Meet Emma Jesse, tenacious director and producer of the short film Asking 4 It, a fantasy tale about what it’s like to be desirable

A cameraman operates a professional film camera equipped with a ZEISS lens during a video shoot with a small production crew.

Riding the wave of the success of the dark comedy Soggy Biscuit, her “stomach churning” first short film, former set and costume designer Emma Jesse went on producing and directing her 2nd short film, Asking 4 It, as a passion project as she explains, “it was an opportunity to explore creative choices I hadn’t previously had the freedom to pursue on other people’s shoots.” It was a conversation over the phone with a friend that made her realise she had to write this story of a man who wakes up in the body of a sexy woman and experiences the perks and risks of the female condition in our modern world. “It was around the time the Sarah Everard case took place. There were all these conversations about women safety, and I read the book I Never Called It Rape by Robin Warshaw, which said that the majority of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows. A lot of women didn’t realise at the beginning that they were assaulted, because it wasn’t like what they had seen in films. It really hit me as a filmmaker. I remember saying, ‘men are never going to get it unless it happens to them’.”

A camera operator films a scene using a professional camera setup equipped with ZEISS lenses in a studio environment.

The first draft of the script was written in eleven hours, as a succession of visions inspired by personal experiences and by songs, such as Smooth Sailing by Queens of the Stone Age. To back-up the main character’s arc, Emma made her research… on Tinder, asking various men, “What would you do if you woke up and your reflection changed into the most beautiful woman you'd ever desire? A lot of them said that they would cry. They were like, I would just lock myself into a room. They were quite distressed with the idea.”

Then came the longer production phase, where Emma invested all her energy, tenacity, and financial resources. Willing to adapt to her collaborators’ schedule, she entered the preproduction phase knowing she’d had to design the set and costumes herself, she said, “because I couldn’t afford hiring somebody who had my skills. I was so lucky meeting people like Markus.” Emma remembers, “He’d just had a baby girl and sometimes he’d have his little baby on his lap while we were going through the shot list! It was more than just being professional; we got to know each other as individuals. We went into such detail that he knew what was in my mind because I'd had the time to really explore the idea with him.”

Cinematographer Markus Ilschner, director Emma Jesse, and extras during the night club scene

True to her career as a set designer, Emma provided her team with many visuals and storyboards, and for the most complicated scenes involving the male main character (Arron Blake) and his female reflection (Antonia Whillans), miniature sets and models!

She explains, “For the mirror scenes, I built different versions of the set, with the positions of the characters to check the angles we could get. I tried to make the model as realistic as possible. I even put in working lights. I had worked for a toy company making models, so it’s one of the skills that I love using. As a theatre designer I was taught to make scale models of my designs, which helped me understand deeply the space I’m working with and gave me a place I can physically play around with. I had learned the skill but was never able to use it, because no one has the budget to pay somebody for such a process. I was like, this is my moment, this is my film, I can finally do what I want.”

Close-up of a person's face in soft focus with detailed lighting and shallow depth of field.

A person in an orange robe stands with arms crossed next to a wardrobe in a dimly lit, warmly toned bedroom.

Knowing she had to make the most of the assets at her disposal, Emma built the double sets of the mirror scenes in one of the barns of her father’s farm in West Sussex. Then it was put on a tractor trailer and moved to the village hall, which she turned into a cinema studio for a few days.

Carpenter Marc Langley building the double set in a barn in Ashton, West Sussex.

Responding to the same urge to spend wisely, all the other city locations were in Brighton, within 5 minutes to each other, including the nightclub and its spectacular, flowery toilet! “We could barely fit Markus in the toilet It was so small that we changed the camera. Even the environment of where we were shooting influenced the camera.”

Asked about her method to shot listing, Emma describes herself as “not a technical person, so it’s mainly about feel, and visual description of what’s happening in shot. It can be a chunky paragraph! A lot of times I have an image coming to me while I’m reading the script, and since I design the costumes as well, I can imagine shots that showcase them as I want. (…) While going through the shot list with Markus, there was a real sense of creative freedom. I’d sketch out ideas and ask, ‘Do you think we could achieve this shot?’ and he would always respond with a considered confidence: ‘Yes, I think we can.’” and we went to the location and checked. Some of them we couldn’t do because of time, but we came up with beautiful shots. We only got two takes for one of them: Dave is on the dance floor, up on a stage, and a waitress is picking broken glass up and holding a tray in the foreground. It’s almost like Dave is dancing on the broken glass. It’s only a couple of seconds. I love this play with symbolism. (…) There were so many things that we wanted to push! I always reach for the stars and then reduce. I had a design teacher who’d say, ‘each design is like a bunch of balloons, and as long as you’re holding some of the balloons at the end, you’ve made it’.”

The look of the image features strong textures and heavy highlight diffusions, and Emma describes her and Markus Ilshner’s approach in simple yet efficient terms: “Because of the subject matter, we could go bold. I told Markus, let’s push it to what you feel comfortable with. As long as it’s not taking you away from the story.

Same with the colouring: the story can hold that kind of bold choice. He sent me references and some of it also on the day. He has got such an incredible sensibility when it comes to light and colour that it was just beautiful watching him work. As soon as he lit the set everybody was like, ‘what, it looks so good on the screen!’ He was so on it. He was very good at being precise, working out what was needed, going through it and be like, yes, I've got it, let's move on to the next one. Because we had so much that we needed to film.”

Markus chose the ZEISS Supreme primes, which he knew from a prior and totally different project, and used them to find the right balance between realism and fantasy: “We wanted to make it as realistic as possible but heighten it in a subtle way. I decided to go for the Supreme Primes, because I know I get everything I want with the lens. If I want to stop them down, I get a great depth of field. If I open them up, I can make them almost dreamlike. I created a very subtle show LUT that had pastel tones to also enhance the dreamlike memory in a way, but I never treated it like it's a dream, because I don't want people to feel tricked into believing this is a dream. The reality of it was already as glamorous as possible, and I just wanted to enhance it in a subtle way, so I chose shooting Full Frame on a Venice 1 camera for its dual gain and relied on great lenses and beautiful lighting to help convey the story.”

Emma adds, “Markus made suggestions about direction and blocking, and was like, yes, let’s do that! I like to create an environment so that all the members of the creative team have a say. In the theatre where I come from, there isn’t this ego that cripples films, I think. Theatre is so collaborative, nobody [cares] whose idea it was, they just want the best out of it. Even the title

Asking 4 It came from Eva, an assistant. That’s how I want to create films, in an environment of collaboration. I’m trying to be the director I always wanted, giving the space for people to have creative ideas.” The collaboration with Arron Blake, who plays the protagonist Dave, went beyond expectations, from the casting to the editing. Knowing Arron is also a filmmaker, Emma “wanted to have his eye on the editing, and he was a pinnacle. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think the film would be what it is now. He was integral to finding these moments, a little smirk in the mirror, tiny details that say so much about the characters in a couple of seconds.” Again, the director strives for a collaborative experience: “I spent quite a long time going through their characters with all the actors, even the small parts, and when I was doing the shot list, I’d go and ask the actors about ideas I had about what their characters could do and send the storyboards to them. I like to give people as much information as possible.”

Creating an inspiring environment for anyone to speak up even started before the shoot for Emma, as she created an exhibition about the making of the film in her city, which she intends to make travel with the film. She gained confidence when she had “women coming up to [her] of all different ages, from a 74-year-old woman who had been assaulted when she was 20, or a mother with her 14-year-old daughter. The fact that they were willing to talk to a stranger and felt confident in this environment feels so essential because the biggest issue, I think, is the shame. “There is still so much shame surrounding sexual assault many women don’t speak out because they fear being seen as “tainted,” or blamed for what happened to them. It is never the victim’s fault. The responsibility lies solely with the perpetrator. I hope this film helps survivors of sexual assault feel less alone. I also hope it encourages men to reflect on their own behaviour whether directly or indirectly and to question actions they may have witnessed from friends or family that didn’t feel right.”