‘Little Wonder’ aims to be a LGBTQ+ short film (~10 minutes) that follows a group of four young queer people on a small-scale adventure.
by Elizabeth Lindsay in Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
With a bigger budget, we'd be able to get enough Super 8 that we wouldn't be afraid to run as many takes as needed to make each shot absolutely perfect.
This, paired with the ability to spend more money on props, constume, & locations, would result in an overal much more polished film.
Great question! In 'Little Wonder', four friends go on adventure to escape the stresses of modern life when they explore an old smuggler’s tunnel that holds more mystery than they expected. This film will have a majority queer cast and crew!
We're looking to raise around £2000 to cover the costs of production, so hopefully you can help!
As a writer & filmmaker who’s queer and trans, I’m perpetually looking for new ways to integrate authentic, meaningful representation into engaging and fun stories. ‘Little Wonder’ is importantly not another story about queer characters where they experience prejudice or trauma, but moreso a demonstration of the joys of being queer, and being in a circle of accepting, like-minded friends, and how beautiful accepting who you are can be, in spite of the dismal political and social climate levied against the community.
While the story does delve into some more difficult aspects of the trans experience, I feel it’s important for contextualising character relationships, and ultimately it resolves in a way that’s positive and hopefully reassuring for any audience members going through a similar situation.
As of launching this crowdfunder, we’re currently about halfway through the pre production stage. We’ve not yet cast, and the script is in bones, but while the funding is live, we should be able to get to a place where production isn’t far away!
With that in mind, the release of the project is fairly hard to roadmap, but thinking optimistically about it, a Q4 2023/early 2024 release currently feels achievable should we meet our funding goals; but again, whatever happens, you as backers will be the first to know!
Friends Jace, Alex, River & Scythe are tired. Uni, Jobs, and the busyness of modern life are getting them down, so they decide to take a trip together to take their minds off things, have a catch up, and connect with nature a little.
Experiencing a bout of dysphoria, Alex breaks off from the group unexpectedly, and his partner Scythe goes after him, Jace and River staying back, not wanting to interfere (they also feel obliged to protect the group’s mascot, Dajain, an ‘emotional support rock’).
After some searching, Scythe finds Alex around the entrance to some sort of cave, and after a heart to heart, they decide to check it out. To their surprise, the couple find a tunnel system, and at the end of it, a huge pirate ship!
They run back to the others, and the gang immediately start scheming to snoop around the ship, believing it to be a long-lost relic.
Later in the evening, the whole gang go to check out the ship, but they spot a pirate, loading an innocuous crate onto the ship. Startled, the friends leap to the conclusion that the pirate is up to no good, and a series of hijinks ensue as they attempt to capture him.
Some time passes, and the trap is sprung! Though as our protagonists approach to question the pirate, they find the older man in distress. After some deliberation, they let him down, and it’s revealed he’s a retiree named Linus, who just wanted to pretend to be a pirate to bring some more joy into his life after his wife passed away.
After this revelation, the gang decide to dress up as pirates too, and join Captain Linus on a seafaring escapade!
The moodboard for this project ^
We want to shoot some parts of this project on Super 8 film, ideally all of it, but film is expensive to buy, process, and scan, so depending on how much we raise, it’s most likely going to be a combination of digital footage that’s edited to look like Super 8, and a few parts that are actually shot with a Canon 514XL.
Though the technologically inclined amongst you may be dubious of this approach, I’m confident that having genuine Super 8 shots as a reference will mean that our digital footage matches up fairly seamlessly. (And even if this all goes wrong, which is an ever-present risk in filmmaking, we will be recording digital right alongside every shot we take on Super 8, so there will always be a back-up,
Our main priority with the money other than that is more of the regular costs one would expect from filmmaking:
Some say the first rule of filmmaking is that everything can go wrong, no matter how much you prepare, and sadly, we’re not exempt from that either.
There might be delays in production, unforeseen circumstances, technological failure, and a myriad of other things, but I’ve been involved in making short films for around eight years now, and my experience with them & academia has made me very adaptable & proficient with handling on-the-fly changes. But anything could happen.
Bottom line is, if you’re committed to funding the project, I’m committed to finishing it, and even if we don’t make so much, I’ll give it my best effort either way. Whatever happens, I’ll be sure to keep you all updated, both here, and on the various social media channels.
This project offers rewards in return for your donation