Making my first short film 1/3 – Pre-Production
In the Beginning
Making my first short film started with a message in an online group chat that I joined during Lockdown. I was in Northampton at the time, and all I knew was that I wanted to be a filmmaker. But where do I begin? It’s December in the legendary year of 2020, and I’m a first-generation 26 year old Ghanaian who has only been in the UK for three years so far.
How do I connect with actors and crew members who can help me pull this off? Fortunately, I found an ad on Instagram that advertised the same thing I was looking for: the National Youth Film Academy. When I joined and paid their three monthly subscription fee, I was assigned a meeting with my “coach”. This was the only meeting I had with her, and I’m not even mad because it was the only meeting I needed. She had seen some of my stories, and suggested that I should get a Producer for my story.
So, after spending my first three months mustering the courage, I finally made the below post to the group chat in March 2021. I had a flood of comments, mostly from actors, who wanted to be a part of this ambitious project I was venturing on.
![Menelek Mikael](https://i0.wp.com/menelekmikael.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-07-193343.png?resize=685%2C292&ssl=1)
But I had two problems:
1. Finding an interested producer
2. Considering my origin, most of my original stories are based on African lore or star black characters… However, none of the interested actors was black.
The Distraction
I still couldn’t find an interested producer… so I decided to work with other directors instead. The aim here is that, by working with these other “experienced” directors, I’ll gain some production experience. So I assemble a small team of writers/directors. I explained my universe to them and pitched to them that they could all take a different character of mine to create a story with. It was a good time… a good waste of time. Mostly because of one individual who soured the experience for everyone. There’s more nuance to this part of the project, and exploring it will digress from the aim of this article, so let’s just leave it at that.
It cost us five months of our time, but we got nothing substantial done. But on the bright side, I built a close connection with an amazing individual who was a special effects artist. Leon Clements-Beall. Leon was actually one of the first people to reach out to me when I posted my first NYFA message in March ’21, and the last couple of months strengthened our working relationship. Leon helped me ground a lot of my imaginations in practical reality, and talking to him kept me going on especially when the wasted three months came to an end with little progress.
Fine, I’ll do it myself
Back to the drawing board. What next? I decided to fix what was easiest to fix: story. In my second year in the UK, I met a girl on a train in London. Somehow, this memory led me to write a short story about a starving artist who meets a goddess from a painting. Within a couple of weeks, I wrote, rewrote and rewrote the story till Leon and I were satisfied with it.
Even at this stage, the story was too ambitious, and would require almost five locations to pull it off properly. How was I supposed to get 5 locations? I really needed a producer to do the heavylifting for me.
So I made another post on the NYFA group chat in August 2021:
![Menelek Mikael](https://i0.wp.com/menelekmikael.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-07-193506.png?resize=688%2C492&ssl=1)
Well, I still didn’t get any interested producers. At this point, you can tell that I was tired of waiting around. “Fine, I’ll do it myself!”
I had NO IDEA what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to translate the script into a short film. So I read a lot of online articles and watched several more hours of YouTube videos to get ready for this task. Around this time, I made a big move in my life. I relocated to London. The primary reason for this is in order to be closer to more actors and film opportunities.
When I had settled in well enough, I put out another post on the NYFA group chat in September 2021:
![Menelek Mikael](https://i0.wp.com/menelekmikael.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-07-193550.png?resize=694%2C506&ssl=1)
Assembling a Team
In response to this post, I was able to assemble a cast purely based on the actors who seemed interested in the production. I didn’t care about looks much, because my racist black eyes said “They’re all white, so one will care”. I landed on a cast of interested individuals:
1. Nathan Bhamra who will play Mystic Man
2. Liam Peacock who will play a mysterious bodyguard
3. Gemma Wilson who will play Morgan the sorceress
4. Alex Tuohy who will play the lead character Ethan
5. James Storey who will play the “smart-talking sick sibling” stereotype Kyle. The first of the many Jameses I’ll be working with in film.
There were more actresses who were interested, but I needed the last actress to be specifically be black… I need to figure that out. I actually asked Gemma, Alex and James to name their own characters.
For the crew, I had Leon to back me up in the SFX department. He was joined by Molly Springs who was happy to help in the Hair and MUA department. This was shaping up into something.
We had a couple of virtual meetings with the cast and crew to discuss the story, characters, and production. We then had our first online reading. and it was quite a pleasant experience to hear actors reading my work. Through this, I was able to hear how cheesy some of my lines sounded, and all the fat I needed to trim. I took their critiques in tow, and applied it in further rewrites.
Painted Goddess first scene
I even drew this wonky storyboard to help visualize the story better.
![](https://i0.wp.com/menelekmikael.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Painted-Goddess-first-scene.png?resize=1024%2C840&ssl=1)
I went on to download Storyboarder to help storyboard the ideas better. And shared some of these videos during our online readings. This was really shaping up into something… I was making a short film… But I didn’t have a cinematorgrapher or sound engineer.
So, considering I was in full DIY mode, I thought to myself that I’ll do the cinematography myself. I have extensive photography knowledge so pivoting into cinematography shouldn’t be too hard… Right?
Just Ask Around
![Menelek Mikael](https://i0.wp.com/menelekmikael.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screenshot-2023-11-07-193638.png?resize=651%2C462&ssl=1)
Well, I put out another post on the NYFA page on 13 October:
Since the casting was mostly complete, I didn’t get a lot of response. And also by this time, I had gotten over the cringe title, “Painted by a Goddess” to a more solid one: “The Painted Goddess”.
I had two sponsors who committed their money to the project, and I can’t explain how exhilarating it was to have people agree to give up their money to my project. The first was:
1. Dominic Woodhouse who committed £50, and
2. Nathan Bhamra who committed £100
This was very useful in many ways than financial – it boosted my ego severely. If these individuals were able to part ways with their hard-earned money for my unrealized project, then I can do no wrong. All I had to do was ask. So I asked.
Hey Alex, do you know a black actresses? Yes! Meet Lucelia.
Lucelia, are you interested? Yes! Boom! Black actress to play The Painted Goddess is sorted.
Hey Molly, do you know any sound engineers? Yes! Meet Tramell.
Tramell, are you interested? Yes, and guess what? I have my own equipment! Whaaat? Boom! Sound engineer with his own equipment sorted.
Around this same time, I united a group of writers to help me develop my future projects. One of the writers was a comedy writer called Daniel McLaughlin who agreed to help me fine-tune the dialogue in the story. He made the characters sound more human when the actors read their lines. The best part was the humour that made some of the characters more endearing.
Thanks to Daniel’s addition, I found where the story was weakest, and did a final rewrite to trim out what needed to go. At this point, we were at the 9th Draft. And poetically, our 10th draft was the last.
But that’s not to say the story didn’t have it’s flaws. I had to cram a lot into the three locations, and it wasn’t going to be easy. And I didn’t really have much time… so I butchered a lot of things. We were not able to get much insight into his motivations and backstory. The pacing was also rushed in places, but that’s short film headache. But the best part was the dialogue and humour that Daniel injected.
Now, let’s revisit the cinematography. Was I really sure I wanted to do it by myself? Leon helped me understand just how much work I’ll be taking on if I did the cinematography by myself on my very first project. I decided I was going to go out and search once again for a cinematographer.
I combed through the comments on my previous NYFA posts, and found that someone mentioned they were happy to do their own videography: Brandon Whelan. I scheduled a video call with him and spoke to him about what I was working on and what I needed. He had his own videography kit, microphone kit, and an interest in helping. So with only a week to go, the crew was finally assembled.
Let’s talk about the trickiest part – Location
You may have realized I’ve not spoken too much about location. Well, I didn’t know where to start when it came to that because I was still green in the UK. When I started down this path. I used to live in Northampton, and I relocated to London one month before production. So I used what I was good at – Google Maps. There were three main locations to account for: 1. A cliffside, a seaside, or any cinematic abandoned location which looks like a place where one can summon a spirit from, 2. An isolated path, possibly in a foresty area. 3. The house that the artist lives in. And I also needed to sort out accommodation for those coming from far.
The goal is that if we found the abandoned building or mystical looking location, we’ll book our Airbnb there. Leon suggested the stone circles in the UK. How pleasant. I was so lucky to have this man on my team. We located three stone circles that we could travel to. We really considered travel out of town to the South-West thus the minibus mentioned in my Facebook post. Thankfully, London has a stone circle in Lewisham. So we just need to find an Airbnb.
This is what led me to register on Airbnb for the first time. My first three bookings got cancelled perhaps because I was new and had no previous reviews, or perhaps because of how my skin looked. Hopefully not the latter. We were dangerously close to the shooting dates without a booked location accommodation. What do I do? You guessed right, I called on Leon. I sent him the money to Leon to book it with his Airbnb. Fortunately, it wasn’t cancelled when he did it. And we got a really awesome space: a small-ish three bedroom trailer located on a horse farm.
The path in the foresty area will have to be left to luck because it’s such a short scene. How young and optimistic I used to be.
Conclusion
We actually pulled it off. Pre-Production of my first short film was finally coming to an end. What a journey.
On 5 November, I finally made it to the farm to meet the whole team… Did I tell you I was a serious introvert? Well, my introversion kicked in to 2000% as soon as I got to the entrance. This was the first time I was meeting everyone in the flesh for the first time. I was so nervous, anxious, and shy! Gosh! Such an anticlimactic ending. This article has gone on for too long to I’ll leave this here and write a separate one dedicated to the Production and Post-Production story.
Here is everyone that showed up on Day 1 – From Left to Right:
That’s me making this video
Liam Peacock
Nathan Bhamra in yellow
Alex Tuohy beside him
Brandon Whelan with the camera
James Storey is seated beside him
Tramell E-Rowe is in white
Molly Spring is doing the makeup for
Lucelia Agostinho, and finally
Leon Clements Beall is in the centre of the room
Looking back, this pre-production journey was full of invaluable learning experiences. Though the path was long and full of uncertainly, each step brought me closer to actually pulling this off. I gained first-hand experience pitching ideas, assembling a team, handling logistics, and navigating setbacks. Most importantly, I learned that persistence and optimism are key – each stumble provided an opportunity to tweak my approach. I can’t wait to share the next chapter of this cinematic rollercoaster ride. For now though, it’s time to call “Action!” and see where this journey takes us next.