The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting - Short Film

Aim

Help our award-winning team bring 'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' to life with the cast, locations, and resources it deserves.

What if your life never actually started - and you were just waiting to be told it had?

Four strangers wait in a room for something that might just change their lives.

Daniel seeks purpose, Lola chases fulfillment, George refuses the present, and the Not Receptionist - well, she’s stopped believing in exits.

An absurdist dark comedy-drama about uncertainty, burnout, consumerism, and the constant need for self-reinvention.

At its core, the film explores the experience of waiting - for clarity, direction, and permission to begin living properly. 

It transforms that condition into a contained, surreal world where waiting itself is the structure of reality. Time is unstable, attention seems to alter the space, and even small interruptions take on unnatural weight. No one questions why they’re there; instead, they continue to wait, gradually revealing the personal narratives they use to make sense of their lives.

Running at around 15 minutes, 'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' is a live action English Language film being produced and filmed in the North West of England.

We’re in an era defined by constant optimisation, uncertainty, and the pressure to keep moving forward. We're encouraged to improve ourselves, build our futures, and prepare for what's next, yet many people feel increasingly stuck, anxious, and unable to fully arrive in the present.

'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' reflects a generation caught between endless expectation and an ever-receding sense of fulfilment.

At a time when conversations around burnout, anxiety, and purpose are more relevant than ever, the film offers a timely and relatable exploration of what it means to feel permanently ‘in progress.’

We'll cover the rest... unless we happen to meet a generous benefactor... cough...

Honestly - we can’t make 'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' without support.

It’s a very specific, controlled short film. It relies on getting the casting right, having a very particular kind of space, and enough time to really land the tone. It’s a small film - but it depends on precision. And precision isn’t something you can shortcut.

Your support helps us bring in the right actors, design the world with the level of detail needed, and give the project the time it needs to feel considered rather than rushed.

Every contribution helps us avoid the slightly tragic version of this film that exists in a parallel universe where we couldn’t quite afford to make it properly.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re waiting for something to finally become real - you’re not just backing an idea, you’re helping bring it into existence.

If you can’t donate, we get it! You can still help massively by sharing the link - on social media, in your group chats, with family, colleagues, friends, that bloke down the road... every share genuinely helps.

George Miller is a Preston-born, Manchester-based actor represented by Curtis Brown. On screen, George can most recently be seen playing 'Roddy Boxhall' in Russell T Davies' acclaimed drama Tip-Toe for Channel 4. Alongside his screen work, George's notable stage credits include the premiering production of What Does It Take To Slay A Dragon with Take Back Theatre, the landmark broadcast project The BBC's First Homosexual for BBC100, Glorious at the Hope Mill Theatre, and the hit comedy Some Masterchef Sh*t, which enjoyed a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe + an accompanying UK tour.

Frankie Lipman trained at Manchester School of Theatre. Her work in TV includes Doctor Who and Domino Day (BBC), short films include Crocodile, The Door is Always Open, Scratch and Habitus. Her work in theatre includes Electra/Persona (National Theatre), F*ck Machine and 14% at Contact, Manchester; The Angry Brigade (Up ‘Ere and HER Productions); Macbeth and Vignettes (HER Productions); Millenial Pink at HOME Mcr; Pornography (Red Brick Theatre); The American Bureau for the Afterlife for Take Back Our Bodies 2 (Take Back Theatre); The Glass Menagerie, and The Bruntwood Prize Ceremony at The Royal Exchange, Manchester.

Daniel (25) is an anxious over-thinker who learned early that analysis equals safety. By breaking everything down - work, relationships, life itself - he keeps uncertainty under control. But the strategy that protects him also traps him - the more he understands the world, the smaller it becomes.

Daniel isn’t stuck - he just hasn’t quite figured out where he is yet.

Lola (30) exists like she’s inside a story that must remain meaningful. She doesn’t resist; she re-frames. Setbacks become plot twists, loss becomes character development, uncertainty becomes evidence that life’s being written in real time. This interpretive filter protects her from chaos, but keeps her slightly removed from direct experience.

Lola doesn’t live outside reality. She just refuses to believe it’s unscripted.

The Not Receptionist (48) - her sense of self is structured around absence rather than presence: not the career she expected, not the adulthood she imagined, not the recognition she believed she would earn. The question ‘If I’m not what I am, what exactly am I?’  is no longer asked, just constantly present beneath everything she does.

She isn’t lost. She’s fully aware.

George (50) lives in a state of delayed arrival - like adulthood hasn’t properly caught up with him yet, and his future self will eventually make everything coherent. Always on the edge of becoming - never quite landing anywhere, he’d never admit he might already be there.

George doesn’t feel stuck. He feels prematurely interrupted.

As a group, they’re individually together - occupying the same space, yet remaining subtly isolated within their own systems of meaning. 

Their interactions are polite but never fully engaged, as though each person is having a slightly different conversation.

The film focuses on a few core themes: waiting as a condition of modern life, and the quiet fear that we may never have properly started at all. It looks at identity as something unstable and constantly revised, shaped by systems that defer meaning rather than deliver it.

At its centre is the idea of ‘permanent becoming’ - a culture where everything is in progress, but nothing ever really arrives.

Sitting between psychological realism and absurdist structure, it draws on the traditions of the Theatre of the Absurd, where logic is unstable but behaviour remains precise and controlled.

It blends dark comedy with existential realism - finding humour in things that don’t quite make sense, but still feel strangely familiar.

The film is visually rooted in a recognisable space with a neutral, almost comforting palette that stays close to reality, but gently destabilised.

Through stillness, repetition, and quiet visual unease, the film creates a world that’s ordinary, but never quite ‘right’.

Blocking is theatrical but framed cinematically, with a strong emphasis on controlled and deliberate composition, stillness, and spatial logic.

It’s performance-led, focusing on timing and subtle behavioural shifts. The set is minimal but precise - specific without feeling constructed. 

Tone is heavily shaped in post-production, where sound design, editing, and pacing gradually build unease and allow absurdity to surface organically.

 Working together on short films and music videos for over ten years, we’ve developed an unspoken shorthand that helps things run smoothly on set. Basically - we just get things done. We’re renowned for rarely running over schedule, mostly thanks to detailed pre-production. Once we’re on set, there are few surprises, so the focus stays on performance, precision, and execution.

Our films have screened at festivals globally, and won awards including Best Short Comedy (Happily Ever Afterlife), Best Short Film (The Flowers From The Window), and Best Cinematography (Every Kind of Fruit Bearing Tree), amongst many others.

We’re drawn to slightly unstable worlds - where identity, memory, and control blur. From dark comedy to surreal drama and satire, we explore systems that shape people and what happens when they start to crack. Even across genre, everything stays grounded in performance and emotional truth.

In short, we know how to make films - and what we’re saying with them.

Susan is a Lancashire-based writer and filmmaker working across short film and theatre. Since 2016, she’s developed projects with Wasp Video, creating character-driven stories that blend dark humour with emotionally grounded themes. She holds an MA (Distinction) in Comedy Writing.

Susan’s work explores people navigating systems, relationships, and shifting realities, with an emphasis on tone, character, and narrative precision. 

'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' comes from a pretty familiar feeling: life always seems like it’s about to properly begin, but somehow never quite does. You’re constantly ‘in progress,’ just with no clear sense of what the destination actually is.

I wanted to take that feeling and make it visible - build a world where waiting isn’t just something you do between moments, but the actual structure you’re living inside. Meaning’s always being hinted at, always slightly within reach, but never fully confirmed.

There are influences from Beckett, Pinter and Douglas Adams, but it’s filtered through something more contemporary: burnout, uncertainty, consumerism, and that low-level pressure to constantly reinvent yourself.

Ultimately, it’s about suspended life - that weird state between waiting and arriving, and the uncomfortable idea that we might already be inside whatever we’ve been waiting for.

John is a Derbyshire-based filmmaker, cinematographer, editor, and the founder of Wasp Video. With almost two decades of experience, he works across short film, music video, and commercial production with a focus on controlled visual storytelling.

John specialises in building visually coherent productions through cinematography and editing, supporting strong narrative intent with disciplined technical execution.

Laurie is a Lancashire-based filmmaker working across short film and music video production. He specialises in performance-led cinematography, focusing on framing, composition, and atmospheric visual control.

Laurie’s work prioritises clarity, mood, and performance, contributing to visually precise storytelling within carefully controlled environments.

What if waiting wasn't the interruption - what if it was the whole experience?

• Script: Ready. Obviously. Although Su remains constitutionally incapable of leaving a detail alone.
• Equipment: Sorted. We already have everything we need, which saves a rather substantial chunk of the budget.
• Locations & production design: Locations have been scouted, and props and set dressing are starting to accumulate.
• Cast: George and Frankie have both read the script and, crucially, remain enthusiastic.

Like most independent films, the shoot works within tight schedules, limited budgets, and the usual challenges of booking locations. To keep things running smoothly, we rely on well-established pre-production: clear shot lists, structured schedules, and close coordination between direction, camera, and production.

We build flexibility into the plan to respond to practical unknowns, while protecting the film’s core creative intent throughout. However - the unforeseen does sometimes happen and if any unsolvable challenges arise, we’ll communicate them transparently and as early as possible.

We’re keeping this simple - because the important bit is making the film.

Any contribution, big or small, goes directly into getting 'The Inexplicable Weight of Waiting' made properly: cast, crew, locations, and the careful process of making something very controlled feel very alive.

We spend our lives waiting for things to begin - but what if they already have.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st October 2026 at 12:00am