How to say hello

HOW TO SAY HELLO tells the short story of twenty year old Olivia, who after suffering a head trauma in Amsterdam whilst on holiday, wakes up to discover she has become the victim of a rare affliction called Aphasia. Specifically, she has the form of Aphasia whereby she has not only lost her speech function and understanding of her native language, English, but also that she has picked up an almost fluent understanding of the last language she heard, Dutch. Olivia's struggle to come to terms with the condition is felt just as strongly through her single father, Trevor. She comes to realise that there is no need for conversation when communicating with Trevor.

With your help, £400 pounds will ensure that telling this story for our short graduation film can be made possible, covering flight and accommodation costs for actors in Amsterdam. By reaching our goal, we can explore abstract ways in which we aim to recreate this peculiar condition and allow the audience to experience aphasia alongside Olivia.

The crew

We have gathered a group of talented and hard working individuals to complete our undergraduate final project. Co-directed by Charlotte Davies and Lillian de la Rie, who having already directed alongside each other in the past, have found a good collaborative working method when combining each others differing skills. Written by Caleb McGrath, who has turned initial online research of a few personal experiences with this form of aphasia, into a captivating and heart warming short story.

OUR story

After coming across this rarely told form of Aphasia, we as filmmakers saw an opportunity to create something that could be visually stunning, whilst telling a unique story. With a social realistic and comedic undertone, we will play around with cinematography and sound design in order to recreate Olivia's experiences in a heavily stylised way, as shown in our inspiration-reel.

What are you doing and why?

• Writing HOW TO SAY HELLO has been a challenge to write due to the peculiarity of the subject and we are proud to present a finished piece that not only educates but can also move its audience. Therefor the strive to do this script justice and bringing it to life is incredibly important to us as a group.
• As this is our final film at Kingston University, each crew member is fully devoted to putting their all into the project in order to enter the film industry as confidently as we can.
• By donating to our film, you are helping us create a beautiful and captivating short film, that we feel each individual could relate to.

Where will the money go?

• If we were to raise our minimum, we could earn back half of the travel and accommodation costs for the actors to go to the Netherlands.
• If we were to reach our target, we can pay our talented actors a fair wage, as well as dress our sets as we envision them. We would be able to cover the costs for crew to travel to Amsterdam, and also hire out a desired camera of high quality.
• If we were to be so lucky as to raise beyond our target, we would pay our actors the wage we believe they deserve. We would also have the opportunity to hire out more advanced tech in order to achieve a better quality film, much like the movies we are inspired by.
• We will deliver updates every week.
• A breakdown of costs:
• Actor Travel and Accommodation costs (roughly): £400
• Crew travel costs: £1000
• Actor wage: £400
• Costume: £100
• Food expenses: £150
• Reward costs: £50
• Camera: £300
• Festival Submissions: £250

By helping us fund our film, you are allowing us to finally create the film we have been working towards for a long time, without putting us out of pocket. Extra funds would be fairly spread amongst the cast and crew.

Rewards

• Each contributor would be credited as an executive producer at the end of the credit roll.
• Contributors will receive updates every two weeks as well as a link to the final product.
• Contributors will also receive printed photographs of the crew at work on set.

The Crew

Crew Members unable to attend the photoshoot:

Eimear Keenan - Art Director

Find us here

Updates for our film are available on our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/HTSH.SF/posts/?ref=page_internal

Help us succeed

By sharing our project with all of your friends and family over social media, or any other platform, you can help us raise funds and make this thing happen! Any donation is worth while and brings us one step closer to creating what we think could turn into one hell of a great short film.