Following a screening at this year’s Grimmfest, we caught up with first-time director McKenzie Jones to talk all things Void Supervisor.
Can you tell us where the idea came from for Void Supervisor?
The idea for void supervisor came out of a time when I was looking for another job and had come across one for a position titled ‘Void Supervisor’ (If I remember right it was for cleaning and managing staff only areas of buildings) I joked about how boring that job would be if it was taken literally as a supervisor of a void and that night the initial ideas were drawn up for the short.
Would I be correct in saying it’s a cautionary tale?
Yeah I think it has an element of cautionary tale to it with the curiosity killed the cat saying holding quite true to the outcome of the character in the short film. As well as that I think the film also served as me almost reflecting on how the job I was in at the time was a dead end job and felt like watching paint dry which was also a big influence on the themes of the short.
I’m guessing you had a limited budget, can you tell us about crafting the void effect?
When we designed the void look for the short the idea was always for it to be a deep black void on the wall and just giving it this really uneasy feeling when you looked at it. When we got in contact with our VFX artist Howard he came up with the idea for the faint red glow around it which almost resembled a black hole in the design which I think really sold it.
Do you think there’s scope there to create a longer short or a feature?
I’ve considered potentially expanding the idea into something larger and there is some ideas I have had for how it could be done. People have really enjoyed it so far at festivals and I think we would have a lot of fun expanding on it and its definitely nice to be seeing that people want that to happen. I think I want to wait until I know I have an idea that can deliver on the things we wanted to do with the micro short and not take away from that. So yeah definitely would love to revisit the world in some capacity and hopefully with the reception we can secure funding to do something really special with whatever that ends up being. We just wrapped up production on my next short film ‘Sanctuary’ which is very different in a lot of ways to Void but has crossover as well so I’m currently deep into post production on that currently.
This is your directorial debut, how did you find the experience?
I really enjoyed directing the film and was really fun to bring this idea to life. I studied directing whilst I was at university so it has been something that I have been pursing over the last few years so getting to bring all that work together into practice and share void with the festival circuit has been really rewarding. Screening at Grimmfest was a really exciting opportunity for myself and the crew. Grimmfest means a lot to us all with us being Manchester based so to get to have the UK premiere in the home town for a lot of us felt really special and full circle for us. For me and some of the crew, Odeon Great Northern where the festival is based is also our local cinema that we go to so there was a very surreal feeling to be sat in there watching our own film on the screen.
You’ve just screened at Grimmfest, what was that experience like for the cast and crew?
We also screened at Bay of Blood in Canada a couple of months ago, which was the world premiere; it was really great to get to screen it overseas, and then the same weekend as Grimmfest we also screened at the Dead of Night Film Festival. We are also due to screen at:
Nightmare in the Ozarks
Terror on Tyne
Bite Size Horror Film Festival
Along with a couple more that we are still due to announce.
Has Void Supervisor given you a taste for more directing?
As I mentioned earlier, we have just wrapped on my next short Sanctuary and I have also finished writing the script for my first feature film which I’m in the early stages of hoping to secure funding for and really looking forward to hopefully sharing more on those projects in 2027.
