AN OXFORD filmmaker wrote and shot an entire feature length film during the pandemic on a budget of £10,000.

Bradley Charlton, 23, lives in Headington and graduated from Oxford Brookes University in May. At university, the young filmmaker set up his own production company called Crazy Goose Productions with his own film team predominantly made up of other students.

Mr Charlton’s graduation film ‘Binary Truths’ was completed in May and was made available to stream on Amazon Prime in September.

He then wanted to move on to a new challenge and decided to make a feature length film.

Oxford Mail:

Originally, he wrote a 120-page script which had to be scrapped because of Covid restrictions. He then wrote a new script in just four days – and luckily his team liked it.

Then he had the trouble of gaining funding in the middle of a pandemic.

He explained that no one was investing in the arts and there was no financial support, so he took out a loan through the company and friends and family helped him raise £10,000.

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The feature length film, titled ‘Fading Petals’, took 11 long days to film and most of the footage was shot in Barton in October.

Focusing on the subject of identity, the two-hour long film dives into the lives of two isolated individuals, one old and one young woman, who are thrown together after the elderly woman gets ill.

Mr Charlton describes the relationship as 'antagonistic' to begin with and said that as the plot progresses, and their relationship evolves, it is revealed that the two share a past. Eventually the film leads to their relationship disintegrating and the elderly woman is haunted by the younger woman.

Oxford Mail:

Mr Charlton said: “It is essentially a film about morality and choices and memories.

"They both have these shared events and deal with them quite differently and for the older woman she has chosen to lock these memories away and put them in a box and forget about them. It is the presence of the young woman that makes them come back.

"So, these memories that were fading away are brought back to the surface.”

Oxford Mail:

The film stars Melanie Revill and Charlotte Reidie and the crew consisted of a team of four - director of photography Oliver Rigby, production designer Dan Evans, sound recordist Amelia Raymond and production manager Gabrielle Mastrolonardo.

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The film is currently in the post-production process and the team are working with composer William Cunningham.

The film makers hope to have the film edited and have the post-production process over in June of next year. The team are hopeful to get the film to festivals and find distribution for the film as cinemas hopefully begin to reopen.