Hiya!

Thank you for being on this email list and being the first people to hear about Playback.

🤔 Can you have a constructive dialogue with someone you are fundamentally opposed to? Does it work? Is it worth the emotional distress?

Maybe there’s someone in your family you avoid talking to at Christmas, a friend you quietly unfollowed on social media, a neighbour you’ve assessed wouldn’t be worth engaging with.

These questions sculpted every choice when making this short film. And that’s forged it into a film of contrasts; yes and no, resilience and vulnerability, real and sci-fi, anger and hope, engaging and retreating.

🎬 An eleven page script, twenty “yes let’s make it” from cast & crew (all volunteering their time!), two days in the hot August 2025 sun, many more days in the dark rooms of post-production - and we have an eight minute film that will hopefully do some good in the world.

Finding a producer and funding has been the biggest challenges of my career, so I end up doing a lot of that work myself and relying on generosity from those who believe in the vision and values (so important) of the film and want to contribute to making it.

To them THANK YOU! You can see their credits here.

📹 Two years ago I discovered an old camcorder at a car boot sale. The seller was insistent that it worked (what a fiction), but I was on the fence about buying it. Until I discovered a used tape in the bag: “Mark’s 21st birthday”.

That tape clinched the sale. What could be on it? Some innocent family gathering from the 80s, some raucous night out from the 90s, something corrupted, something salvageable?

My mind went in a million story directions and coalesced into Playback.

~ After years of carrying out revenge on behalf of other women, a female sniper must decide whether to reconcile with her past or continue her violent spree.

I won’t spoil the story yet! You’ll get to see it first when it’s available.

📼 As for the “Mark’s 21st birthday” tape (and the 80 others I bought in an ebay job lot), it became a prop in the film. I’m working my way through digitising them all (big thanks to Somerset Film) and have been discovering some truly treasured memories; family Christmases, Cyprus holidays, bird watching (with obligatory David Attenborough impressions), charity rugby matches… but I’m yet to digitise Mark. He’s on the hit list though.

Something will be happening with all that found footage, stay tuned for that.

⛓️‍💥 I’ve found this a very freeing film to make, a large part due to the format of a camcorder and the rough and intimate view that brings. It’s really only a mental shift that says “let’s get out there, see what’s possible, be raw rather than perfect, lean into the feeling that anything could happen”.

Although I wasn’t consciously thinking of it at the time of making Playback, there are two sections in The OA that hooked me and have clearly influenced the style of our film. The very opening shot of episode one is a phone camera witnessing an incident on a bridge (very handheld with snatched natural conversation) and later the camcorder recorded invitation to meet OA (extreme close ups with a hint at the supernatural).

👀 If you’re keen to feel the vibe of Playback before it comes out, watch those two moments.

🌊 My previous short film Fathom is available to watch online. A story of surviving the workplace and a climate shifting world.

📹 I’ll be sharing more about Playback on these emails over the next few months. We’ll be submitting it to a few select festivals and then getting it online as quickly as possible after that.

😱 I’m about to go into pre-production for my first horror short film, which will shoot in Autumn 2026.

So that brings you up to date with me. More to follow soon.

All the best for now,
Holly

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