Jockstrap | a tender short of vulnerability and power

Jockstrap is a bold, intimate, vulnerable, personal and universal story focusing on sexuality, shame and getting out of your head. Writer director Henry Faint explains how the film organically grew into a tender short

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I’ve called it a tender short, because it shows an extremely vulnerable moment.

Iconic and symbolic

Jockstrap was born out of the development of my upcoming feature film LAY-BY, where the lead character puts on a jockstrap for the first time, but it is also born out of personal experience. The jockstrap is an iconic and symbolic piece of clothing within the gay community and the short is based on the first time I wore one at the age of 19, the sexual power I felt but also the shame that hit during the experience.

Proof of concept

In early 2025, I was settled on just having a writing year, but this scene from the feature kept circling my mind so I decided to put it down as a microshort on paper. Within a week I had a team behind me and we were ready to roll. This was my first short that I intended to make purely off my own back financially, my credit card… The idea behind it was to continue to strengthen our skills as a team (and my writing directing) and use it as a proof of concept for the feature.

A tender short

I’ve called it a tender short, because it shows an extremely vulnerable moment. Vulnerable has ended up being one of those key words for all my work, especially given all my work is somewhat semi-autobiographical.

Organic

Hullo...

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We shot it on Saturday last April across two locations, Austins Department store in Newton Abbot, and my own house in Exeter. My husband wanted to redecorate our bedroom so we used our bedroom to hit two birds with one stone. Post production ended up being longer than anticipated just because life got in the way and I am in the process of relocating to Falmouth from Exeter as I am now lecturing at Falmouth University on the Film Course, with the final film being completed about a year later. It feels like a long time to get a 3 minute short complete, but it was important that it was an organic process, and it was nice to not answer to any external deadlines and see what that feels like.

Support

My previous two shorts, Lymp and King Henry look at what being queer feels like in the school setting. As a teacher/lecturer I’m always thinking about what support I can give to students who are finding themselves, and what I didn’t have during my teens. I also think now that I teach students who are over the age of 18 I am less afraid to tackle some of the more “adult” themes that I want to.

“*Jockstrap* follows that moment when you get out of your head and into your body.”

Sex, relationships, shame and beyond

Jockstrap signals what I am interested in exploring next, sex, relationships, shame and beyond. I’m interested in exploring the internal barriers we put up in our heads that limit our experience, and as ever my work is helping process the world around me and supporting the unpicking of things in my head. If my previous work is very “teenage coming of age queer” my current work will look at what it feels to be a 31 queer man in Cornwall. Jockstrap follows that moment when you get out of your head and into your body.

Challenges and responsibility

Putting the intimate on screen comes with more challenges and ethical responsibility though. Part of my ongoing interest is how we can support safe and productive on-set cultures, which I hope to formalise into a research project next year. There are some obvious things such as intimacy coordinators which are necessary. While we didn’t have one on jockstrap, my producers JT Waters and Jacob Saul and 1st assistant Director (Declan Crowther) went through the appropriate steps to ensure our lead Cameron was protected and felt cared for, and had a closed set for near nude scenes. We were lucky that we have worked with intimacy coordinators before so knew the process (though there is no substitute to working with one directly and on set). Part of the thing i’m trying to get over is the inherent shame I feel while trying to bring these more sexually introspective stories to the screen. In fact, writing my feature has been a real task, where I am often tackling shame and fear in myself head-on, in order to bring something special to the screen. It’s been a process.

Great actors

I was blessed on this film to work with three great actors. Cameron Bernard Jones, JD Hunt and Cal Moss. I’ve known for a long time I have wanted to work with Cameron, we met when I interviewed him on my podcast Queer Reflections in 2022 and we have been in touch since. Though he is a London-based West End Actor, he toured with a company of RENT and performed in Barnstaple in 2024, leading to us connecting in person. Last year he came down to speak at my work and I was speaking about Jockstrap to him on the drive in. A week later he sent his expression of interest and we worked on thinking about how blackness changes the experience in the film. In reality, nothing much changed , but it was important for us both to spend the time to explore it.

JD Hunt travelled in and had a call time of around 8pm, and provided some much needed energy to cast and crew and his charm spills off the screen.

Cal is a student at Falmouth who worked on a short story a friend made a couple of years ago. He plays this 20 something floor manager at the department store who thinks he’s it, based on what I felt like when I was that age, donning a britney mic headset.

Jockstrap is now on its festival journey and I’m sharing it around friends and family and to producers as part of the pitch for LAY-BY. My previous two shorts – Lymp and King Henry are available either through the Fylm Ankoth Vimeo or currently on Cornwall 365 through the At Home Page.