BUS GIRL’s Jessica Henwick & Louise Palmkvist Hansen receive British Short Film BAFTA nomination

January 20, 2023

Actress Jessica Henwick, who recently starred in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and The Matrix Resurrections, makes her directorial debut with short film Bus Girl. After collecting several awards on its festival circuit, Bus Girl has been nominated for the British Short Film BAFTA! 

Produced by Louise Palmkvist for Emu Films, with Annika Ranin as Line Producer, the short film tells the story of an aspiring young chef June, played by Henwick herself, as she tries to break into the culinary scene and navigate the cutthroat world of high end cooking. 

Bus Girl was shot over the course of three days using six Xiaomi Mi 11 smartphones, a phone with one of the larger camera sensors available in a smartphone today, allowing it to pull in more light for brighter results in low-light scenes, capture more detail and output higher-resolution video. 

Henwick says “we would actually have two phones. We would be pulling focus on one phone, and we would be using Wi-Fi to control the main phone. It worked very similarly to a normal crew, except the gear fits in your palm.” Cinematographer Nick Cooke describes the creative advantages of shooting on a smartphone, given its compact nature, “we could squeeze through shelving units with little thought or even place it in a pan of water ”.

OnSight are pleased to have supported Bus Girl in post production, with Jeff Halsey as Senior Post Producer and Adam Sample as Online Editor. Henwick is currently in post production on a sequel titled Sandwich Man, and has announced there will be a third short film to put a cap on what she calls ‘The Phone Trilogy’.

Huge congratulations to our clients Jessica, Louise and Annika for their BAFTA nomination! The BAFTA award ceremony takes place on February 19th and, in the meantime, you can catch Bus Girl at the London Short Film Festival on January 21st, tickets available here.