WHO WE ARE
"Action brings good fortune"
— Syd Barrett
Chapter 24 is a Film and Television Production Company, founded by Matthew Waldram and Andrew David Barker in 2024.
With 20 years of experience in film and tech, we aim to produce innovative and entertaining features, TV shows, music videos, podcasts, and short films—from micro-budget to mid-range—in and around our home: The Midlands.
We believe the Midlands is the most under-filmed, under-used, under-served, and under-invested region in the country, yet everything is here: the locations, the big cities, the wide-open cinematic landscapes of the Peaks, and most importantly the talent. We want to showcase it all, and prove there is far more to the UK than the London-centric film and TV industry suggests.
Let's shake the tree.
Matthew Waldram
Matthew is a writer from a working class, industrial city—the youngest son of a nurse and a Town Cryer... so now he writes comedy as a defence mechanism.
He has worked in tech for more than 20 years, working for some of the biggest IT and software companies on the planet, and handling multi-million dollar deals.
He came into writing by running a monthly online magazine. That taught him how to structure story, conduct interviews, and write to a defined scope and deadline. Since then, he has worked freelance for companies like BBC, Medium, Skiddle, and Environmental Graffiti, producing celebrity interviews and articles on gender equality, positive masculinity, the environment, and cult film and television.
His novel Monsters of Elsewhere received glowing reviews and was compared to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, which... no chance! (Thanks, but come on now!)
He co-wrote the short film Here Lies... which played festivals throughout the UK in 2023, and his co-written sitcom Empire Amusements placed in the Top 10% of BBC Open Call 2023. Both of these projects were co-written with Andrew.
He's passionate about stories that reflect the world back on itself and spin warmth and humour from characters' weaknesses and traumas.
Andrew David Barker
Andrew is an author, screenwriter, and director. Born in Derby in 1975, he has had pretty much every job going. In his time he has worked as a window fitter, a rail track worker, a factory worker, a carpet salesman, a car cleaner, a delivery driver, a bricklayers' labourer, a shop assistant, and a care worker. None of them stuck.
In the late 90s, he played lead guitar in a rock band. They got signed, made a single, played London, thought they were famous, and subsequently imploded.
As a filmmaker he wrote and directed the independent feature film, A Reckoning—a last man on Earth tale that won acclaim—and has made several award-winning short films, including Shining Tor and Baby on Board, written by Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch). He also co-wrote the time-travel short Laura Living Backwards and the upcoming horror feature The Wilding, starring Jördis Richter, Tim Plester, and Richard Brake. Andrew's horror screenplay Nerveshredder, co-written with David Bryant, has just been optioned.
He is an Arts Council Grant recipient for his writing. His latest project, the comedy/crime series Empire Amusements, co-written with Matthew, placed in the Top 10% of the BBC Open Call 2023.
Andrew is the author of The Electric, Dead Leaves, The Winterman, and Society Place.
He now lives in Warwickshire with his wife and daughters, trying to be a grown-up.