About Me
I'm Phoebe Ball, an aspiring director of either documentary or fiction, having directed multiple short films within my degrees, each revolving around a story which questions human nature and leaves the audience thinking. I have just completed a role as junior archive researcher at Pulse Films, organising a large collection of footage and using my editorial eye to find potentially useful images from commercial archives. I am starting a new role as archive researcher at Dorothy Street Pictures in February.
My Story
I have always been a filmmaker - wanting to tell stories which truly connect with an audience. This passion for creativity and filmmaking ultimately led me to decide on pursuing it further as my chosen career path and in 2018 I was delighted to gain a place to study Film and TV Production (BSc) at the University of York, which I graduated from with First Class Honours. This was an exceptional learning experience and accelerated my knowledge and skills extensively, as the degree offered not only the chance to study the theory and history of film and television but has also given me an excellent grounding in the technical and creative skills required to actually produce, direct, film and edit my own productions.
My experience at York has focussed my interest in the directing side of filmmaking, which is where I feel my talents lie. I was able to develop these directing skills even further during my Master's degree at Falmouth University, where I directed three short films and achieved a Distinction.
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Creatively I find that I am very much drawn to the genre of dark comedy. I feel like my passions for both horror and comedy films have really informed my filmmaking and allowed me to begin to develop a certain voice and style of my own. I have been strongly inspired by TV series like Inside No. 9 and films such as JoJo Rabbit, The Lobster and Parasite for their ability to touch upon meaningful and haunting topics in a way that also has comedic elements.
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I also have a great interest in creating female-led stories that don’t focus on subverting gender stereotypes but are stimulating and thrilling human interest stories from a perspective which is more real to a woman’s experience. A female-directed film that I absolutely loved was Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook; a truly unique and magnificently unsettling horror which was conceived and portrayed within a woman’s world and explored the nature of grief. I have also been inspired by the works of Phoebe Waller-Bridge with Fleabag and Killing Eve and I aspire to create strong gripping stories like these.
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Within my degrees I have also had a lot of experience within non-fiction forms of storytelling, another keen interest of mine. For my undergraduate dissertation project I created an in-depth proposal with taster tape, and a budgeting and scheduling narrative, for a large-budget documentary film; and then during my Master's degree I got a job as a trainee archive researcher; a role which landed me my next job as junior archive researcher for RSA films. From there I've been working as an archive researcher for a variety of production companies.
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Ultimately, I found that whether it be fiction or unscripted, I had a passion for telling stories that reflect human life in a more abstract way, leaving the audience thinking, and hopefully broadening their perspective on the world.
