Humanz

January - March 2017

Our first short film project

Earlier this year, we tried out something new - making a short film with our members of our community! The idea was to give new filmmakers the opportunity to learn / share skills and meet new people.

First, we asked screenwriters to submit one-minute scripts. Out of all of those submissions, we chose our top five. Then we held an informal meeting for people interested in making a short film with us, 16 guests turned up. In that meeting, we read those five scripts and we each voted for our favourite. The most voted one was Humanz - a short film written by Ilena Ilardo about two friends discussing zombie movies.

We then assigned a role for everyone after we took on board what each of them was interested in. The crew was made up of people from all walks of life - some were completely new to filmmaking, others had more experience. Before the shooting day, the crew met up a handful of times. These pre-production meetings involved making some script changes, rehearsing and planning for the big day.

Let's fast-forward to Sunday 12 March, the day of the shoot. James had kindly offered his living room for us to film in. Our shoot was from 10am to 4pm and it went really well. It was great to see everyone working hard and supporting each other. We even finished a little earlier than 4pm, so we celebrated with more drinks and snacks.

It was then time to pass it on to the post-production team who had three weeks to edit it. It needed to be ready for our London Filmmakers’ Showcase which was on 8 April. Humanz was one of the nine films we screened and we also had a Q&A with the cast and crew.

We asked our participants what they liked about the project, here's what some of them said: