Laura Jean Hocking‘s short film, Hot Singles, is not exactly what you think it is when you look at the title. But then, it kind of is. The sex chat culture sure plays a part here, but it’s a supporting player to the nucleus hovering around isolation and the unknown in a modern world. Set entirely in a darkened basement as our heroine, Daisy, arrives to take shelter, Hot Singles is a vivid imagining of the somehow relatable.
Given that we dream such a toxic wasteland will never be a reality, Hot Singles is a familiar apocalyptic genre of film. Daisy is cautious, in the midst of what we don’t need to assume is a global panic, scrambling for a safe place and any form of communication with the now outside world. Hocking’s film is rife with striking visuals, a humming sound/score and some rather nifty, extremely effective editing. Radioactive green text messages and battery draining bar are superimposed in the frame, and glimpses of a wedding home video or the weather report.
Our psyche and eyeballs are saturated with mass media and memories, so this all makes sense. As do those out there desperate for a quick fix dick suck – something surely apt to our relatively safe everyday lives, not just a landscape devoured in an enigmatic virus. That final moment is not quite a moment at all in fact, Hocking makes us wait, delays the inevitable until we experience the climax.
I spoke to the filmmaker recently to find out more:
Icebreaker. You can have ANY drink, starter, main course and dessert – what would you order?
I’m taking a break from drinking right now, but a glass of good champagne would be my first choice. For starters, escargot from Galatoire’s in New Orleans with plenty of French bread for dipping in the garlic butter. For the main course, Trout Amandine from Restaurant Iris in Memphis. For dessert, a slice of classic Southern coconut cake from anywhere that’s not a factory, preferably someone’s grandma’s kitchen.
What were your ambitions growing up outside of the film world?
I wanted to be an artist and hang out with other artists. I was obsessed with Andy Warhol at an early age. I envisioned living in an NYC loft with lots of easels and paint brushes and muses.
Tell us about a time you overcame a challenge during filming?
It’s been a challenge for TV and film directors as to how to show text conversations on screen, and there have been a million solutions. I chose to do it in camera, to project the text on the walls of our shooting space, rather than to do them in post. I wanted everything to be in that basement with Daisy, to intensify her isolation. Doing it this way definitely took some finessing, but it was totally worth it.
What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Give us a one sentence review.
MOONAGE DAYDREAM. A sensory delight – turn off your mind and dive in.
Before we talk about Hot Singles, tell us a little bit about your background and experience in the film business. What have you achieved? How did it all begin?
I was a visual artist first, I did a lot of collage work and pencil drawing, worked in Photoshop, etc. My first film experience came in 2001, when I did craft services and catering for a local (Memphis) feature film. I gradually moved up in the local scene, making props for the next feature, and then producing the next. It was during post on that feature that I was watching the editor at work, and I realized that editing was what I wanted to do. I got the book for Final Cut Pro 5 and did all the lessons in the book. The first thing I edited was a feature film with 52 speaking parts! Trial by fire, I guess. Fifteen years later, I’m editing my 10th feature film.
Hot Singles. There’s a lot going on here. There are several possible genre strands to this. What were you intending with this story? How did you integrate the mix of ideas?
I first wrote Hot Singles in 2019 as a basic apocalyptic sci-fi story, but with the same ending it has now. I had submitted it for a few grants and not gotten them, so I put it aside while I worked on other projects. In the fall of 2020, after I’d been on pandemic unemployment for several months, had a nervous breakdown, etc., I went back to the script and realized that I had been writing about my tendency to isolate all along. I realized it was about my fear of not being heard, of not being understood, my distrust in the human race, and in the wake of 2020, my fear that my chosen career had disintegrated. I went back and removed all the explosions and aliens and made the threat indescribable. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic just staring out the window and feeling how ominous “out there” was, and how empty I felt with no clear way to make money.
Where did you shoot? How long did you have? Was there a small budget?
I shot in the basement of a gallery/shared artists space in downtown Memphis, where my gaffer stored all his gear. We shot most of it in one day, with a half day the week before when I shot the dream sequence with my phone. The movie was funded by a grant from the Indie Memphis Film Festival, the first of the Women’s Short Film Grant. It’s a $5000 cash grant, and principal photography had to be done within 120 days of receiving the grant. Both the awesome sound design and the audio mix were done in trade for work I’d done: the sound design in trade for a music video I’d made for the UK band Dead Anyway, and the mix in trade for a promo video I’d edited for an audio engineer friend of mine.
The actress is pretty much front and central. What is your casting process? How did you select Shannon?
I had directed Shannon before, in two music videos. I had thought of her originally when I was first writing the script. When I got the grant, I contacted her about it and I said, “I’m going to really need you to bring your pandemic to this”, and she did. She has done a lot of theater, and I knew she could make the black box situation work.
Hot Singles is strong in its editing. What is the post-production process on this? How did you intend the editing to impact the audience?
I’m an editor by trade, so I tend to be visualizing the edit early in the writing/development process. Since all the effects were done in camera, the edit was a pretty quick process. I think the part I labored over the most was the phone call at the end, because I knew all of that had to land. I wanted her rambling to be a lot like I was the first time I was around a group of people after months of pandemic isolation — awkward, emotional, insecure. I wanted the jump cuts to mimic all those thoughts jumping around in her mind.
How disciplined a writer are you? What distracts you? What helps you write better
Everything distracts me, so I generally write in spurts. I come up with dialogue and scenarios all the time when I’m not at my computer, so I email them to myself with the working title of the script in the subject line. I waited tables/bartended for a long time, everywhere from a punk rock dive bar to fine dining, and I credit those gigs as helping me write dialogue. If you don’t listen to natural conversations, your actors will all just sound like you.
Why are short films so important to the industry?
Short films are important to the industry in the same way that short stories are important to literature. They are an opportunity to portray a singular emotion, or drop a needle in time. Raymond Carver said something to the effect of, “Short stories should start after the beginning, and finish before the end.” Short films shouldn’t just be tiny feature films; I always want to give the audience poetic license in filling in the gaps before and after the movie.
Tell us your plans for the rest of the year and into the next?
This year I have picture locked on two features (one documentary, one narrative) that I edited in 2021/early 2022, and am close to locking picture on a third feature (documentary) that I am the finishing editor on. I’m going to edit a short film that’s shooting in November, and am directing at least two music videos. I’m hoping that next year includes going to a lot of festivals with these features I’ve edited!
WATCH ‘HOT SINGLES’ NOW HERE
password: DAISY
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