Art Works: Charlie Delaney's Short Film Trentside

As teenagers, me and my friends made our own little action and comedy films. Most of them were pretty ridiculous, but we had fun. We got into filming our own skate videos, and eventually I studied filmmaking at college and university.

Trentside is a short thriller I directed. Set in nineties Nottingham, it’s about Sterling; a skateboarder who struggles with mental health issues, who finds an old Super8 film reel. After watching it, eerie elements start to seep into his life and soon he can’t differentiate reality from hallucination. Loving films like Donnie Darko and The Ring, it was great to blend genres and pay homage to both film and skateboarding.

Together with an experienced, diverse crew and some talented local Notts actors, I shot most of the film at Nottingham’s – now sadly destroyed – DIY Skatepark. We only had a £2000 budget, but our aim was to make something with a high production value. We shot most of it on the RED Epic and Super8 film, to give a different feel to the footage Sterling found.

The film began as a project for my MA degree in Digital Film and TV Production at the University of York, but we worked heavily on the post production, particularly on the sound, for about a year afterwards. We’ve screened Trentside at Rough Trade and Broadway, and will be releasing it on Vimeo in Autumn. After I finished the film, I started working at a production company called Rare Content; mostly as an editor, but I’ve also directed a couple of projects, which is great.

I’d love to integrate animation into my next project, and make a film that has a positive impact. Maybe an imaginative film with environmental, vegan or animal rights themes at its core. That’d be cool.

Find out more about the film here