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Five years after breaking up Molly and Gretchen meet in Sheffield. I guess this is a scenario a lot of people think about – the conversation they’d have with a significant person who isn’t in their life anymore. I’m a sucker for movies like Before Sunrise and I think this film is pretty clearly influenced by that kind of cinema – I suppose it’s a bit of a homage. We shot the film very quickly over a couple of nights and it was really intended as a kind of proof of concept for a longer film I’ve been trying to finish writing for about 100 years.

I love Sheffield. As well as being my home it’s one of my favourite cities and I feel passionately about having it represented in film in interesting ways. You always hear about certain cities being characters in the films they house and I don’t see why Sheffield can’t be one of those places. Now, if you’re from Sheffield you’ll know the route the characters take absolutely butchers the geography of the city centre but we shot very minimally so I picked places where the lighting could work.

 

We shot over two nights with me, a sound recordist, a production assistant and the cast – with zero budget. One of the main challenges was how heavy the camera and rig was for me during these really long takes. I made the decision that I wanted the film to be, basically, four long unbroken scenes so I was walking backwards for 3-4 minutes at a time holding up a pretty heavy camera. That was tough. If I could go back and do it again I’d do it so much differently but I’m glad we made the film in the way we did and that it’s out there in the world!