Katie Taylor: How we took part in a 72 hour film challenge! And how we got on… (BSL)

It has been a busy 12 months for Nadia who has become a nomad, travelling the country (including a trip to New York) for her acting and writing work. In the summer this year Nadia Nadarajah takes on the leading role of Cleopatra at the Globe Theatre in London, “in a ground-breaking bilingual production using Spoken English and British Sign Language.” One of her scripts is being produced at the Edinburgh Deaf Festival this year. She is unstoppable and a busy multitalented woman!

Earlier this year Nadia was tagged in a social media post by Seattle Deaf Film Festival sharing their memories from when she won with ‘All Day’ in 2012. The following post by them was to advertise their KissFist 72hr film challenge which caught her attention. As she had recently moved to Peterborough and was getting to know the local deaf community, she asked around to see if anyone fancied taking part with her. Three brave ladies raised their hands and said that they would join in and were available that weekend in February. “What have I done?!” said Charlene!

After entering, Nadia gave everyone a role, she would do the script, act and edit the film, Charlene agreed to be filmed too. JoJo was very happy to be in charge of the filming and Katie as the general dogsbody!

The challenge started at 6pm in Seattle (Pacific Standard Time) on the Friday evening but due to the time zone differences Nadia had to wake up at 2am on Saturday morning to receive the challenge! The requirements were: a film lasting 3-5 minutes in the thriller genre, the following props were essential – a beanie hat, an umbrella, a light turning on and the phrase “I wasn’t expecting that!” had to be included in the script.

The cast/crew had to consist of at least one deaf person. Working through the night she came up with the script and the beginnings of the filming style ready to meet up with the others at Peterborough Cathedral early Saturday morning. Prior permission to film at the Cathedral had been granted to Nadia in preparation for the challenge.

JoJo, Katie and Nadia scouted the cathedral looking for locations to film and discussing what would work best. We were limited as there was also a wedding fair being set up! Ironic considering the script! We decided that outside amongst the gravestones added to the fear/thriller factor.

When Charlene arrived (late as usual!) it was just in time to join in the rehearsals. Nadia was very keen to have the whole film completed in just one continuous shot which was a unique challenge. Starting points, end points, the route, avoiding the public, the direction of filming as well as the distance/speed of walking had to be worked out. Katie came up with several ideas to help with this and Nadia promoted her role to that of Director!

We worked so well as a team, and we were lucky that it only took three full attempts to achieve what we were aiming for. Nadia and Charlene did their acting brilliantly and JoJo had her eyes trained on the camera doing her very best to stay balanced while Katie pulled and pushed her about as well as keeping out of shot whilst keeping everyone on their timing cues!  A well-deserved brunch afterwards was much needed to recover, to discuss the paperwork for submission and to come up with the name for our film – Deafear! I won’t give away the plot/script for the film so that you can go and watch it.

On Sunday Nadia did the editing required, added the titles and credits, the subtitles and the soundtrack. As a deaf person – the soundtrack was a bit tricky! Using her editing software, she came up with the first draft and Katie’s husband helped out to finetune this to make sure the style of sound and the timings was what Nadia was aiming for.

The original soundtrack was not appropriate to use as apparently all he could hear was JoJo and Katie breathing hard with all their rushing around to get the filming done! Challenge completed and submitted with plenty of time spare.

Last week the Seattle Deaf Film Festival started, and the submissions were judged, and we found out that we were winners! Hooray for us! We were given free tickets to attend but alas no plane tickets were included so we arranged to attend virtually instead together at Katie’s house complete with a fake red carpet and mini Oscar statuettes for each of us!

We are definitely biased but we totally thought we deserved to win! We each were asked why we had decided to join in, JoJo worked on 11 productions as stage manager for 3D in Derby when she lived there. Since getting married and moving to Peterborough this was something she missed doing and was pleased to have this opportunity to get involved with the challenge which was fun.

Charlene really enjoyed attending an NDCS summer drama school led by Jenny Sealey, Artistic Director of Graeae twice. This gave her the opportunity to relive that and to give her time for herself for a laugh as she is a busy mum to a toddler. Katie loves challenges and being creative and this was a completely new opportunity to do something different and she loves helping others. Going round the tree was her favourite idea and part of the film even though it was the trickiest to negotiate! Nadia was happy to take on this unique challenge and work alongside some local deaf friends for the weekend.

You can watch our short film here https://www.deafspotlight.org/kissfist-2024

Don’t forget to catch Nadia at the Globe 4^th August to 15^th September in Anthony and Cleopatra. https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/antony-and-cleopatra/