Director's commentary of 'Courage'

Courage is a short film I wrote and shot in the half-term holiday. After one week of editing I posted it on Facebook. To save you the hassle of following the link I've embedded it here:






I wanted to replicate a scenario where an authoritarian government has just clamped down on the people and the sparks of a resistance movement have just been lit up. I originally came up with the (far better) idea of explaining this through the atmosphere. I even thought of including Valve's famous graffiti. Unfortunately this was dismissed and the setting/backstory was explained though short pieces of dialog. I realize now that was a mistake because it breaks up the story.

Nick's acting was brilliant and I've already set my mind on including him in other films we do in the future.

The attempt at a double narrative was slightly forced (I did write it in, but didn't intend it to look like it did) because Nick and Matt both came at different times so I couldn't film them together.

Both costumes were improvised in the hour before filming, I had planned to get hold of some from a costume rental shop but they were either shut, very expensive, needed a week's notice or a combination of the three.

I was unable to find a suitable cockpit background for the pilot so opted just to have sky. Thankfully this  was anchored by the sound of engines. On that note the sound from the freesound project was incredibly useful and I'm very grateful for it. What I did miss was some royalty-free music; there's loads of techno bleeps and ambient synthesized soundscapes on freesound but I needed something more like an orchestral score.