Daniel Radcliffe waits but what is approaching?
Wait is a film about fear, a fear of the unknown. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, It’s a simple and pure film that follows a character waiting for an unseen event to occur which speaks of terror, loneliness, and fragility, it’s a very human narrative.
The idea came from a loose conversation director Joseph Connor had with Daniel about fear, that feeling that you are waiting for someone or something. Thriving from Daniel’s personal experiences and memories, Joseph played this very simple game between Dan and the camera and the action of looking.
It was very simple which is how I like to work…. he’s such a skilled actor (It blew me away actually, how intense he can become) that after that initial conversation my only direction came through how I positioned the lens and he just reacted to it instinctively, giving me what I wanted.
The film is extremely simple using only an actor and a chair with bits of narrations grabbed from old archives. What we like about its simplicity, is that it shows us how important the small, subtle shots and camera angles are, and how they can bring wonders to even the simplest narratives. Just as important is the subtleness in the acting, and Joseph wanted to exploit his actor’s natural talents and rely on emotional improvisation.
I’m a big fan of letting actors be, giving them small games to play and letting them stare into the lens if it feels natural and that final moment just grew organically and I think it shows in how honest that look is.
Actors like Daniel are often only visualized in their most popular characters, but Joseph, and Daniel himself did an outstanding job at breaking that typecast:
I wanted to put Dan in something that showed a different side to him, a very very fragile and honest facet that we don’t often see. The main aim for this short was to tell the simplest story possible but to really focus on the intensity of the performance.