Short film collaboration: 'Something Pointless'

At the launch of my solo exhibition Annwn, filmmaker Keefa Chan asked if I’d be interested in working on a short film.

I didn’t think much more about it until spring rolled around—then I thought, why not?

At first, my role was to source props that would help create the right atmosphere for the film. Later, once we had a producer on board, I was invited to be the art director.
That meant looking after a small art department and working with director Asa Bailey. Co-incidentally, I was in the middle of watching Silo on Apple TV...
I had no experience of working as an AD and had to Google what an art director actually does. To my relief, I realised many of the skills overlapped with what I already do in my creative work…

I'll be adding more to this post when time allows, but for now, this is where it all began...

An ideas board/moodboard/vision is integral to the process. It doesn't have to be complicated or super-neat - just a visual reminder to keep the ideas and 'front and centre'.
Of course, there's room to change ideas after the many online meetings that took place...

I was given the script and the 'treatment' - a polished document, which included potential filming locations, references to films, and later, a Spotify playlist which 
I listened to on repeat whilst designing the artwork...

I LOVE this illustration, from a children's book called The Mousehole Cat (1991) by Antonia Barber and illustrated by Nicola Bayley.
My sketch below was an idea from the script where the main character, a young tween boy struggles with nightmares and sees shadow monsters in his dreams.