The Voice | A Short Film by Stuart Hardy 

I wish I had the money to donate to your next short film. Only gripe I got is the audio gets a bit crusty, but that's probably my phone being a DiC. P.S I'd like to suggest a webseries that greatly exerts this energy. It's called 'The Show', by a guy called Quod Matter.

This was incredible. I know not knowing and leaving it ambiguous is kind of the point but I have to know. Did he kill his mum?

My DOP burst out laughing when we got to that shot. It was a fun day

@@Stubagful It's definitely not where I expected the scene to go.

Yeah, that's my favourite moment too.

Thanks! Yeah it was way more complicated than anything I've done before. Filmmaking is a humbling but also thrilling experience

I'm actually writing a feature script based off it :)

@@Stubagful great. All the best with that.

​@@Stubagful I meant to ask, how is the writing on it going? I've had industry level mentoring on screenwriting the last 3 years. I could lend my thoughts on it if you'd like some objective feedback.

Cheers mate! :) I was especially happy with the final scene. Shooting it was one of the most fun days of my life! I know that technically speaking i have a long way to go of course. I'm in post production on my second short and I've gone way overboard on the visual composition this time round. It's another funny idea played with a straight face

Cheers mate :) glad you liked it

The original short story I wrote and based this on was even more horrible (Colin has a child in it) - this was as palatable as I could make it! (He's married to Jane Goddard, Colin's Mum)

@@Stubagful As much as I'd love a completely twisted one, I think this version was a good balance. Wouldn't mind if it appeared as a sort of DVD Extra though!

Do you have any questions the answers to - depending on what they are - could Make you want to finish watch it?

Hmm. You're the first person to mention this. I did research into schizophrenia when first starting on the project because I thought it might be an issue, and discovered a lot of misconceptions about it that I was harbouring. I ultimately decided that my intent behind it would supercede concerns about stereotyping. For the record, the idea for the film came out of a therapy session. In about 2019 I started undergoing therapy for depression and it was during these sessions I discovered I'd completely shut out my ability to feel anger for 15 years and when I allowed myself to feel anger again, I was thoroughly disturbed. It didn't sound like me, it sounded like a different person, so my thought was "what if it was an entirely different person?" I came down on the side of "go ahead, do it" because in the story, Colin isn't a violent person, he has this voice inside his head that is distinct from him and he spends the film rejecting it, even though he is tempted to follow through on it on a couple of occasions. The impulse is there, but it's not acted upon because violent thoughts and violent actions are two different things, and in this instance: two different people

@@Stubagful ah ok. that's interesting. thank you very much for your thoughtful response. love ur videos

No problem :) Another interesting thing that happened while I was preparing was I got a positive response to the ending monologue predominantly from women (including my mum) and then I started researching this impulse called 'cute aggression' - look it up, it's fascinating