Here's a short film I made for the 2018 edition of a horror film festival in Girona called Acocollona't. The film is called Playtime and it features my ten-month-old son.

The organisers only give you 24 hours to make your film. To ensure you can't cheat, you get given vital information at the last minute. This year, a certain object (a VHS tape) and a location (a bookshop in Girona) both had to appear in the film. I managed to get the VHS tape in there as a main part of the film, but I couldn't be arsed with the bookshop, so it only appears for only a couple of seconds at the beginning.

I won first prize

Even though the film is shit, IT WON FIRST PRIZE. I still don't believe it.

Here's the trophy:

Here's me and 0-year-old:

Here's me with the other winners:

I'm even in the local newspaper, El Punt Avui. It says

Pel que fa a la cinquena edició de l’Acocoexprés, el concurs de curts fets en 24 hores de l’Acocollona’t, els vencedors han estat Playtime (millor curt), de Paul Jones, “per haver ofert amb molt pocs recursos, però molta inventiva, un relat divertit, inquietant, espontani i eficaç”.

It translates as:

As for the fifth edition of the Acocoexprés, the short film competition in Acocollona't, the winners were Playtime (best short), by Paul Jones, "for a film made with very few resources, but lots of inventiveness and a fun, disturbing, spontaneous and effective story. "

Inspiration for the film

My main inspiration for the film was a  creepy and disturbing Angel episode called Smile Time. The opening scene is where a little boy is watching TV alone in the living room. He's ill, which is why he's not in school. He's basically living the dream we all wanted when we were kids: to stay at home instead of going to school. Anyway, a children's show is playing on the TV, a  show that features puppets. The puppets aren't creepy. At least, not until one of the puppets approaches the screen and starts speaking directly to the little kid. The puppet tells the boy to come and touch the TV, and when the boy does touch it, the puppet sucks the life out of him through the screen.

Even worse, when the mom comes in the living room to check on her son, she finds her son dead on the floor with a grin on his face, as if the Joker killed him. I don't know why, but that's the most disturbing part for me.

That's the kind of thing I was scared would happen to me when I was little. Brrrr.

I've always been fascinated with creepy children's TV shows. There's the Australian show Johnson and Friends, for example, which features a creepy accordion with wide, staring eyes and a fixed grin, and a hot water bottle who seems to be screaming silently.

Some characters in Button Moon were unintentionally creepy, such as Queenie Jelly, a jelly with empty eye sockets:

Then there's Life on Mars, which isn't a children's TV show but does have parts where characters in the TV talk to the protagonist, Sam. Sometimes they even left the TV and entered Sam's living room, like the Test Card Girl and her creepy doll:

Other inspiration includes:

• The poster for the film Poltergeist, where a little girl is holding her hands up to a TV set.
• The Ring, where the creepy well lady crawls out of the TV.
• The scene from Twilight Zone: The Movie where a girl gets trapped and then killed in a children's cartoon.

Well, that's it for now. Happy Halloween!