directed BY Ned Caderni | PRODUCED BY Poppy O'Hagan
An aspiring director attempts to make a personal account of his battles with depression but a neglected crew begin to turn against his unorthodox working methods.
ABOUT THE FILM
THIS FILM IS NOT TITLED is a mockumentary about being on a film set and was cast with non-actors. More precisely, all the roles in the film are played by people who usually do that on set job for a living.
This is it’s premiere.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Ned is an award-winning director and writer from London. His last short, Hey Katie, was screened at the BIFA Qualifying Festival Kino London where it was praised for its comedic screenplay and direction. His previous film, Light Fantastic, won Best Film at the 2021 Reale Film Festival in Milan and was shown at the annual Independent Short Awards in Los Angeles. 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. Ned is currently in post-production for his debut feature film, worm, a modern folk horror. When not making his own shorts or music videos, he works for a variety of clients both as a creative and copywriter. He spent the last year working as a Story Producer and editor for an upcoming docu-drama about immigrant chefs in London which will be premiering on a major SVOD platform in early 2024. He is allergic to penicillin.
Poppy is a producer who aims to engage both audiences and crew in narratives that explore themes of human bonds and wishes to support indie filmmakers with a variety of narrative styles. She currently has a film on the festival circuit and several short narrative films that are in various stages of post production. Alongside this, Poppy has a micro budget feature shot on Anglesey in Wales in September 2023 that is now in post production and has a slate of features that she will be developing in the new year under her company Giant Films, whilst working at Jeremy Thomas’ Recorded Picture Company.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH NED & POPPY
Welcome to our Short of the Week series (and "welcome back" to Ned). Poppy can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and your filmmaking background?
PO: Hi, it’s really great to be selected for your series and to meet another supporter of Ned’s work. I am a film producer, with a focus on indie features that challenge the audience. I’m a keen linguist and have worked across both film and television, working with French and Italian crews.
Ned what have you been up to since we featured your last short "Hey Katie"?
NC: Thanks for having me back! I started work on this short pretty much around the time Hey Katie was shown at Kino back in April 2023. Since then, Poppy and I went up to Wales to shoot a very low-budget horror feature. So that has taken up a lot of our time!
Can you tell us about the genesis of This Film Has No Title?
PO: This short was initially a way for Ned and I to get to know each other’s filmmaking styles and experiment with blurring the line between fiction and reality.
What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making of This Film Has No Title and how did you overcome them?
NC: I’m not sure if I’d call it an obstacle, because I ended up really enjoying the challenge, but working with non-actors was incredibly rewarding. With the exception of Marnie, everyone in the film ‘played themselves’. Ed Glynne Jones is a DP, who played the DP. Eli Banfield is a 1st AD, she played the AD. So it was about giving them the space to be themselves but also make them feel as comfortable as possible with the camera in front of them.
PO: The obstacles were not too bad considering how hard it is to get any film made with little budget, but the crew were so generous with their time and energy that it made it a very easy ride.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
NC: This will be our premier! So ask us that again in a few weeks!
What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?
NC: I mentioned it last time I was here, but keep things as simple as possible. I re-watched my first film and although there is lots I love about it, I’m trying to throw so much into a short space of time. Also read short stories, especially anything by Chekhov or Maupassant. Not only will it make you a better writer, they also happen to be really quite good.
PO: From a producer side, I would say use what you have access to and what you can control. It is really not essential to spend lots of money on short films if you prepare a story well and make sure that it’s contained. Don’t overcomplicate. Shoot everything as if you were shooting on film, 13 to 1 take ratio.
What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
NC: I think one thing we all feel but don’t talk about enough is how disheartening social media and putting your movies out there can be. The highs are high, but the lows can be very crushing. I remember talking to a friend who spent years on a short and when it was over, they said to me something along the lines of ‘What’s the point? Some teenager is going to just put a video up on TikTok and it will get millions more views than what I’ve done’. I get it, even though I do like TikTok. But you have to believe that the work will somehow reach an audience, even if it’s small. If you change or touch one person with what you’ve created, then it’s kind of all worth it. Not to get too sententious, but one of my favourite quotes is from George Elliot and she puts it better then I could; “The greatest benefit we owe to the artist (...)is the extension of our sympathies.... Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.” And that’s pretty cool.
PO: Finding the right collaborators can be tricky. The almost essential need to pull in favours when doing short films on a budget can be a challenge for those who don’t have the connections. BUT I would say that you must be brave and make those peer to peer connections because whether they’ll serve you now or in the future, everyone is willing to do you a favour as they’ll likely be asking you for one not long from now! We must help each other.
What next for you?
PO: Ned and I have an exciting announcement actually. We are in post production on our first feature film! We can’t give too much away about it now, but let’s just say that it’s a genre film, combining folk mystery, drama and horror called WORM. We hope that the Short of the Week fans will support us in promoting it when it is released (hopefully in summer 2024) as we made it very much with the same crew from our short and on a super micro budget. Part of our short film process was to start building our audience so we hope you’ll all enjoy it!
A feature! that’s exciting! How have you found the difference between making a feature vs a short?
PO: Creatively, the timeline of a feature requires much more patience and planning I would say and the edit feels a lot more impactful on the overall story because you can really play around with pace and subplot. It really asks you to probe HOW you want to tell the story. More logistically, making a feature definitely involves a lot more admin and we definitely asked for all the help and advice we could get to make sure we got the film into the best position it could be. I do have to say though, that the guerrilla mentality of short filmmaking definitely helps you overcome the barriers to feature filmmaking and undoubtedly shaped how we shot ours.
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
NC: If you liked this short, I’d highly recommend Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (what a title, right?), which you’ll realise I just ripped off for this film. Also sounds like I’m taking the piss, but I saw Gran Turismo this year and honestly thought it was such a blast. Proper No Bullshit Fun. Life is about balance after all!
PO: I have to say Anatomy of a Fall from autumn last year - a brilliant example of a high quality script.
