A Life In Print

I first met Jenny by chance during Cheltenham Open Studios, an art initiative designed to allow the public to meet local artists in their work spaces. For a few weeks I passed the sign for Jenny’s studio and finally decided to head in and take a look. Jenny has an instant warmth to her character that makes you feel at ease and a wisdom to her that I felt would instantly translate to camera. Surrounded by large piles of fabric and thousands of sheets of tea cloth paper with her designs printed on them, everything started to come together in my mind for the film. I felt compelled to help tell her story.

I want the audience to be taken in to, not just her career as an artist, but her philosophies on life. It is also clear that, while having ambition, she doesn’t take herself too seriously in what she does as an artist. In fact, her first words in the film are “If you’re going to be an artist then you have to have something to say, and I’m not sure I really have.” I believe this tells us more than we realise about her approach to her art and life in general. Now, in her twilight years, I wanted to get across the clear importance of authenticity in what we choose to do in life. Jenny’s compulsion, and obsession, to create new designs over and over again for decades was something that I found fascinating. (In fact, what anyone chooses as a career and why is always something I find fascinating. Someone dedicating their whole life in one field.) That is why I chose to film 95% of the footage on an 85mm prime lens. I wanted that immersive feeling of being amongst her art, surrounded by thousands of prints stacked on top each other or draped over any available hook. This was an important choice for me as well as being a beautiful focal length for portraits and talking head pieces.

The challenges of making this film was getting consistent natural light for B-roll over 3 separate days across 1 month. The main challenge, however, was budget. The film was made with zero money available. This was my first film and managed to use my own equipment with a couple of mirrorless cameras, one studio light and audio equipment. Jenny lives in the next village to myself so there were no issues in terms of travel costs.

I will always be proud of this film not least because it is my directorial debut. I shot, directed, produced, edited, photographed, sounds designed, researched and colour graded it myself and loved every minute of it. It felt as if everything fell in to place at the right time for me to create my first film. I will be forever grateful to Jenny for allowing us to go on this journey together and have become firm friends.