How would you describe your film?
Hovering Between Us follows a night in the life of a young 'almost' couple. Maria and Alex live together, and have been friends for years with an interwoven history, but their relationship has drifted.
In secret, Maria keeps a digital library of all the online and phone interactions, photos and posts of her flatmate. As the night unfolds, the reality of the true nature of Alex's character and their relationship reveals it's not as it first appears.
The film explores the disconnect between our digital lives and our real day-to-day experience. Incorporating digital interfaces, phone footage and traditional cinematic imagery; the film is a visually striking and sensitive character study refracted through the prism of the online world.
The film explores the disconnect between our digital lives and our real day-to-day experience.
How does your film respond to the ideas behind Life Rewired?
With so much of our lives lived online and the digital and our day-to-day life interwoven, I wanted to make a narrative film that explored identity and the mental state of a character drawing on digital visual tropes, used phones and computers as a narrative device, as well as exploring these ways of manoeuvring through life.
The relationship and narrative we see in the film is at its core about the juxtaposition between an online and a real world. Exploring how we can form opinions, relationships and ideas online, sometimes at odds with the reality taking place, through the prism of two people who live together but are disconnected.
Rather than simply dismissing the online world, it looks at how it can reflect and form the identity and mental state of a person. It's a platform and world that holds up a mirror to Maria's psyche and what is taking place in her life as played out online.
Can you explain the process behind the making of your film?
The initial idea of the film came from a much earlier storyline that we don't see in the finished film, but ultimately sought out to explore how interconnected characters could live discrete lives online in contrast to their interactions in reality. Although the storyline changed drastically, this approach and theme continued and helped inform the development of the specific story and characters throughout.
Harriet Salmon (the producer) and I were then commissioned to make the film at the start of the year. And we've been pretty steadily working on it since then. We shot the film across two packed days and nights in July, which was only possible because of the incredible crew and cast. Spike Morris was the DOP and his lighting and camera team were integral in capturing the footage we did.
We then began to edit with the footage we had, leaving screen records of the apps we took inspiration from. At the same time, Jon Evans (the animator) designed and animated the app interfaces that you see, which Spike again helped shoot in camera as they played lout on phone and computer screens; so it feels as visually connected with the other footage as possible.
There were so many incredible people who helped make this film and whose passion and hard work made it. Anna Kennedy helped us find out incredible leads (Nenda Neurer and Alfie STewart), Nuha Mekki remarkably transformed the interiors as production designer, Sam Allen did a beautiful job with the edit, Rufus Gibbs composed the music you hear. Thomas Mangham did a wonderful colour grade and Jack Patterson tirelessly fixed and pushed the sound in it. And without the support of Pulse Films, Panavision, Speade, The Mill, Wave Studios, South London Shorts, The Smalls, Barbican and British Council this film wouldn't have been possible.
What does the filmmaker of the future look like?
Hopefully the filmmaker of the future looks like anyone who has an interesting perspective and the passion to tell that story.
