Behind the Camera: 'Ms Green & Other Lovely Beasts' #2...

Time for some more glimpses behind-the-scenes of our new short film, the weirdly romantic horror comedy Ms Green and Other Lovely Beasts...

Richard Coppen at Panther Studios in Reigate supported us with ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) on our short film. ADR is when actors re-record dialogue in the studio to make every word crystal clear. On Ms Green, our actors jumped back in to perfect lines and capture every subtle emotion: including bringing puppet pug Dziga to life! Richard's skill, patience, and good humor make every session effortless. He doesn’t just run a studio, he makes sound sing.

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The feature track in Ms Green and Other Lovely Beasts is “No Angle” by Android Anima. Creating ambient and experimental music through non-traditional methods, Android Anima crafted something truly haunting here. The song is spiritually charged, layered with mindful lyrics and atmospheric soundscapes that quietly intensify the unease and inner tension at the heart of our film.

Written by Richard Coppen (aka Dick Crippen), whose career spans collaborations with Tenpole Tudor, King Kurt, Adam Ant and Angie Bowie, and more recently albums for garage-punk stalwarts Chelsea, Johnny Moped and The Sensible Gray Cells, the track carries a depth and edge that perfectly complements Elnora’s strange world. With beautifully restrained, powerfully understated vocals from Jessie Page-Smith, the song doesn’t overpower the story, but rather lingers with it.

As editor and colourist on the film, Veronika Koubova brought razor-sharp instinct, restraint and rhythm to a story that delicately balances satire, psychological horror, comedy and drama. Her sense of pace is impeccable, knowing exactly when to let a moment breathe and when to subtly tighten the tension, while shaping the film’s unsettling tonal shifts with confidence and control.

A BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award winner, Veronika works across narrative, documentary and commercial projects, and that versatility is felt in every frame of Ms Green. The edit never overreaches; it trusts performance, atmosphere and subtext. The colour grade enhances the film’s quiet unease - grounded, elegant, and never overstated - supporting the world without distracting from it.

 

Taxidermy oversight and props came courtesy of The Surrey Stuffer. Helena & Chris Finden-Browne gave their generosity, expertise and support to the film. While researching the subject, Producer Ali Causon reached out to Helena to review the script - particularly Parker’s monologue about his work - to ensure it was not only well written, but factually accurate and respectful to the craft.

What followed was far more than a script review. Helena kindly held an impromptu taxidermy workshop for our cast, art director and director, and supplied beautiful bespoke pieces used for our set dressing, helping bring Parker’s world to life.

Helena has been an amateur taxidermist in Surrey since 2017, working with British native wildlife that has died accidentally or through pest control/culling. No animal is ever killed for her work, and a portion of profits goes to wildlife rehabilitation. Creating something enduring from our native wildlife, as Helena describes it, feels like the purest form of recycling.

What you see on the monitor here (at my Script Supervisor station) started out as something ordinary and everyday, only to became something else entirely. We spent a whole separate rig day at the Oakhill Productions family home transforming familiar corners into the strange inner worlds of our story.

Having already become quite familiar with the Sesame home in recent years during our work on For Want of a Nail (as a meeting place, production base, and accomodation), I wrote Ms Green and Other Lovely Beasts with that location very much in-mind, tailoring the script so that all the scenes could be achieved at one location with the aid of some elbow grease and selective framing. Lights went up, textures shifted, shadows deepened ... and suddenly reality bent. Parker & Elnora’s workshop? Ali's Mum’s garage. With a bit of movie alchemy, cable ties, grit, and a lot of imagination, it became a space where beasts are built and minds unravel.

Similarly, at the bottom of the garden, the Oakhill Productions team transformed a familiar patch of earth into something much darker: a world that was pulled straight from Elnora’s mind. One minute it’s a quiet Surrey garden, the next it is a haunting echo of a frosty corner of a small rural town in the middle of America, reimagining the graveyard tied to the chilling legacy of Ed Gein. This is the alchemy of indie filmmaking: turning the bottom of a suburban garden into the depths of a troubled mind, further boosted in the edit suite as the footage was transformed to resemble the Universal Monster Movies of the 1930s and 40s. Our fearless cast and crew leaned into the darkness and created something unforgettable. 

It was also quite special about turning a family home into a film set, where layers of memory were underneath every frame, and a crew quietly made magic between tea breaks. Many thanks to everyone who helped us reimagine a garage, a garden, and a home into the world of the strange world of Ms Green.

You can follow the film's progress on Facebook and visit the Oakhill Productions website.