AWARD-winning filmmaker William Johnston and his writing partner Jordan Campbell are this month premiering a new work filmed mainly in Yorkshire.

Fleeting Constellation is to be screened at Hebden Bridge Picture House on January 25, followed by a series of screenings around Huddersfield and elsewhere in Yorkshire.

Shot in-studio and on location in Huddersfield, Leeds, York, Sheffield and Hartlepool, the work is a multi-medium coming-of-age film, that tracks the transience of love and combines written, animated and live-action sequences.

The male lead in the production, Hayden Sugden, is from Bradford as are some of our production team. Katie Blatherwick plays the female lead.

The film centres around the character Simon Anderson, a typical, nervous adolescent boy destined to traverse the mundanities of life, until he meets free-spirited Armelle Jacobs. The two descend on a journey of self and mutual discovery but can the spirit of youth escape the finite nature of love?

William is completing his final year as an undergraduate at the University of Huddersfield before continuing his studies as a postgraduate at London’s Ealing Studios, while Jordan is a screenwriter and academic currently studying at postgraduate level at York St John University.

“I’m a documentary filmmaker, but together our work is most frequently nihilist coming of age comedies,” says William. “We started making films together four years ago, and have been working in the industry and taking our shorts to various film festivals.”

He adds: “Combining different mediums has been one of the most exciting parts of Fleeting Constellations. When we decided to include a psychedelic sequence it was obvious to us early on that we wanted to include an animated scene.

Psychedelic scenes can quickly become generic or disengaging - the inclusion of animated footage allowed the characters to delve into impossible situations.

“We hired the brilliant Lancashire-based animator Emily Ritchie, where together we started drafting up four individual sequences.”

Felipe Gutierrez worked on the score, whilst Fleeting Constellations also features tracks from Leeds-based band Laminate Pet Animal. Poet Kayleigh Campbell also features.

The pair started working on the script in early 2018, shortly before premiering their most recent short film ‘Choices’ in Huddersfield, which has since made the official selection at CFK festival in Swindon, InShort film festival and the semi-finals of Sunday Shorts in London.

William last year, released the documentaries Level-Up and Snake Man, which screened at festivals and cinemas in London, China, Sheffield and Nigeria. SnakeMan, which made the selection of In-Short film festival in Nigeria and was also a semi-finalist at Sunday Shorts in London, is showing at the Show Room cinema in Sheffield this month on January 29.

They filmmakers are both inspired by filmmaker Ben Wheatley. “He is probably the most inspiring British filmmaker right now,” he says. “A little closer to home, our various professors, and my closest industry mentor Tim Copsey, have inspired us - their experience has been instrumental to my development.”