The day after Vicky Jewson sat her last A-level exam, she began to write the script for a full-length film, Lady Godiva . For most 18-year-old aspiring film directors, the next step might have been to borrow the school's video camera, find a horse, and bribe a school friend to play the film's heroine, Jemima Honey, who takes it on herself to do a charity striptease in front of a large crowd in Oxford's town centre (to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel"). But Jewson's aims were not so modest: top of the To Do list on her bedroom wall in Oxford was publicity - "so that my investors wouldn't say, 'Oh, I wish I had heard about that earlier.' "

It isn't surprising that the phrase "my investors" trips so easily off this 22-year-old's tongue. By courting wealthy family friends and business acquaintances - her father, a one-time taxi driver, is now in property development - she succeeded in raising £1.4m to make her film, which premieres on Tuesday and will then show at 19 cinemas across the UK. Still aiming to make a profit on her investors' money, Jewson knows that public relations are more important than ever. "I definitely seek out press attention. I need it for the film, and it gives me a good profile so that my investors think they're backing a good horse," she says in a business-like tone, passing over the pun.