EXCLUSIVE: Premiere of Sign Language, the new super 8 film by multi-award-winners Max Mir and Matthew Poole, starring George MacKay

30 Oct 2025

Molly Lipson

It’s hard to say if the most fascinating aspect of Max Mir’s life story is that he had brain surgery as a child, or that his dad was a professional mime. They’re both important facts when it comes to understanding how the Barcelona-born director came to make films: it was during his recovery from surgery that Mir’s dad presented him with a camera, sparking his childhood love for filmmaking that eventually bloomed into a career. He has since made a series of silent films, one actually about a mime.

For Matthew Poole, Mir’s co-director, his cinephilia started later in life, and relatively unpromoted. One day, he “took a notion” to write a screenplay. During a trip around the US, he somehow managed to get it in front of an LA producer who seemed to like it. Though that film was never made, the confidence it gave Poole spurred him on to study film at MetFilm School in Ealing, London, where he and Mir met.

They were mid-course when the pandemic hit, which meant the usual mixing between students on different courses was pared back. Producers didn’t get to meet cinematographers, who didn’t get to meet sound designers, and so on. Disheartened and a little frustrated, Mir was determined to meet his classmates, even if it meant taking on a project outside of his course. He had come across the straight 8 competition (you can read our interviews with previous straight 8 winners here) and wanted to enter. He pitched the idea to the first person he had met and become friends with, Matthew Poole, who agreed to come on board as co-director.  

For the competition, filmmakers shoot on a single roll of super 8 film, which runs for a total of around three minutes, and send it off for processing without any editing or post production. They also send an audio track, and the straight 8 team compiles the two together for filmmakers to see months later at a screening event. Mir and Poole had amassed a group of about ten people across various departments, including screenwriters, a cinematographer, and sound and camera crew. Each team member contributed to the submission fee, with the rest of production also being self-funded, as it has been in all their straight 8 entries. The pair’s debut film Dead Funny made it to the top 8 films in the 2022 straight 8 competition.

Part of their prize was free entry the next year, and so they submitted another film, Lemonade Standoff, with much the same crew as before, and once again ended up in the top 8. Following on from their previous successes, Short Stuff is delighted to exclusively premiere Mir and Poole’s latest super 8 short film Sign Language. Starring George MacKay (1917, Pride), the film is a farcical comedy in which an art gallery security guard becomes increasingly over-zealous with his signs.

You can watch the film and read an interview with directors Max Mir and Matthew Poole, and a quickfire round with George Mackay, below.

Sign Language

Molly Lipson: The ideas for your films are very niche and wacky – how on earth do you come up with them?

Matthew Poole: It’s not as professional as you would think. In the early days, we’d get everyone to a bar, have a few drinks, start with something random and then just spitball until we're able to build upon the initial idea. For example, when we did Dead Funny, which is coincidentally about a mime, I started off with the story of a mime who’s performing in a park and then has a heart attack but because he’s a mime, no one knows it’s real. And then Max added the idea of having a funeral for the mime that is attended by mimes.

ML: So how did you come up with the idea for Sign Language?

Max Mir: Well obviously we discussed it at a Spoons [Spoons is short for Wetherspoons, an exceptionally cheap and cheerful chain of pubs across the UK]. I told Matthew that after our last film (which didn’t go so well) this idea I had was the only one I wanted to make, and luckily he was into it.

MP: All our films have taken inspiration from old, silent films: Dead Funny was from Charlie Chaplin, Lemonade Stand was like a Tom and Jerry stand off, and this one has a Wile E. Coyote Road Runner feel. The idea fit the style and tone of what we’d done before that we knew worked well, and I loved the idea of having a series of three minute silent comedies inspired by the classics that I grew up watching.  

ML: How did George come on board this project?

MM: I was working as an assistant director on a film George MacKay was in and we became friendly on set. In fact, it was his co-star Bill Nighy who first spread the word about me being a filmmaker to the rest of the cast. Bill was so lovely and always asked me how I was and what I was up to. I told him I had a film on at a festival in Cardiff, and he was so excited about this that he went to all the cast and said, oh my god, did you know Max is a filmmaker and he has a film in a festival? I already had a great working relationship with George so he asked me more about it and wanted to see the film, so I sent it to him along with our previous straight 8 film Lemonade Stand and then I asked him to be in it. He very graciously accepted! We’ve got our eyes set on Bill Nighy for the next one now…

ML: How do you find working on super 8 compared to other formats and do you find it more limiting or liberating?

MP: I think the constraints are the benefits. It got us into the habit of rehearsing everything till it’s perfect. The limitation of knowing that you only have one chance to get it right once you pull the trigger means that if you mess up, you either start from the very beginning or you live with the mistake (yes there’s one in Sign Language that we always notice). I think whenever I direct on digital now, I’m more able to accept a good take and move on and not need seven or eight takes.

MM: It really pushes you creatively because if you fuck up, that's it, you have to keep going. And actually that’s part of the pitch when speaking to potential cast and crew – there won’t be ten takes of everything, it’s a one and done job. We're limited by the runtime and the practicalities of achieving the shot, but never what the shot can consist of. In this case, George was great at shaving off a second here or there, which gave us back that moment elsewhere. I love that although everything is so concrete and precise, there’s still room for improv and collaboration.

ML: What’s your planning process when working on film?

MM: We storyboard everything down to the tiniest detail, and then Max and I meet up and film it on an iPhone shot by shot, second by second, so that we can get the timings right. If we need to trim, we know what to sacrifice, so that by the time it comes to the shooting day, we've already done it. To still have that freedom of adding a joke on the day, it also means that other people, especially the actors, can feel involved. I think in every single film that we've done for straight 8, there's at least one additional joke that was thought of on the spot.

Quickfire questions with George MacKay

ML: What drew you to this project?

George MacKay: I had just worked with Max and he had told me about this idea. Previously that year, I had done the film Rose of Nevada, which was shot on super 16 and we’d had to be similarly strict about the way we used the camera, so I had an idea of what it would be like.

ML: What was it like doing a comedy, which is quite a different genre for you?

GM:  Yeah, I've not done as many comedies before, and it was a great vibe on this set. With it being a lighter affair, everyone was having a good time and being very supportive. There was a real energy about making this piece in line with the rules of the straight 8 competition that was just a lot of fun.

ML Did you feel constrained by those rules?

GM: Not constrained so much. I guess there wasn't so much room for improv and off the cuff stuff, everything was very storyboarded and specific, but as ever, the way you perform each specific beat is still in your court. Similarly, the timings and blockings had to be very set, but the nuances of how to come across on camera was ours.

ML: How did you prepare for the film?

GM: I spoke to Max and his co-creators beforehand – we went through everything on a zoom call to beat it all out. I was party to the storyboard and the very specific nature of each shot, how long we had for each one, and then I just followed their direction very carefully on the day.