'Everything & Nothing' was my 2nd poetry collaboration I made with my good friend Nadia Emam back in 2021. It was in response to a BFI short film that we had made earlier that year in the same location; Whitby.
For various reasons our fantastical and horror inspired little film got watered down and 'made safe'. We were still happy with the final result but it wasn't quite what we set out to make.
So we found ourselves back on this turf later on in the year for a corporate job for a full week, with our evenings spare. And that got us thinking; what if we could put Nadia back in front of the camera, instead of behind it, and portray the vibe we had initially planned with the short film.
On a whim in the car we discussed the idea of another poetry piece. Over dinner we shortlisted 2 poems she had previously written and then ran with one that felt right. In the car over to the location so discussed which locations would fit for which parts of the story. And after 1 take the film went from capturing the audio live to ''we'll just do a VO in post''!
It was a race against the sunset and we barely had chance to get extra takes, let alone change a lens... So I didn't. The whole thing was shot on a 28mm and I prefer it for that reason. Losing the light meant in places the blacks got a bit crushed in the grade and for the final scene I had to use Sony's 'high sensitivity mode' to get more light into the camera.
But all in all, we were very happy with what we shot in just around 2 hours. A week later we sat down in the edit, recorded the VO and had a finished film after 1 day in the edit.
We then released the film on Halloween to a nice little reception.
It felt good to get closure on the themes we wanted to explore initially in the original film with Whitby, Dracula and the classic Abbey on the cliffs...
I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the kind of projects that really matter to me and how with little resources and time you can get sh*t done. Hope you enjoy
LINK - https://vimeo.com/637566694
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Jordan Carroll is a freelance filmmaker & cinematographer working on drama, documentary and commercials in Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, London & Amsterdam
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