Sacred Vows Collapse Under Carnal Desire in Alexander Jeremy’s Psychodrama ‘The Consecration of a Perpetual Virgin’

What immediately distinguishes Alexander Jeremy’s work is its defiant technical approach. In an age where cinematic cleanliness can be suffocating in its perfection, The Consecration of a Perpetual Virgin embraces the textured imperfection of older digital cinema, with Jeremy deliberately choosing a path of digital imperfection. The imagery, awash in intentional noise and natural sensor limitations, creates a unique visual language, which perfectly mirrors his conflicted protagonist Cecilia’s internal struggle just as her carefully maintained devotional commitment begins to crack, the film’s visual palette resists perfection and a carefully crafted space becomes a liminal zone where sanctity and sexuality collapse into one another. The progression from stoic devotion to spiritual crisis unfolds with hypnotic precision, drawing us into Cecilia’s psychological disintegration without a single moment of overacting. By embracing technological limitations rather than fighting against them, The Consecration of a Perpetual Virgin achieves a singularity of vision that feels untouched by commercial compromise and demonstrates a filmmaking path for continued creative growth without the need to court financial gatekeepers. We took some time with Jeremy to dig into how he is making films in resistance to the current bloated industry, why he loves embracing digital noise and the challenges of the editing process despite the film’s slimmed-down approach to production.

Tell us about your collaboration with writer and performer Susie Kimnell and the origins of this wonderfully bizarre short.

The film was written by Susie, we have worked together as director and actor combo since our first film together called f r e d. We’ve been making what we call lofi films since around 2020, meaning they are made with little to no money, crew or resources, just what is available – often on older digital cameras with inexpensive lenses. This was born out of our frustration with how difficult it is to raise money to make films in a traditional manner. We’ve therefore been developing this lofi style, using little dialogue, 1 lens, few lights, 1080p cameras and leaning into digital noise/under-exposure which has culminated in the lofi_film25 film channel which we are in the process of trying to build a small but dedicated audience for – a kind of mini YouTube A24.

We used the old Sony PMW F3 for this. Originally released in 2011 for around £23k, but can now be bought on eBay for less than 1k. I find everything today looks the same nowadays, as everyone wants to shoot on the usual suspects (Alexa, Red, Venice), super high resolution, etc. The F3 was part of the first range of digital cinema cameras that aimed to nail the film organic look. So I’m in love with the 1080p sensor.

Could you expand on your lofi manifesto and how it shapes your decision-making on set?

The lofi film manifesto is really about doing a lot with very little. It’s a kind of resistance to the current state of the industry, which feels very maximalist – millions spent on actors, gear, crew and tech, everything polished to this standardised, commercial sheen. It’s like films and shows are being manufactured like iPhones.

Mark Jenkin talks about being a “shoddiest,” and I love that, it’s about making something that feels handmade and personal

What we’re doing is the opposite. We’re working with affordable gear/what we have, embracing imperfection and roughness. There’s so much beautiful, characterful stuff you can do with cheaper equipment now. It’s the old ‘using your limitations as fuel for creativity’ thing. Mark Jenkin talks about being a “shoddiest” and I love that, it’s about making something that feels handmade and personal, like a chair crafted by someone who really cares about chairs, rather than something rolled off a production line. In terms of decision-making, those constraints actually help me. I get overwhelmed when I have too many options. If someone gave me a $300 million budget, I’d probably freeze. But if you say, “You’ve got one room, one camera, and this amount of light,” then I can really play.

What specific creative freedoms have you discovered through this approach that might be lost in traditionally funded productions?

It’s just so much freer. It reminds me of being a kid messing around with cameras – pure play. There’s no pressure to hit a set of expectations or squeeze things into a rigid schedule. You can go, “I’ve found this weird old lens I want to shoot with,” or “I’m going to build a custom mount because I want this exact look.” That kind of playfulness can get squeezed out when there’s too much structure or money involved. There were only about six of us on set. There wasn’t any of that standing around. It felt focused, scrappy, alive. And we didn’t have to deal with all the bureaucracy, those daily call sheets and planning docs that make me feel like I’m at school.

Of course, traditional structure evolved for good reason. But technology’s changed, and the way we work can too. What I’ve rediscovered through this approach is just how much I love experimenting, messing about, finding something unexpected. That’s the spirit of lofi_film25. I wouldn’t even call it a production company, it’s a space to make things with heart, and with our own rules.

I was drawn to the sexual references throughout – a voice imploring her to cum, her vanilla pudding between her legs, Jesus’s fingers at the end – how did you make sure this didn’t go too cheesy?

It’s all about balance. I knew I’d have control over the tone because I was cutting the film myself, so I could constantly adjust things, try something, then pull it back if it felt like too much. I was very aware that those kinds of references can tip into cliché easily. But in some ways, I didn’t mind flirting with that, because what we were going for was this sense of purity the character’s trying to cling to, while all this sexual imagery sort of bubbles up around her. It’s like no matter how hard she tries to stay on the straight and narrow, it’s always there – seeping in, waiting to consume her.

How did you embrace the low camera resolution and potential digital noise as aesthetic choices rather than limitations?

Honestly, 1080p is completely fine. The whole 4K, 6K, 12K thing is mostly a marketing race. Sure, it’s useful if you want to crop in/reframe or you’re shooting from far away, but most of the time, I’d rather just set up the frame properly and shoot it the way I want it from the start – which is what Joseph Hobbs (our DP) and I spent a lot of time doing.

What we were going for was this sense of purity the character’s trying to cling to, while all this sexual imagery sort of bubbles up around her.

I actually upscaled the footage to 4K in post, not because we shot in 4K, but because YouTube compresses 1080p so aggressively. If you upload in 1080p, it gets stuck at that quality. But if you upscale it to 4K, YouTube gives it a better compression rate, so it looks way cleaner online. Also, I don’t like things that look too sharp. I wanted this to feel filmic, not like one of those fake film emulations, which never quite work. You can always tell when something’s been shot on actual 35mm. So I wanted to use a digital camera that gives me something closer to that look natively. As for digital noise, I love it. Why did we decide it’s a bad thing? Film is full of noise. Grain. Texture. It gives the image life. Digital noise does the same – it gives it personality. I’m not trying to make everything noisy, but I don’t want to scrub it out either. I want the image to feel alive, not sterile.

I want to know all about the dressing of the bedroom, creepy Jesus, the crosses and then how you lit it all to give us that pervasive red.

Claire Hickman did the bedroom design, and she absolutely smashed it. I kind of just left her to it. I love finding people who are brilliant at their craft so I can say, “Here’s the feel, go,” and then I just give feedback when I see what they come up with. The “creepy Jesus” has a funny backstory: the image of Jesus in the portrait is actually Rupert Charmack’s real headshot, he plays Jesus. We just digitally altered it to add a halo and make it more religious-looking. He already had long hair in the photo, so it weirdly worked. It’s a great headshot, not creepy at all originally – but it became creepy Jesus with a bit of tweaking. As for the lighting, Susie’s script simply said deep red (though I may just have made that up). We just wanted a mood, a vibe that was immersive. That was the goal.

I am so impressed by Susie’s performance in this. She remains so blank-faced until it starts to get really weird. How did the two of you develop her character?

We actually didn’t talk about it all that much. Susie wrote the script, so she had a deep understanding of the character already. I knew what I needed from her performance for the film and the edit, but we didn’t spend ages breaking it down. The thing about Susie is she’s just incredible. To be honest, she makes me look good. So much of the film is just her face in frame, doing so little but communicating everything. That’s a gift. With someone like her, you don’t need to over-direct. Just point the camera and let her cook.

Your sound design makes me want to be next to some loud speakers, feeling it vibrating in my soul.

That’s all thanks to Ines Adriana, she did an incredible job in post. We actually didn’t have a sound recordist on set, which is kind of typical for these lofi shoots. Most of my films have very little dialogue, so I’ve been experimenting with different ways to get what we need.

Sound is still one of the trickiest parts of the lofi process, especially when you don’t have money for a dedicated sound team.

For this one, I used a couple of 32-bit Rode VideoMic Pros, one mounted on the camera and a couple of wireless receivers placed around the room. It didn’t always work, especially the first scene, which we had to do a lot of work on in post, but some of the other scenes came out better. Sound is still one of the trickiest parts of the lofi process, especially when you don’t have money for a dedicated sound team. But I love ambient sound, real, imperfect audio that captures the feeling of life happening. I’m still figuring it out.

Seeing as these shorts are minimal in their approach, does that mean you have everything in place for an easy edit?

I’m not sure, to be honest. It didn’t feel any easier than shorts I’ve done that weren’t lofi, maybe slightly. I always hope to get to the edit and just go “plonk, plonk” drop the clips in, shape the cut quickly, and be done. Rarely the case though. The first scene, for example, was the hardest to edit. I much prefer to get things in-camera – in one or two well-composed shots – and let those do the work. I’m really trying to get better at being simple.

There’s always an idea in my head for a more ambitious shot, but then we don’t have the time or the gear. Like, there’s a scene where she’s texting in the car. My original plan was to do a slow push-in from outside the car, gradually getting closer to her face throughout the conversation until the knock on the window. We tried it, but we just didn’t have the right slider, the stability, or a focus puller. Joe was doing his best on a tiny monitor, half inside the car. Then, thank god, Joe was in the back of the car grabbing some pickup shots, like the yoghurt pot, and we happened to run the whole scene on her face from that angle. And thank god we did. It’s one of my favourite scenes. It’s so simple and it works. So yeah, the edit is only easy when you let it be simple. That’s something I keep trying to learn.

For anyone reading who’s felt hampered by the cost of high-end cameras and fearful to share their 1080p films on YouTube, as you’ve successfully been doing on lofi_film25, could you please go full technical geek and walk through your post upscaling through to upload workflow?

Okay geekage. This is in Davinci Resolve (only the paid version does superscale).

Set the Timeline to 4K

• Import your 1080p footage and go to the Project Settings (bottom-right cog icon).
• Under Master Settings, set the Timeline Resolution to 3840 x 2160 (Ultra HD).
• Click Save.

Apply Superscale

• In the Media Pool, right-click your clip and select Clip Attributes.
• Go to the Video tab.
• Set Superscale to 2x.
• Set Sharpness to Medium, and Noise Reduction to Low (optional).
• Click OK.

Final Steps

• Drag the clip to your 4K timeline — Superscale will now be applied automatically.
• When exporting, make sure the Deliver tab is set to 3840 x 2160 resolution.
• Render as usual:
  • Codec: ProRes 422 HQ
  • There should be a setting under Advanced Settings that says “force debayer to render highest quality” – click that.

There’s lots of AI upscaling software out like Topaz AI that also does this. In terms of uploading (to YouTube in particular) I’ve found it best NOT to compress the ProRes before uploading. Upload the full ProRes directly to YouTube.

I’m very into your vibe and want to see more of these films. What’s next?

Thank you, that really means a lot. If you want to see more, please check out our YouTube channel. We’ve got about four shorts up there now, all made in the lofi spirit, though each with its own flavour. Subscribe, follow along. We’re also on Instagram, again under @lofi_film25 where we post clips, updates, and little glimpses of what we’re working on. We’re also funding the work through platforms like Ko-Fi and Patreon. Consecration cost us about £3,000 to make, and that kind of budget per short is doable if we can build a community to support it. On Patreon, we’re going to be posting more ‘creative diaries’ behind-the-scenes thoughts, footage, reflections from the actors and crew but all of that stays behind a paywall. I really believe in keeping the main feed focused on the finished films. I think too much behind-the-scenes stuff can ruin the magic. But if you’re into process, it’s there for you.

As for what’s next, we’ve got a short called Still There, which we actually made before Consecration. It’s been doing a festival run, so we’ve held off uploading it, but it’ll be out this summer hopefully. The teaser just dropped! And the big one, we’re working toward a feature for the YouTube channel only. I love long-form storytelling. That’s what I’m here to do. But we’re approaching it in a slightly unconventional way: we’ve split the feature into six parts, and we’re starting by making just Part One. That’ll cost around £3,000 again, something we think is realistic to crowdfund. We’ll release Part One, grow the audience, and then, if people want more, we’ll make Part Two and Part Three, and keep building from there.

There’s even a world where we start multiple features in parallel this way, release the first part, and if people want to see more, they can help us fund the rest. We’re trying out a new model. So if you like what we’re doing, the best thing you can do is: subscribe, share the films, tell your mates. That’s how this thing grows.