During the summer of 2010, I applied to and was accepted onto the 4 week MyX film production course based in Northamptonshire. The Northampton based film production company Wildfire studios ran the course with help from Northampton museum. During the 4 weeks, I met some of the greatest people which are now lifelong friends. The film course really did allow me to explore the world of film and gave me the greatest team bonding skills there are. Waking up at 7am for 4 weeks and taking a 90 minute bus to Northampton during the summer holidays wasn't really the way I had planned to spend my summer but I believe that without attending the course, I wouldn't be where I am today. There were 7 people accepted to the course and I had never met any of them before. We all experienced working independently aswell as working in groups and with our two course leaders. After the first week of basic team bonding challenges and general film production, we were given our assignment of making a film based on artefact which inspired us. Northampton museum and art gallery allowed us to enter the museum storage where the public aren't allowed. There were thousands of things to choose from. From paintings to shoes, we were all amazed at the oppurtunity which we had been given. When I came across an old wedding dress, I knew straight away that I wanted to use it as my artefact. I decided to go for a 'Corpse Bride, zombie, revenge' theme. I worked with two girls from the course on the film. One of the girls chose a weapon and the other chose a mask, we incorporated all 3 of our chosen artefacts into our film. We were given another fantastic oppurtunity of going above the Northampton library where they had a copy of every Newspaper of the last 100 years. With the two girls I worked with, we visited local charity shops where we bought a dress really similar to my artefact. We could not use our original artefact because they were hundreds of years old. We found replacements for the weapon 'stake' and the mask. My friend who was in our group had a real love for maskmaking, She made a purple mask especially for the film. We were all given the oppurtunity to gain an arts award during the course. As everyone was working on their bronze art award, I had already completed it in year 10. I began doing lots of work towards my silver art award but never actually got to complete it(something I want to achieve this year..) We were each asked to come up with a short workshop. There were all different workshops which people had to offer, from learning to speak Japanese, mask making, photoshop tutorials, drama improvisations, jewellery making and my own, specialising in costume design from rubbish.
With each of us speicialising in different areas of the arts, we found how we could bounce ideas off of eachother in order to create something with each of our own input. We filmed The Vampire Strikes back over 2 days in Northamptonshire. On the first day of filming, we shot in a graveyard. I played the vampire bride and our course leader Daniel played the vampire groom. We got most of our filming done on the second day. The second day was really good as we came our of the museum in our costumes and shot infront of a large crowd of people in Abington park. One little girl even appeared in our film as the bridesmaid. On the final day of the production course, parents and friends were invited along to join the VIP screening of the Vampire strikes back aswell as the two other films that the two groups had made. We even had a visit from Katherine Prescott, who played Emily in series 3 and 4 of Skins.
Over the 4 weeks, I found myself the happiest that I had been before. I found that working with people who wanted to see my work and get involved with it were the perfect motivation for myself. Although I was working with these people, I formed the greatest of bonds with them which made me think a lot about the career path which I want to take. If I actually loved getting up at 7am every week day to travel to Northampton by bus to work from 10-3 each day was what I loved to do then film production was definitely for me. I haven't looked back since :)
Walking around the museum as The vampire bride.
Second day of filming, yes that's me in the pink wearing a wig...
We all won cameras and were given certificates for completing the course! With Katherine Prescott.
