Star photographer-turned-filmmaker Sean Ellis has come a long way since he had his picture published in newsprint when he was aged only 14.

That was in 1984, but the Brighton-born director of Metro Manila, nominated for the Best Film Not In The English Language BAFTA, remembers it well.

“I was out with my camera shooting stuff down by the Palace Pier and I saw this swan swimming in the sea.

“I got this black and white shot of the swan in the foreground, and towering above it and going off into the distance was the pier.

“My dad looked at it and said, ‘It is really good. You should send it into the Evening Argus, they’d probably like that picture’.

“So I sent a print in and the picture editor at the time rang me up and asked me for some details.

“I remember being this ecstatic 14-year-old who was going to get a picture published.”

He gave a few lines to the paper. “I said: I’m a 14-year-old member of Brighton and Hove Camera Club and when I leave school I want to be a professional photographer.

“They gave it half a page with a caption.”

Ellis was a Dorothy Stringer pupil. He took up photography because he’d had the bad luck of comparing his art to that of an old friend, Jason Brashill, who would later work on the cult 2000AD magazines and draw covers for Judge Dredd comic strips. His dad suggested he use a camera instead of a pencil. That way he could make the accurate images he failed to do with his drawings.

“That sparked a whole massive chasm of ideas in my head. Much to my mum’s dismay I was soon running round my house photographing my Action Men on fire.

“She said to my dad, ‘You’ve taught him how to take pictures of what’s in his mind. What worries me is what’s in his mind’.”

The aim was to recreate an explosion. The film director was already making storyboards. When his careers advisor told him to think about something other than photography because it is so competitive, she installed the fury that can be the drive.

“I will be the one that makes it, I thought.”

He did well in his art and photography O Levels and had his own darkroom in a garage. “It meant I didn’t need to wait on school facilities to develop my pictures.”

With bags of knowledge, he didn’t last long on a two-year college course and instead decided to become a photographer’s assistant. A clash of personalities with his employer and he arrived at a studio doing pack shots of products for small clients.

“I got paid about £7k a year but it was great because I would have a week to photograph a box and over the space of two years I learnt how to light static images.

“I was able to make my own mistakes photographing these things. I could go down to the lab to assess what was wrong with them and then say I can do that better. I was pushing myself to develop a style of still-life images to impress my boss.”

He took on his own clients but later moved to London to work as an assistant for celebrated Vogue photographer, Nick Knight.

He lived in his car for six months after turning full-time and later took a flat above the Dazed And Confused office and started shooting for the magazine after leaving Knight’s studio.

He was soon asked by 1990s fashion bible The Face to lead shoots for its features and American Vogue’s Anna Wintour also began to call.

His cinematic style led to record sleeves and, after doing an album cover for All Saints, was invited to shoot the video for the girl-group’s smash, Never Ever. He won a Brit Award for the production.

“I had become a photographer who was a frustrated film director. I had started to realise a lot of my images were being constructed like film stills, which was basically a long and laborious process and costly and time-consuming. 

“I felt like I wanted to do something more. I was interested in moving image and sound, editing and story. They are the things missing in still photography.”

Although Ellis was an expert at light and composition, the film world doesn’t care about fashion photographers. He had to start again and teach himself editing and story structure. After three short films and two full-length features, neither of which made a dent in the box office, came Metro Manila.

The bleak story of a family’s struggle to build a better life in the Philippines capital won Best Film, Best Director and Best Achievement in Production at the 2013 BIFAs. It also picked up The Audience Award for World Cinema at Sundance Film Festival 2013.

The inspiration for the social realism-crossed-with-crime thriller came from a holiday to the country – his first visit – to meet old friends for an annual rendezvous.

“I went out there not knowing anything and while I was walking I saw two armoured truck drivers having an argument by their truck.

“They were fully armed: Kevlar vests, helmets, the lot. I thought it was going to kick off. I sat in a doorway watching it all go on.

“It was so intense I was blown away. I kept thinking there was a movie there.”

His most exciting idea was that one of them was being blackmailed into taking part in a heist. What followed is “a Filipino story and also a universal story.

“I felt the Philippines is a place not many people visit in the cinema. It felt fresh and exciting to me.”

The project was shot in 35 days in a single trip to the Asian country – and Ellis found his cast on arrival. Its star Jake Macapagal was a theatre actor brought in by executive producer Celine Lopez to read with prospective leading ladies the day after Ellis arrived.

“Those first two weeks were a baptism of fire and we didn’t know what was going on. We were meeting people of people who were recommending other people and locations.”

Luck played an important part in the production, as did Canon, whose new digital 5D SLRs cameras had a film-look quality with holiday snap portability.

“It became clear I could make an inexpensive, good-looking independent film in the Philippines.”

He insisted on filming in the local Tagalog language to make it authentic, which made funding the film difficult. So he remortgaged his house to pay for the film.

“I thought, what’s the worse that can happen?

“I can’t pay a loan and lose my house. My mum and dad lost their house in Brighton during a recession and I don’t come from a rich family. “I come from nothing, so I can easily go back there.”

  • Metro Manila is available on DVD from 10th March