
Products of Loneliness
Products of Loneliness is a love triangle between a piano teacher, her son and a microwave. Both surreal and intimate, this family drama unfolds in the uncanny confines of a lonely mother and son's home. Supported by CPU London.
Project
Products of Loneliness


The Story
This is a tale of love and suffering between a mother, her son and a microwave.
Ever since Josh was young he has often sought comfort in a microwave to help him sleep with its soothing drone. Having just failed the intake to a prestigious music academy for cello, he is questioning everything and turns back to his familiar fixation.
His mother, Rosalie, is a lonely piano teacher who can't let go of her dream for her son's musical career. In their co-dependent and surreal little world, they fight and clash, eventually destroying each other's dreams.

Director’s Vision
"This is a story that is very personal to me, and yet has universal relatability.
Having struggled with depression myself, I wanted to bring a unique story to people that offered a perspective on these struggles.
Products of Loneliness’ strength is that it deals with two different sides of the same coin; two subjective experiences. The film takes you on a journey through a young man’s search for a flawed solution to his mental health issues and his mother’s attempt to repress her own. The short is sympathetic to both characters. It can be painful to ‘get better’ from our difficulties, and it can be easier to remain in our illness.
I know this from experience and I hope this short helps people understand that better, rather than demonising the complexity of our feelings."

Look
The visual style of this film is all geared to enhance character and storyline.
We are creating a beautiful but claustrophobic atmosphere, with painterly and objective cinematography representative of the repressive and closed-off world of this mother-son duo. The film will use desaturated colours and a muted palette, alternating between warm and cold tones.
We will be shooting on an Alexa Mini with spherical lenses to achieve a naturalistic style, better suited for character-focussed close-ups and creating detailed, deep focus wide-shots to emphasise loneliness.
As the pace builds we will move into a more subjective style, with speedy editing to underline the building pressure to a violent climax and its consequences.

THE MICROWAVE
The microwave functions as a digital outlier to the setting of the film. It's hypnotic, it's anti-musical and it's hard, cold technology. It’s also a feeding mother, of sorts.
Josh uses the object to escape his feelings, functioning as a wider symbolic metaphor for dependency and avoidance. While it sticks out, the microwave creates a relatable bridge between the world of the film and the viewer, through its uncanny and humorous presence.




Import/Export - Ulrich Seidl
The Piano Teacher - Michael Haneke
Birth - Jonathan Glazer
The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Yorgos Lanthimos
The Souvenir & Archipelago - Joanna Hogg
Warped kitchen sink naturalism with a surreal edge.

Sound
Sound is one of the most important elements of this film. We will evoke a dreamy and unsettling atmosphere, through the score and sound design.
William Carkeet, experienced musician and film-scorer, will be heading up all things sound design and score. He intends to manipulate spatial recordings and the piano to enhance the different emotional atmospheres of the film. In particular, Will has recently been exploring the sounds of an organ inside of an abandoned Primark which will certainly be making it onto the short film, Rather than a traditional ‘score’ the film is driven by alternating sonic palettes from the piano, the pervasive drone of the microwave and the quiet of domesticity.
Brahms Piano Sonata No.2, the slow movement, is the evocative piece that Rosalie is currently learning as the story takes place, and will also be an important element to the score.

WILLIAM CARKEET - COMPOSER

Budget
We have already managed to get certain large costs down thanks to our resourceful and amazing team. Luckily cameras, lenses and location will all be very affordable.
For production the budget reflects our desire to pay crew a fair daily wage, lighting, sound recordist and equipment, art & prop dept., costume and simple catering. In order to do the script justice we believe a 4-day shoot is necessary, which naturally raises certain costs.
For post-production securing a great colorist is of utmost importance. Because of the film's references and style we had always wanted to shoot this on film, but budget has nudged us to make the difficult decision to shoot on digital instead. Therefore, a great colorist can make a world of difference. We also need money to submit the film to festivals.






Why This Story
This is a film about family and loss. In particular the parent-child relationship. It can be hard to let go and move on. Through a tragicomic lens we explore the challenges facing a parent or adolescent dealing with depression. There is a lot about mental health at the moment, but because of this we feel the real complexity of these things gets missed out sometimes. We don’t believe the solution is obvious, nor can it just be a symptom of technology: this film aims to help lift the shame of mental suffering from the viewer, offering a radically ambivalent view of these issues. We want to free you of the necessity of having to fit in a box. It’s a compassionate film, not a solutions-based one. It celebrates the oddness of our condition.
POL X CPU
We are excited to be partnering with the mental health charity CPU to help fundraise for this film and raise awareness for their important cause.

Our film is supporting the vital work of mental health charity CPU London, which provides free and low-cost psychotherapy to people on benefits and low incomes. To learn more about CPU London, or to make a donation towards their much-needed work, please follow this link to their website and donation link:
