Face to Face

You wouldn't believe it looking through the photos, that for many of the cast and crew, this was their first movie.

Armed with a budget of £500, the team and I had six weeks to produce a short film from conception to completion. Given the tight budget and timeframe, we felt it necessary to tell a character-driven story in one location with a one-day shoot. Utilising both our life experiences and research, my co-writer Alpha Kamara, who also portrays Jason in the film, and I began developing the concept around restorative justice, exploring themes of racial injustice, redemption, family and grief.

When exploring more profound questions of human and social existence, we invite the audience to engage in the discussion rather than presenting a direct point of view. It is vital that, as artists, we do not paint ideas as either black or white but attempt to be truthful to each character's intentions and let the audience share in their own experiences.

Given the weight of the themes we explore in the picture, I felt it was essential to keep the production simple, primarily one key light source over a table, allowing us to move quickly between set-ups, have more time on the day to focus on the performances and to avoid too many distractions from the world we were trying to create. This 'performance first' ethos is reflected in the film by deliberately covering the first third of the script in a master, inviting the audience to become uninterrupted observers and establish the incredible chemistry of the three siblings and their family dynamic.

Directing and acting in the film offered both unique opportunities and challenges. It demanded an extremely high level of focus and an ability to communicate with the cast and crew separately - to keep the cast immersed in the performed reality while maintaining a level of support and creative encouragement to the crew - all the while ensuring I could quickly slip back into the given circumstances when the camera rolled. What was unique was finding how to engage with the other cast members outside of the performance. As we are dealing with a highly emotional subject matter, I didn't want to disrupt the scene's momentum after every take. I therefore had to keep direction short, sweet and most importantly direct. Creating in this manner requires a considerable level of trust from both you and the other actors, and when it pays off, it is extraordinarily fulfilling.