A Flight of Fancy - 16mm short film (Stage 2)

Roll Up! Roll Up!

Campdale Motion is producing its most exciting film yet, 'A Flight of Fancy'. Following on from our previous production, 'The Holy Yield' which premiered on June 3rd at Regent Street Cinema, we are aiming to make a more ambitious short film which we hope will both be an amazing opportunity to learn and hone our craft, and a great cinematic experience!

Plot Summary

'A Flight of Fancy' is a short film about a long-distance relationship in the early 1950s. The protagonist is an RAF officer, Clive Goodge, who plays the Theremin to his wife over the radio in order to deal with the melancholy of being stationed on a remote base on the Shetland Islands during the Cold War. Little do they know that their communications are attracting suspicions and strange visitors.

What We Need

For 'A Flight of Fancy', we are hoping to produce a more ambitious short film. Our story revolves around loneliness and isolation. Our aim is to shoot on the Shetland Islands, or somewhere with an equally magnificent landscape, in the hope of capturing its sublimely and sparse natural beauty, a perfect backdrop for the film's themes.

With our previous production, 'The Holy Yield', we managed to do a lot with very little. In the last four years, we have produced several low-budget short films as part of the UCL Film & TV Society, as well as independently. That experience, together with what we learnt from 'The Holy Yield', has allowed us to optimise our productions and balance our investment in the right departments.

Since we are hoping to shoot on 16mm Kodak film, this means that we need to skilfully balance between the technical investment, like film stock and camera equipment, as well as the artistic investment, such as the talent, production design, and locations.

With what we raise from this crowdfunding campaign, we hope to cover the film's artistic investment, which we expect to be the most expensive part of the production, given the period nature of our project.

This includes:

What You'll Get

In return for your support, you will get at least one of the following:

Our current production dates are set for the first weeks of September. Any changes to the schedule will be reported on this page.

Audience Impact

Genre

Flight of Fancy is one of those rarest of delights, a musical sci-fi film. And not just any music either. The melancholic swooning of the theremin shall play an integral part in both the plot and the mood of the film, as the instrument is played by none other than Clive, the main character. Using our specially composed score we will be training the actor playing Clive to play the Theremin and look good doing so! The theremin is the perfect instrument for our sci-fi with its technological nature, producing music via direct control over wavelength. We also think the originality of this concept will be pretty exciting on screen.

Non-violent Heroes

We want to represent non-violent heroes within the military and praise the important contribution of its many bureaucratic workers. Our protagonist Clive is a Flight Lieutenant who has been deemed “unfit to fly” and so he finds himself working as a clerk. The film emphasises the sensitivity to music through the beauty of his theremin playing and serves to invert the traditional glorification of military violence in favour of a more peaceful masculine figure.

Loneliness

Our story is also a unique lens into the issue of loneliness. The story imagines a couple forced a part, and so must live their life almost exclusive from each other. This has broad appeal. It requires at least one of the following things: (a) to have experienced loneliness. (B) to have either been in love or want to have been. We feel either of these experiences are universal and so reflect a wide-audience appeal. Given the recent pandemic, the intensity and challenge of the type of loneliness presented in our film will resonate with an audience, and we want those who still have this recent memory steeped in their imagination to be impacted by our story.

Why shoot on film?

For the last three years, we have been working with 16mm and particularly old cameras, such as the Bolex H16, manufactured in 1954, and the Arriflex 16BL, manufactured in 1965, with which we shot our latest project. Even though these are incredibly old cameras, the pictures we got from them were beautiful. The combination of old glass with 16mm added a softness to the image that is not very common in the days of razor-sharp digital images. Film's vibrant colours and texture were also very appealing to us, especially its fantastic dynamic range when shooting outdoors with strong highlights.

Kodak's support during the last few years has greatly helped us understand how film works and has solidified our reasons for choosing to work with this medium. Reasons that are partly technical and partly romantic, but if we can't have a touch of romanticism in the arts, where else are we going to have it?

Community Development

The film immerses its audience in the world of a post-war RAF base. We are looking to film at an airbase in either Scotland or, if the budget allows it, further north, in the Shetland Islands. The base captures three important things: The countries’ history and its involvement in WW2 and the natural beauty of British countryside. These two ideas will each in their own way contribute to our audience and really establish a sense of place and history.

The WW2 military base holds immense historical significance and often serves as a reminder of the region's role in global events. Its existence showcases our involvement in significant historical moments, reflecting its contribution to the war effort and highlighting the resilience and bravery of its people. We remember as children being told stories of the war and the sacrifices made and always being shocked at the sheer resilience of every-day people. Filming on a base and capturing the characters we want to create will hopefully reflect this.

The beauty of the North is not lost on anyone, with its picturesque landscapes. Although we haven’t grown up in the area we want to film in, location is an essential characteristic, establishing the loneliness and isolation of soldier's existence on these bases.

We also intend to use local crews and reach out to communities within the area of our filming location to see if there is any talent interested in supporting the film.

Risks & Challenges

We are aware that the goal of our crowdfunding campaign is not enough to fully finance our production. We will invest our own savings, as well as seek additional sources of funding, to produce our project in the most complete way. This may delay the production, but any changes to the schedule will be reported on this page.

Other Ways You Can Help