Produced as part of his first unit in Level 3 BTEC Media, Naughty list is a short 7 minute film written, produced and directed by Freddie Baldwin, and starring long-time Media collaborator Lucas O’ Connor.

Freddie’s brief was to plan and film a short video based on a supernatural seasonal theme, on an extremely low budget. As part of this he had to produce all of the expected pre-production documents , including storyboards, screenplay, script break-downs and location recce’s – around 45-50 documents in total!

This is Freddie’s final short film. below the youtube link is his own ‘director’s commentary, which gives us some of his own thoughts on the making of the film.

“During the course of making this short film, various aspects changed. Initially, the plan was to have the main character be the opposite of how he is now;
instead of being horrid and spiteful he was instead kind and simply minding his own business, whereas in the final version he seems to be looking for trouble. This was changed because I came up with the theme of being on the naughty list as a plot point very early on, and in the state he was at the time, the main character did not fit this theme, especially since I wanted that to be the big reveal as to why he was being stalked in the end – that he was on the naughty list. He was too easy to empathise with and, as a result of this, his downfall at the hands of the evil Santa did not feel deserved. Once I came up with the idea of him being mean, ideas for ways to make him seem mean came rolling in. The despicable things he does in Scene 1 (the town) also became a way to add some meaningful events to the scene. Previously Scene 1 was simply going to be an uneventful walk through town. I think this would have made Scene 1 quite boring, which would have been especially bad since nothing really of note happens in Scene 2 (the canal) either.

The people in the circle dancing around the presents were also originally going to have a much larger role, and would be recurring characters in Scene 4 (the woods). This idea was scrapped, partially to make the main character feel more alone and isolated and partially to not put as much pressure on my sisters who played them, particularly as one of them was not having a good time acting in the film. To me, the idea of the “protagonist” being stalked by only one looming presence felt much more threatening than being stalked by a group of people.
In very early drafts of the plot there were actually going to be around 5 – 7 circle dancers. I quickly realised, however, that I would not have nearly enough people at my disposal to pull this off. Therefore, the amount was cut down to 3 (which would have included my step-sister as well) and then, when I found out she would not be available either, it was cut down to 2.

It is also worth noting that the two girls (played by my sisters) who put money in the homeless person’s cup and get pushed by the protagonist also play the two people dancing around the presents, and the homeless person who gets his cup kicked over (played by my dad) also plays the evil Santa at the end. The actual initial reason this was done was due to the lack of different actors who could be in the film, meaning some had to take double roles. However, I realised that this kind of works from a narrative perspective as well. It could be said to represent his actions and the people he has wronged coming back to get him, like karma.

The main character is also internally referred to as Nick, which is the same name that Santa Claus is said to have, St. Nick. This has absolutely no bearing on the plot since his name is never spoken or referred to, but I just thought it would be a fun thing to mention.
At the end of filming, the name Naughty List was chosen, and the project was concluded.

I worked on this project over the course of about a month and a half, and I am very pleased with the final product overall. There are a couple of very minor plot inconsistencies I would have liked to fix where possible, but from what I’ve seen, they really don’t impact the average viewing experience at all. The editing software I used (Lightworks) was almost flawless and did the job pretty much perfectly. I am very proud of this project, especially considering it is technically my first finished film, and I enjoyed working on it for the most part. Lucas O’ Connor says he is looking forward to working with me again in the future. Maybe we can even have our own trilogy, like the Cornetto trilogy, but for school projects.