As the first days pass, Clayton realizes that his loneliness is overcoming his ability to write. He isn’t able to discern the difference between his obsessive fear or the strange sounds he hears at night. Becoming paranoid, he turns to the camera as a way to comfort himself.
The deeper he sinks into loneliness, the more the sounds seem to circle him closer and closer. Which begs the question, is something more sinister feeding his fear? In the middle of the night, Clayton takes a final stand against the sounds and decides to storm into woods to discover the source. What Clayton finds out in the nothing begins his decent into the breaking point of loneliness.
Clayton Thompson is a passionate storyteller and screenwriter that has been perfecting his craft for the last ten years. He has completed a total of eight feature-length scripts with several more projects in development. He graduated from Georgia State University in 2010 with a degree in creative writing and film.
On top of his love for storytelling, Clayton has been working in the film industry for the last seven years, during which he was inducted into the Directors Guild of America in 2015, and worked on many projects including Baby Driver, The Avengers: Infinity War, Stranger Things, and the Walking Dead.
This film began as a challenge to explore stories that can be executed with minimal resources. After six years of production experience, such as on the Walking Dead and Stranger Things, I decided it was time use my knowledge and passion to create my own story. I wanted to explore the the human condition of reckless isolation and loneliness. It was clear that these ideas were perfect for the found-footage horror genre. I wrote the narrative in the most personal and vulnerable ways possible to me. I was willing to put my own insecurities and conflicts as the backbone of the narrative.
The horror aspect of the story came from a real nightmare that I had. I woke up and felt a dark presence and it nearly killed me in the dream. I was helpless until it was over.
When considering this story, there was something terrifying about being alone in the forest and dealing with these fears in both a psychological and real way. The Nothing represents the demons that attack us when we separate ourselves from our places of faith, love, and foundations. In the story, the character portrayed has to deal with these fears and it brings him to the cliff of his identity. I wanted to learn why do people leave safety and security in order to pursue their dreams, and risk themselves in the process.