Our Secret Ingredient

Spaghetti Western

Filmmaker's Digital Diary 2

17 August 2025

Shooting my shot at storytelling, this second diary entry comes to you from myself - Emily - Spaghetti Western’s Marketing Lead. After graduating from the University of St Andrews, the filmscape was an unexpected, though not surprising, career progression. As someone who has throughout her life found solace and meaning in film, and reflected it into my own experience of life, the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of movies was an offer too irresistible to pass up.

Although I’ve had the opportunity to learn a number of lessons while working on Spaghetti Western - from how to build a website to supporting investment activities – the most valuable and overarching one I've found, is the importance of one’s team. From this point on, if it has not yet been made clear, when I speak of our team, I mean all of us, including you.

A project can only be as strong as the team behind it.

There are various ‘ingredients’ required to make an effective team, the most foundational one being experience. From creative-minded directors to sharp producers, the diversity of experience is something we have in abundance, but that alone isn’t unique. So what sets us apart? What destines our project for success? The secret ingredient is community.

With just 23% of female directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on the top films of 2024, supporting female storytelling in film has never been more crucial. Spaghetti Western has already begun forming and empowering its very own community of women – take the Blythswood event we held in Glasgow last March. The focus of the event was to introduce people to Spaghetti Western, but it was also where I was introduced to the majority of our team in person.

To get to watch these ladies so passionately express what had drawn them towards Spaghetti Western, opened my eyes to a larger more serendipitous outcome of this event. As women, we had created our own space, which enabled people of all backgrounds to come together and learn about our story, our people and our mission. More importantly, in doing so we paved a way for others to get involved, create a difference and become a part of this dynamic team.

From the dawn of civilisation, the intrinsic connection between women has helped build communities and shape societies. Historically, women have been grouped together for the purpose of fulfilling societal roles, from gathering berries to raising and caring for children and more recently, striving for collective political action. Female relationships offer more than companionship, they have sparked empowerment programs, charitable organisations and enterprises all born from mutual desire to improve the shared experience of being a woman and to help break the barriers down for future generations. Spaghetti Western is the spirit of all this in action.

Having spent two years throughout my time at university supporting the Women for Women Society – a charitable organisation founded to aid women in times of conflict - I came to deeply appreciate the power of community and collective support in creating meaningful change. This only made Spaghetti Western more important to me. Here I am, now part of a community not only telling stories but actively reshaping the narrative by empowering women both on screen and behind the scenes. My love for film comes entirely from its ability to reflect the world and the people within it. Contributing to the representation of women in film resonates with me just as much now as it did when I was a young girl, and I feel grateful to continue exploring that passion through my work.

This diverse and interconnected team of women is united through a vision of creating the first film to be fully funded by females. Perhaps the most significant attribute towards achieving success is that we’ve already created our own community. Building a strong team isn’t easy – but history shows that when women come together, incredible things happen.