Directed by Asa Bailey and written by Neil Graham and David Cormican, SOMETHING POINTLESS is a spectacular 14-minute Welsh drama recognized in the international film festival circuit for its cinematic prowess and derring-do. The story tells of two troubled individuals in a small UK town. One is an artistically inclined shy middle school boy (played by Leo Harris) who faces the horror of brutal bullying every day at school. In the movie he is known as The Boy Who Never Smiles. The other individual is a septuagenarian gentleman Aldous Evans played by BAFTA-winner Owen Teale. They inadvertently form an unexpected inter-generational bond in this power house of cinematic story telling.
Evans spends his mornings painting eggshells on a on dilapidated neighborhood wall for his self-appointed mural project: A ritual he deems a necessary “pointless” recess from the frenzied demands of the modern world. The lives of wistful youth and eccentric septuagenarian intertwine into a fateful, beautiful, quiet defiance against insignificance.
Asa Bailey
Asa Bailey is a British director, producer, and technological visionary whose career bridges the gap between bleeding-edge digital tools and grounded, human storytelling. He began his career path as a graphic artist during the dot-com boom before transitioning into a web designer of digital interfaces. Living in London, he became widely recognized as a pioneer in the early digital space, even coining the term “viral advertising” in a 2004 interview with Wired magazine.
He directed high-concept commercial campaigns globally, including a massive branded content project starring Jackie Chan, an iconic martial artist, filmmaker, and comedic actor renowned for performing daring stunts and blending acrobatic action with slapstick humor.
Leaning heavily into entertainment technology, Bailey established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading virtual production gurus. His career features notable tenures as a Studio Virtual Production Supervisor at Netflix and collaborative work with AI giants like NVIDIA.
Most notably, he led the virtual production crew for major sci-fi series like Apple TV+’s SILO (Season 2), using real-time graphics and tracking environments to seamlessly build complex lunar and futuristic landscapes on physical sets.
His pioneering work earned him a spot as the first Director of Virtual Production invited into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Despite an outstanding reputation as a “tech visionary” using custom real-time graphics setups (which he controls globally from his mountain retreat), Bailey explicitly treats his advanced digital career as separate from his personal art.
With SOMETHING POINTLESS, Bailey intentionally stepped away from digital green-screens and virtual environments to capture a story rooted entirely in the physical textures of a real community. Filmed on location in Newport, Wales, Bailey has been quoted as saying that the project was a vital opportunity to “let things breathe” and direct a grounded, deeply human narrative with live actors on real locations — proving that a machine can never replace genuine human connection.