Making Something with Someone

Some projects stay with you not because of what you made, but because of who you made it with.

Last Song started it. Shot across multiple days spread over the summer and autumn of 2023, it's a short film about two sixth formers who fall in love through their shared passion for music. We had almost no budget. Just enough to cover a location, transport, and food. What we had in abundance was the cast, a group of young actors who brought their talent, energy, and positivity to every single part of the process.

It became one of my favourite projects I've ever worked on. Not despite the constraints, but partly because of them. When there's no money to hide behind, everything depends on the people in front of the camera. And those people delivered something I hadn't quite expected.

That experience opened something. Since then I've made several short films with young actors, some returning for new projects, each one reinforcing the same thing. There is a particular quality that younger actors often bring. An openness. A willingness to go somewhere without fully knowing where it leads. Less accumulated habit, less protective instinct. When the conditions are right, that openness produces something raw and alive that is very hard to manufacture any other way.

Romy Clarkson was like that on Unfiltered. It was her first proper short film, and the role asked everything of her. Raw, exposed, deeply personal. She didn't hold back for a second. The film follows a young woman recording letters to her own body, working through beauty standards, comparison, and the pressure to measure up. It lives or dies on its central performance. Romy made sure it lived. She went on to win Best New Actor at the Liverpool Indie Awards for that performance, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.

Most recently there was Ewan Hazlewood on What Light Remains. A raw talent. We spent a day in rehearsal together before the shoot, finding the shape of things, building the trust that a twelve-hour shoot day would need. On the day itself we went the full range, from the quietest internal moments to the film's climax, where his character expresses freedom and release through movement. There is something particular about being that closely connected to an actor through a long shoot day, working together to get them where they need to go. When it's working, it feels like a genuine exchange. You're both building something neither of you could have made alone.

That's what collaboration at its best actually feels like. Not a director extracting a performance, but two people finding something together. The script gives you the architecture. The rehearsal gives you the foundation. The shoot gives you the moments. But the thing that makes those moments possible is trust, and trust is built in the small exchanges. The conversation before the camera rolls. The adjustment made quietly between takes. The willingness on both sides to stay open to what's emerging rather than forcing what was planned.

The leads in Last Song, Unfiltered, and What Light Remains have all received award nominations for their performances. That recognition means something. But what stays with me more is what happened on set. The particular feeling of being present with someone who is giving everything to something they believe in, on a project with no commercial pressure and no brief except to make something true.

That's the joy of it.

And it's why I keep coming back to personal work.