boy Shan Christopher Ogilvie was one of the two producers for Stutterer, a 12-minute-long British drama that won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
The low-budget film, written and directed by Irishman Benjamin Cleary, follows a lonely typographer named Greenwood as he tries to overcome his speech impediment and form a romantic relationship.
Shan, 34, started his career as a cameraman after his tutor at North Herts College, Geoff Meakin, talked him into going to film school.
“I was applying to study Chinese when he told me I could study film-making at uni for a BA rather than at a private film school,” he told the Comet from Los Angeles.
“I went to film school at the University of Westminster in 2007, and got into producing from there.”
Shan commuted into London from Stevenage until he moved permanently in 2011. His mother still lives in Stevenage.
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On his return to the UK he has agreed to visit Knebworth Primary School, where his niece Tehya Ogilvie is a pupil, and give a talk to a Year 5 and 6 film club.