Unboxing the Baggage: How Abbie Lucas Crafted Her Twisted Short Film 'Voices'
CenterFrame Curated ▶ Metaphors, Micro-Budgets, and a 45-Festival Run with Director Abbie Lucas
Every filmmaker knows the familiar dread of heading to a festival only to watch a parade of heavy, straight-laced dramas that leave the audience feeling more exhausted than inspired. When director Abbie Lucas teamed up with writer and star Omar Khan, they decided to take a completely different route. Their short film, Voices, takes a familiar, grounded domestic setup and turns it entirely on its head, delivering a Twilight Zone style thriller that lingers in the mind long after the credits roll.
Finding the Twist in Domestic Drama
The initial spark for Voices came from a real-world media circus: a highly publicised domestic argument between politician Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie. While the premise could easily have been treated as a straightforward drama, Khan wanted to push the boundaries. He was fascinated by the cyclical nature of couples' arguments, where unresolved thematic issues escalate over time.
"Voices is a sort of Twilight Zone style short film about a couple who are moving into a new home and they hear some banging coming from the neighbours next door and they go to investigate and things get a little weird from there." Abbie Lucas
To visually represent this heavy emotional baggage, the film introduces a clever visual metaphor right from the opening scene. As the central couple unboxes their belongings in a new home, they are literally unpacking their past issues. Lucas used this domestic realism to play with audience assumptions, subverting expectations about who is the victim and who is the perpetrator behind closed doors. By layer-caking the script with themes of class backgrounds and the unique politics of an interracial relationship, the fantastical elements of the narrative feel completely earned rather than gimmicky.
Crafting the Atmosphere on a Shoestring Budget
Achieving a high-end look on an initial budget of just £6,000 required an immense amount of resourcefulness and clear creative direction. Shot over two intense night shoots in a North London Airbnb, the crew had to entirely empty the owner's furniture and redesign the space to fit their specific colour palette.
"My treatment for it was to make the second half of the film feel warmer and cozier and kind of more lived in, in the same way that their ongoing arguments kind of are," Lucas notes.
To contrast this, the first half of the film relies on a colder, bluer grade with minimal furniture to establish an immediate, almost documentary-like environment.
On the technical side, Lucas maximized her resources by utilizing an Arri Alexa Mini paired with a Steadicam, which was used for roughly 80% of the film. This fluid camerawork allowed her to pull off ambitious sequences, including a meticulously choreographed "poor man's motion control shot" that seamlessly stitched four distinct shots into a single continuous whip-pan transition using runners as body doubles.
Surviving the Circuit and Looking Forward
The hustle didn't stop once production wrapped. Due to tight festival deadlines, Lucas threw herself straight into editing the project herself after their original editor stepped up to a major television program. Because of the film's complex looping narrative structure, the post-production phase required extensive sound work to recycle lines and manage the heavy amount of yelling across two-shots.
The hard work paid off, leading to a spectacular festival run that spanned 45 festivals globally, including prestigious stops at Aesthetica and the Seattle International Film Festival. For early-stage filmmakers looking to emulate this success, Lucas emphasizes that everything hinges on the page. No amount of directorial flair can rescue a script that isn't ready.
“Festival submission is death by a thousand cuts... it's a numbers game and you can't just enter a few and hope for the best, you have to really put it out there.” - Abbie Lucas
Now, Lucas is keeping the momentum going with three features currently in development, including a dystopian thriller titled Hit the Wall. As she heads off to network and pitch her upcoming projects, her journey offers a fantastic blueprint for indie creators everywhere.
Want to connect with the filmmaker? Head over to the CenterFrame community to view Abbie Lucas’s Profile and stay updated on her latest features. You can also chat with other members to share your own short film experiences.
NATHAN HAINES
Co-Founder & Filmmaker | CenterFrame Team
