I’ve recently had my own hauntology experience as I revisited and re-edited a short film I originally made in 2010.

I think I’ve mentioned before how as I’ve recently looked back over the work I’ve done as a creative person over the years and realised the reoccurring themes of spirit of place and hauntology seem to be there throughout. When I originally created the work this has not been a conscious thing, it’s only in recent years as my own awareness of hauntology has increased that I’ve realised my work fits into this “mold”.

Revisiting this film is a good example, the film itself was originally rooted in memory and lost futures, as I will discuss later, but revisiting it in 2026 had made me think about my own lost future at that point. When I made the film I was immersed in it completely, just coming to the end of a joint degree in media and music technology (this was my final piece) which I had given up relatively stable work to pursue.

As a mature student it was quite an interesting experience in itself, the bulk of my fellow students were much younger than me, and myself and my new friend on the course, Emma (who was also a mature student) were seen as the “mum and dad” of the group. We also had a different approach to creativity and often made more “arty” projects culminating in one big collaborative project where we effectively turned Woodend (home of the Sitwell family in Scarborough) into a 60s style “happening” with bands, dancers and building projections in various rooms. It was a fun night, but i think our contemporaries thought we were a bit crazy.

Our primary focus was creativity, which was different to most of the other students, and we constantly pushed ourselves to make more interesting and arty pieces. I imagined at the time I would continue to follow that creative route. This is my own lost future, as in reality I drifted into teaching soon afterwards, as a HE lecturer at the University of Hull initially then moving into FE and ending up, as I mentioned before, in education management for HE in Nottingham.

Before I knew it I’d spent 15 years in academia.

Not quite the creative/artistic journey I envisaged in 2010…

Of course, outside of work I was still working on creative projects, mostly music based, and did get some amazing opportunities. I played all over Europe in some great venues, with some great bands and also made some great film pieces too, including a couple of short documentaries I was commissioned to do.

It’s only this year, with the major life changes I’ve faced, that I’ve realised I want to “un-pause” that creative/artistic side of myself. So perhaps re-visiting this film is inevitable as that’s where things paused in the first place.

THE PREMISE

The original idea behind the film was a roadtrip inspired by Christopher Petit’s “Radio On” film made in the late 1970s. It captured the UK at a very specific time on the cusp of the new “Thatcher Years” as the Conservative Party took control of the country. The music was also changing at the time and played a part in the film too. With tracks by Bowie, Devo and Kraftwerk accompanying the stark black and white visuals. European director Wim Wenders was loosely associated with the film too and there are some little Easter eggs that reference his own work in it.

Petit’s film tells the story of a DJ in London who makes a road-trip to Bristol to investigate his brother’s apparent suicide. Along the way he meets various interesting characters including one played by Sting, who shed light on the general mystery of his brother’s death.

It got mixed reviews at the time and has earned a bit of a cult following since its release in 1979 as one of the UK’s only Road movies.

I first came across it on the BFI DVD reissue when I worked in HMV Hull as a DVD buyer and absolutely loved it when I watched it. It captured the post punk period perfectly for me both musically and visually, and while slow paced by modern standards had a great charm due to its nostalgic and, as I now realise, hauntological elements.

The premise of my film would be similar to Petit’s: My protagonist would be a son who was estranged from his father, and who had returned to his home town of Scarborough for the father’s funeral and the story would unfold from there.

I decided that the father would be an artist and the son had lived a quite bohemian early life filled with freedom, creativity and imagination as a result of this.

He ended up rejecting the father’s creative based life view as he grew older, and left to pursue money and career options in London, falling out with his father completely as a result.

A lost future…

On returning to Scarborough the son finds that his father has left specific instructions for him with regard to where and how his ashes are to be scattered, along with a box file of old memories and an envelope with a tape player and cassettes inside it.

A map showing places to visit and scatter the ashes guides the son on his journey as the trip takes the son on a journey from the east coast as the sun rises in Scarborough and Flamborough Head, to the west coast final destination of Crosby Beach in Liverpool as the sun sets. The son makes a realisation over the course of the journey that there is more to life than career and money, reconnecting with his childhood self and developing a new understanding of his father and the importance of memory and creativity.

In my initial draft the film followed a slightly different path, as the father only left instructions for the first part of the son’s quest, which was to go to a local garage. The garage owner would then reveal the father’s vintage 1970s car along with a letter from the father detailing the next location he needs to visit. This mirrored Petit’s film as the son would meet a series of people on his travels who would shed light on the fact that the father has continually remembered the son despite their estrangement and obviously loved him dearly. The vintage 1970s car was also intended to be a key character in the film, and rather than a box file the father had left the memory items within the car, along with the car itself being a tangible memory as the childhood car of the son.

Unfortunately with limited budget I had to make a compromise here and had to create a slightly different story for the short film. I still think the original premise would work very well as a film or possibly in more modern parlance as a short TV series along the lines of “Small Prophets”.

THE PROCESS

Myself and Emma filmed all the film sequences in around a week in May 2010. We had a small Sony camera that used DV tape and I edited the footage on Final Cut on my MacBook. The musical elements were all recorded using Reason software. Looking back I can’t quite believe how basic our set up was.

I remember us filming the Flamborough Head footage first, which opens the film. It was a location I remembered as a child, with its distinctive white lighthouse, and craggy cliffs. It made a dramatic start to the film. For the ash scattering scene I’d mixed up some fake ash using sand and coffee powder to use and if you watch carefully in the long shot the high wind kicked it back into my face, which stung a tad!

I filmed the Scarborough street views during the week, I can’t remember which specific streets they were unfortunately but there are many similar ones in the town. The long-shot footage of the town was filmed from Oliver’s Mount a local landmark that gives a great view of the buildings and roofs of the lovely seaside town. I accidentally managed to track the path of a passing seagull, which I didn’t realise until I started to edit, but it actually worked quite well.

The interior footage was filmed in the library of Woodend, and in my mind is the least successful scene as it felt very empty. In some ways this added to the surreal nature of the film but I was never 100% happy with this.

The box file in the scene before the journey begins is full of items from my own childhood and the tape recording is a recording of my dad and me aged four.

In 2023 I used the same tape recording to construct the DUTY song “Memory Bells” which was initially an exclusive recording for the Woodford Halse label. You can watch the video for that here:

The travelling scenes were filmed on the different journeys across the moors we made, I remember passing through the town of Bedlam just before we reached Brimham Rocks for the dream sequence. Which seemed strangely symbolic.

The central sequence sees the son experience a psychedelic dream visitation from his younger self, at the halfway point of the journey and is meant to symbolise the son making a reconnection with his earlier life and experiencing a creative reawakening. Thankfully Emma’s teenage son was available to use for the child role and did a sterling job clambering around the rocks. It was a fun shoot.

While Petit used black and white footage exclusively in his film I wanted to use some elements of colour, especially in the dream sequence and I think this part turned out very well. I’m also really happy with the music for this part too, especially the start of the scene where I was trying to emulate bird sounds with synthesisers before the full track kicked in.

I recently repurposed the Brimham Rocks footage for a project I completed in 2025: after competing a Kosmischeboy remix for The Gray Field Recordings of their track “Wilderness Takes Over” I realised with some minor tweaks the footage fitted perfectly. I rendered this footage entirely in black and white to suit the mood and theme of the song.

You can watch the video here:

The final footage for Sunrise/Sunset was all filmed in one evening as we actually did race the sunset from east coast to west. It was quite a surreal experience watching the sun literally chase us across the country. We captured some great footage of the derelict art houses as we drove into Liverpool, which I imagine have all been redeveloped or knocked down now, another example of unintentional Hauntology. I really like the music track here as well and it’s particularly effective slowing down as the journey reaches its end, conveying a similar feel to the Kraftwerk tracks in Petit’s original film.

We reached Gormley’s “Another Place” in Crosby just in time for the sunset and captured some lovely footage. That first shot as I’m standing in the beach looking like one of the sculptures myself is one of my favourites and exactly how I’d envisaged it.

In the final scene the son has his moment of creative reawakening, loosens his shackles, symbolised by dropping his braces, and walks off into the sunset leaving his career and money focussed past behind as colour once again floods his world.

“It is only now that I understand the sixth sense that he used to talk about: MEMORY is everything”

THE PRESENT

Revisiting the film all these years on has been interesting and emotional, as a couple of years after the film was made I lost my own father to cancer, making the film much more poignant for me.

My initial plan this year was to re-edit the film completely but this was not possible due to the new Final Cut software being completely incompatible with older files – a big disappointment. So I edited the existing footage for this version from the original master render. Long term I’d like to go back and reassemble the raw footage to properly remaster it.

Despite my dissatisfaction with certain elements I’m happy with the film overall and looking at it with new eyes has been interesting. Although I had lots of positive comments about the film at the time I made it, I also had a few negative ones, including a few from a film lecturer I knew who had been quite scathing about it. As a result I’d always felt it wasn’t “good enough” and took those comments to heart.

Watching it back now I think it works well, there’s a new element of nostalgia and Hauntology which wasn’t obvious initially. And perhaps I was too hard on myself at the time. It’s interesting to see it getting views online and certainly the comments I’ve had in 2026 are positive. It’s been entered into a couple of gallery shows too so it will be interesting to see how that develops.

You can watch the full film here, and your comments/opinions are very welcome: