The Lie of the Highlight Reel
Most films — even short ones — are about something happening. A decision is made. A relationship changes. A character arrives somewhere different from where they started. The arc is so baked into the form that we barely notice it anymore. Even experimental films tend to have a thesis, a transformation, a point they're building toward.
In Between was an attempt to resist that. We wake up. We wait for kettles. We stand in supermarket aisles. We scroll without purpose. We sit in hallways trying to decide what to do next. These moments are not transitions between the important parts of life. They are most of life. I wanted to show them without apology and without elevation.
The ordinary doesn't need elevation. It just needs a witness.
What the Film Actually Is
A single day. One woman. Alarm, bathroom, coffee, commute, lunch alone, afternoon, home, couch, journal, sleep. In that order. Nothing interrupts it. No one calls with news. Nothing goes wrong. Nothing goes particularly right either.
The camera approach follows a simple rule: handheld for private moments, static for public spaces. When she's alone — bathroom, bedroom, kitchen — the camera is present with her, breathing, noticing. When she's out in the world — the street, the office, the supermarket — the camera locks off. The world outside is fixed and indifferent. Only her interior life has a witness.
There is no score. Music tells you how to feel. I wanted the film to trust silence instead — room tone, distant city sounds, a pen on paper at the end. The journaling at the end is not a resolution. It's not a ritual or a practice. It's just something she does. One line written, then the pen stops. That is enough.
The Pressure to Add Meaning
The hardest part of making this film wasn't the production. It was every instinct telling me to add something. A phone call that goes unanswered. A meaningful glance. A final shot that reframes everything before it. The temptation to give the audience something to leave with — a feeling, an idea, an interpretation — is almost overwhelming when you're working in a form that trains that expectation.
I kept asking: does this shot need to mean something, or does it just need to be accurate? The bathroom mirror in the morning. The supermarket aisle. The couch in the evening. These are accurate. They don't need a second layer. The meaning, if there is any, is in the recognition — not in anything I've added on top.
Does this shot need to mean something — or does it just need to be accurate? Recognition is enough. You don't need to tell the audience what to feel about what they're seeing.
If It Works
If this film works, the viewer recognises themselves in the vacancy of the morning bathroom, the mindless couch scroll, the pause in the hallway before deciding what to do next. Not inspired. Not moved. Just seen.
That's a different kind of goal than most films set themselves. It doesn't resolve. It doesn't uplift. It doesn't send you anywhere. It just holds a day up to the light and says: this is what most of it looks like. You're not alone in that.
Whether AI filmmaking is the right medium for that kind of film is an interesting question. The generated images have a quality of slightly-too-perfect ordinariness — real enough to recognise, constructed enough to feel observed rather than captured. That distance turned out to suit the subject. The Tuesday is yours. The camera is mine.