Film graduate shortlisted at Young Arrows for shoestring skate campaign

In terms of the recognition, it means a lot. It's not something you ever really think about when making films, but it's really nice to feel like the work is developing and that projects you feel are special also connect with other people. It's especially nice to see the crew behind it recognised too. We made the piece on a shoestring budget, after Louis actually sold his car to help make it happen, so a lot of the crew, myself included, were giving up our time because we believed in the project. Seeing that effort recognised by the industry is really exciting and I hope it opens up more opportunities to make work like this.

What drew you to advertising and how did you make that step?

I still love making short films and music videos and I'll keep doing them whenever I can. Moving more into commercials is really about finding a way to make ambitious projects and build a sustainable career as a director.

One of the things I like about commercials is that they give you the opportunity to make things now. You don't necessarily have to spend years waiting for a short film to get funded. If you find the right brand and the right project, you can come up with an idea, put a team together and actually start making it.

I also really enjoy the variety. You can work on completely different projects, with different people and different visual styles, and you're constantly having to find a way to tell a story in a very short amount of time. I think that has made me a better filmmaker generally and gives me different experiences to bring back into my narrative work.

In terms of making the step, it was mostly just looking for the work, reaching out to brands with ideas and having a portfolio that gave people something to respond to. There's a lot of rejection when you're starting out, but every project you manage to make gives you something new to show and usually leads to another conversation.

Which project are you most proud of? 

JCD is probably my proudest project to date. Growing up skating, I never felt like I was seeing a realistic depiction of skating in advertising. A lot of the time it felt like skating was being used as an aesthetic rather than actually being true to the people and culture around it, and I always found that frustrating.

I'd tried to make projects about skating before and never quite felt like I'd captured it how I wanted to. I made a documentary about the Southbank skatepark for the BBC Centenary in 2022, while I was still at uni, and I remember being really disappointed that I hadn't been able to get the film to where I wanted it to be. With JCD, I felt like we finally got much closer to that. We got to show a real side of skating, both the good and the bad, and still make something that worked as a commercial.

I'm also really proud of THE LETTER for Hackney Wick FC. Being able to work with a whole community and tell a story that spans generations was really special. The team at Hackney Wick really believed in what we were trying to do and gave us a lot of trust, and we were able to make something that felt like it belonged to the club rather than just being a film about football. Creatively, I feel like football is another topic where you don't often get to make more interesting projects, so being able to make a football piece with a WW2 period scene alongside traditional narrative and documentary styles was an exciting challenge.

You graduated from Falmouth in 2023. What made you choose the BA(Hons) Film course and what were you hoping to get from it?

In all honesty, a lot of the reason I chose Falmouth was because I wanted to be in Cornwall. I'd visited and just felt like it was the right place for me. I also wanted to be somewhere surrounded by other creative people, not just film students. I liked that it was an art school where you could collaborate across courses.

When I started, I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to do with filmmaking. As the course went on, I became much more focused on making as much work as possible and leaving with a portfolio and a group of people I could continue working with after graduating.

Falmouth gave me the freedom and access to do that. I was able to hire equipment throughout the years and use it for projects outside of the course, which meant I could experiment a lot and work with people from different courses. I ended up building a network of creatives and crew that I still work with now, which has probably been one of the most valuable things I took away from university.

What skills or experiences from your time at Falmouth do you still draw on when you're on set?

I think one of the most important things was getting those first experiences on professional sets. Being able to walk onto a real set, see how it operates and understand the different roles around you gives you a much better idea of how to run your own projects later on.

I'd also say learning how to actually take a project from an idea through to making and distributing it. It's really difficult to bring films to life and there are always problems that come up along the way. Being able to make those mistakes at university, when you have the space to learn from them, is incredibly valuable before you're dealing with the same problems professionally.

Another big one was learning how to work with clients. When you're making a short film for yourself, you're the director and ultimately, you get the final say. Client work is very different and much more collaborative. Every brand or artist has a different way of working, so learning how to understand what someone wants, communicate your ideas and still bring your own creative perspective to it was a huge help when I started working with clients after graduating.

I think Falmouth also taught me the importance of building a good team around you. A lot of filmmaking is about finding the right people, creating an environment where everyone wants to do their best work and then trusting them to do it. That's something I still think about every time I'm on a new job.

External links

Connor on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/connorpearsonfilm/

JCD ‘Break the Chain’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mslmJxCCN-0

Hackney Wick FC ‘The Letter’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8rKdY57ewQ

Martha Eve ‘Somebody’s Somebody’ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v47ZhdbllE4