Private Project

Petrichor

A suicidal twenty-something is dragged on a night out by his party animal lodger to cheer him up. How hard could it be?

  • Jack Hockaday
    Director
    Undertow
  • Jack Hockaday
    Writer
    Undertow, Inerce
  • Jack Hockaday
    Producer
    Undertow, Inerce, A Future Where No One Remembers You
  • Marta Buksa
    Producer
  • Danylo Myron
    Key Cast
    "Frank"
  • Ashlee-Rose Brisley
    Key Cast
    "Aurelia"
  • Frederick Bowerman
    Key Cast
    "Ben"
  • Beth Doyle
    Key Cast
    "Ellie"
  • Sheherazade Bodin
    Key Cast
    "Sierra"
  • Harry Tomlin
    Editor
    Downstream, Mantis,
  • Jacopo Scutti
    Sound Designer
    Undertow
  • Robin Boros
    Directors of Photography
    Undertow
  • Sarah Martineau
    Directors of Photography
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    comedy, drama
  • Runtime:
    23 minutes 59 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 10, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    2,500 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    21:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
Director Biography - Jack Hockaday

I grew up in Portsmouth, but have lived and worked in Bournemouth since 2016. I have a bachelor's degree in film, specialising in direction, sound design and production management. Besides filmmaking, my two other key areas of interest are in philosophy and neurodiversity, which I like to inject heavily into anything I do. At the time of making Petrichor I was 21, I'm now 23 and I regard the project with a kind of ambivalence, due to how I've grown and changed since its production, but my peers keep urging me to submit it places, so here's me doing that.

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Director Statement

My aim with the project was to portray the philosophical concept of The Absurd in a contemporary setting, inspired heavily by the first line of Albert Camus' essay, The Myth of Sisyphus: "There is but one truly philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

My approach to the subject was to portray a vignette of multiple characters' intertwining experiences of a night out to emphasise the extraordinary lying within the ordinary human experience. As Camus puts it: "The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says 'less'. There is a certain relationship between the global experience of the artist and the work that reflects. That relationship is good when the work is but a piece cut out of experience, a facet of the diamond in which the inner lustre is epitomised without being limited."