The intention with this film was to create a believable world based around one square metre that a character could exist within. We live in a world with increasingly limited space and resources, and wanted to challenge people to rethink their homes and how they live within them. It didn’t feel feasible to do this any other way than by building the environments as physical sets.

We spent a large amount of time designing the worlds, the rooms and how they would work. The scenes were inspired by how an ordinary person might spend their day: take a shower, eat some breakfast, water the garden, etc.

Once we established the nature of each room, the hardest part was trying to work out how to link the spaces. I wanted one room to become another without the conventions of exiting and entering. Once we dispensed with spatial logic, it became easier as a result of not having to have things play out rationally.

I worked with production designer Steven Jones-Evans, and cinematographer Daniel Landin to try and find ways to combine ‘rooms’ together. By rotating sets, and extending rooms vertically, we could let the actor move from room to room in unconventional ways. While the sets were constructed separately, we designed the action to create the illusion of seamless transitions – linking the scenes through cutting.

It was a very large and complex design and engineering conundrum. Thankfully SJE likes to take holidays in Europe and was able to detour to Bucharest to oversee construction.

As told by Steve Rogers