Written, Produced & directed by Ned Caderni
A man in his mid-twenties attempts to send a voice note to an old friend, but it leads to an existential crisis.
ABOUT THE FILM
“Hey Katie” was an Official Selection at our Kino London Short Film Festival earlier this year.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Ned is an award-winning director and writer from London. His last short, Light Fantastic, won the Best Film at the 2021 Reale Film Festival in Milan and will be shown at the annual Independent Short Awards in Los Angeles in the Fall of 2022. Ned has experience working under some of Britain's leading filmmakers, including Josie Rourke and Michael Winterbottom. Furthermore, he has written and directed for Unit9, Campaign’s Tech Company of the Year 2021. When not making his own shorts or music videos, he works as a Story Producer for an upcoming docu-drama about immigrant chefs in London which will be premiering on one of the major SVOD platforms early next year.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH NED
Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your filmmaking background?
First off, thanks for having me! My name is Ned Caderni and I’m a London-based filmmaker. Hard to try and put your entire background into one answer, so I’ll give you the cliche answer of saying I have always loved storytelling. I grew up wanting to tell stories and, for me, film is the best way that I can get my ideas across. Also having a background in theatre has helped me with getting a better understanding of the craft.
Tell us about the genesis of Hey Katie and how the project came about?
I hadn’t made a narrative short for over a year and was beginning to get the itch to make something again. Or at least something that wasn’t a corporate video. There are only so many explainer videos for energy-efficient gates you can make. I was a story producer on a food documentary at the time and between setups, I’d jot down ideas on my phone's notes app. I was having a coffee and I suddenly remembered how hard I found sending a voice note to a friend a few weeks back. So, I thought that could be a solid basis for a little short. The script followed fairly quickly after, first as voice notes themselves, which I sent to my friend Patrick (they're all on his phone somewhere...) and then finally as a traditional screenplay.
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making Hey Katie and how did you overcome them?
Filmmaking is more often than not about problem-fixing and embracing limitations. My flatmates at the time were both away and I knew we had just one day to shoot something. I was also moving out soon and wanted to make a short film before I left. There were of course obstacles at every step, but we wanted to try and make the film in the most straightforward way possible. We used our own gear and locations and kept it 'in the family'. This way we knew we could make the film in the way we wanted to. Even if we had a big budget for this, there is very little stylistically I would have changed.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
The film premiered at Kino and it was a great experience. It’s an honour to have your film screened with an audience, even if it makes you feel a little sick. My Al Pacino impression got a chuckle though; that meant a lot! We then released it online and people seem not to have hated it, which is always nice. It’s also my mum’s favourite thing I’ve made, which I’ll probably chat to my therapist about.
What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?
For shorts, I often find that simpler is better. I think there is this desire to get all the magic you feel you have into one film. And that drive is wonderful and should never be squashed, but I think you’ve also got to be patient. Rich Taylor, the AC on the film, always talks about working on the rice before you master the fish. When you perfect the rice, then you can move on to making sushi.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
Funding. Big time.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
This is where you want to flex and recommend some obscure art house film; “Oh, what do you mean you’ve never seen Abbas Kiorastami’s early work?”. But I recently rewatched RoboCop for the first time in ages. I forgot just how epic it is. So if you’ve never seen it, RoboCop.