The Short List is a YOMYOMF Network series, where we present short films we love every Friday at Noon EST. For the month of October, we’re celebrating the strange, the macabre, and the outright scary — Perfect for Halloween!
We’ve reached out to the filmmakers with 5 Questions to see what’s up since the production of their short film. It’s a way for them to revisit their film and get an update on their next projects. You can view all The Short List films here.
This week, we ask 5 questions to director James Cookson about his film, THE HOLE: 
1. How did you come up with the concept for this short?
The hole is a real place that’s just a short walk from my parents house in Wales. A couple of years back I took my girlfriend down to the hole and we chucked some stones down there, and just like in the film she became obsessed with it, wanting to throw larger and larger things down there and wanting to lower touches down and see what was in it. Luckily she didn’t go back down there in the middle of the night and get her hand stuck, that part is just where my imagination took over.
2. Any challenges or setbacks during the production?
The biggest challenge was having no crew and shooting it in one day. That meant myself and the actors had to cover multiple positions on the shoot. We also had to use all natural light and that meat shooting the night scenes in the afternoon/evening and then grading those shots to look like night. Inevitably the night scenes look a little fake and that takes a little bit of the believability and tension away. Having to run camera, and constantly check the framing and focus also didn’t allow me to fully observe the acting and I wish I could have engaged with the actors more.
3. Any funny stories from the making of this film?
The area where we shot is prone to rain all year round, so the week before the shoot I had fingers crossed for sun. When we came to shoot it ended up being so sunny that the glue attaching my magnetic viewfinder to the camera melted.
4. Where has your film played? Festivals or other places around the world?
I see this film as a massive learning curve. Rather than commit the film to festivals I choose to put it straight out onto the internet and get as much feedback on it as possible.
5. What’s been going on with you, filmmaking wise since the completion of this short? What are you working on next?
Since filming the hole I’ve made 2 more shorts and completed my first day as a paid director. The first short after The Hole I did was SEE/SAW. This was made specifically to a competition brief and I was lucky enough to win getting my short included on the UK release of the feature film Silent House (2011). The second was a comedy, Dead Man’s Clown Shoes, that was made for the Film4 Scene Stealers competition and reinterpreted a scene from Shane Meadows Dead Man’s Shoes. It made it to the shortlist but no further. Most recently I directed some fictional scenes for a documentary about American families who are preparing for a zombie outbreak. I got to spend a day filming zombies attacking and eating people, suffice to say a career highlight so far. I’m hoping to shoot another short early next year based on an original script. Between now and then i’m going to try the difficult task of looking for funding for the first time.
