
The last few months at Urban have been spent planning and rehearsing for four short films. Now, somehow, we’re halfway through November with two of those films wrapped and two more to film this weekend and next!
It’s extremely important to us that our members have a say in the work they do. We wanted to make films based on stories and themes that they’re inspired by, so our writers came along to run a workshop with each group, to meet the actors and generate some initial ideas. When the first drafts of the four scripts came back we couldn’t have been more thrilled, and it’s been fantastic getting stuck into the rehearsals with our members.
We shot the Under 12s film, ‘Moon Magic’ by Sara Bodinar, on the first weekend of November at The City of Leicester College, then moved to New College the following weekend with our 12-16s to shoot our creepy horror ‘The Pasiscor Diabolica’, by Rory Rawson. Filming requires stamina; it’s an entirely different beast to theatre but each and every one of our members stepped up to the challenge of the long days, the waiting around, doing takes again and again when they were ruined by planes and passing traffic(!), and wholeheartedly embraced the process.
Our director Katie directed the first two films with Jason Nightall on sound and award-winning cinematographer Keith Allott on camera.
This weekend we’ll be shooting in Melton with the 7pm Thursday group and the 5pm Thursday group will be back at The City of Leicester College to round us off on the last weekend of November, completing our month of film shoots. It’s been so exciting to be able to do such a big project with our members after missing out last year due to the pandemic, and we cannot wait for everyone to see the finished results.