Creative Scotland Crowdmatch has provided £4,035 of match funding
Salvation - Feature Film
Glasgow, Glasgow City, United Kingdom
Aim: To finish making our feature film Salvation, a Scottish thriller that offers a timely exploration of life coaching in the modern world.
THE FILM
The story follows Danny Carlton, a striver from Greenock on the west coast of Scotland. He has few prospects and isn’t leading the life he wants, until he comes across an online guru who shows him a new path: here is a map to living a successful life. And so Danny commits completely to becoming a life coach himself. There's one problem though: he’s not very good at it.
Danny has taken out loans to start his life coaching company, and has very little money coming in. And so when the loans come due, he has to go to ever more extreme lengths to pay them off, including exploiting the people closest to him.
This is a film about the phenomenon of online life coaching and influencers, and how they impact on mental health and sense of self. It’s a darkly comic examination of a pervasive aspect of the online world we live in today. We hope to have made a film that will make you laugh, make you feel, and make you think.
THE BACKGROUND
I'm a Scottish writer and director based in Glasgow. My films have screened at festivals worldwide and appeared on platforms like the BBC and Vimeo Staff Picks. You can find more about my work at my website here.
The genesis of this film began with a short film I made called Lighting Tests. It was a tiny film, a crew of four with one actor. The film punched well above its weight, screening at massive festivals around the world and getting tens of thousands of views online. You can watch Lighting Tests here:
Being in Glasgow around the indie filmmaking culture, I knew a few people who had made or who are currently making indie features. Lighting Tests was a big success from very few resources. It became very clear to me that if I could make a film with a really compelling central character and interesting milieu, I could do that without a big budget. Liam, who played Malky in Lighting Tests, was key to this plan, and thankfully he was interested in the idea when I told it to him on a walk in Inverclyde, summer 2023, before a first draft was written. That was the beginning.
THE PROJECT
The production of low budget indie films is often unconventional, and ours is no different. We shot the bulk of the film in September 2024, but we needed a particular section of the film to be shot in summer.
Because of this, we have had to wait until May 2025 to shoot the remainder of the project. We had a successful shoot and now have a rough cut of the film that is around 95 minutes long.
We are asking for money to help us get Salvation over the line. Having to split the shoot up adds cost, and so we need a bit more money to help us in the post-production and festival part of the film. Costs would include: sound design and mixing, musical score, and colour grading.
We want to give the film the best possible chance of making it in a crowded market place, and that means getting the best possible people involved to take the film to the next level.
THE TEAM
We’ve been really pleased with the team we’ve managed to assemble. I was fortunate to attend the Berlinale Talents program at the Berlin Film Festival, one of the biggest film festivals in the world. I connected with various collaborators there - including our cinematographer Alex, editor Raluca, and composer Salla - to build a really strong crew behind the camera.
In front of the camera, we’re really pleased with actors who have wanted to get involved in the project. Outside of Liam Harkins in the lead role, we have Stephen McMillan as our co-lead who was recently BAFTA nominated for The Lesson (and a lead in the number 1 show on Netflix earlier this year, Toxic Town), Kathleen McDermott (Morvern Callar), Conor McCarron (BAFTA nominated for Neds, Dog Days), and Rian Gordon (Mayflies, Get Duked!) among many others.
THE CAMPAIGN
We are incredibly fortunate to begin our Crowdfunder campaign with the backing of Creative Scotland. What this means is that every donation we receive up to £250 will be matched by Creative Scotland: if you donate £100 for example, we will receive another £100 from them. That is absolutely massive for us in being able to reach our goal.
We do however need to raise the entire funding amount for our campaign, or the Creative Scotland match funding will not be unlocked. So please help us in any way you can to reach our goal, whether you donate or share the campaign far and wide.
This is a specifically Scottish film about a universal theme, and we would love for you to help us in bringing this movie to life.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 29th July 2025 at 9:13pm