Film In A Year 

Over Easter, the FILM IN A YEAR project completed its production phase. FILM IN A YEAR was a project devised and launched at the end of last year by Finham Park’s Film and Media Department to create a film using students and their skills from every department in the school. This collaborative project was designed to show the range of different careers and skills in the film industry. 

Over the course of the term, almost 100 students worked with professional mentors across the Locations and Logistics Dept, Legal Dept, Writing Dept, Catering and Music to get everything ready for our Easter shoot. The Camera and Lighting crew attended workshops and rehearsals led by professional filmmaker Jack Brazil to learn how to use the professional camera equipment we had borrowed, and the cast rehearsed in preparation for shooting. A huge shout-out should go to the Art Dept who, with a team of almost 50 different students, created designs for the set, costumes and props, and then proceeded to create and acquire well over 200 different props for the shoot. We should also mention Ms Watson’s outstanding leadership of the Marketing and Business Dept, whose efforts raised over £5000 to enable the project to take place. This incredible organisational feat of co-ordination was led by Beth Armstrong, who deserves particular praise in her role as Producer for co-ordinating the work of all these departments. 

Over the first week of the Easter holidays, 40 students and Staff supervisors worked tirelessly to shoot the footage in different locations across Coventry, filming almost 1TB of footage across well over 100 storyboarded shots. The way the different teams on set worked together was exemplary. The professional producers who were advising us said they’d not seen such a professional attitude from a whole team even on professional sets! 

Now that the filming is done, The Sound Department will be composing and recording scores, while the Post-Production team edit the footage and produce the final cut, ready for its premiere at Warwick Arts Centre on Saturday 11th July. All students who have played a part in the project will be invited to the Premiere to celebrate the hard work everyone has put in and the incredible achievements of the project, before we send the film off to the Film Festival circuit. A behind-the-scenes documentary of the making of the film will also be shown during the screening.  

CovCreative Film Festival 2026: 

At the end of the summer term, we will also celebrate the massive creative talent of the filmmakers within the department, from Year 7 all the way through to Year 13. Guests from the industry will be judging their work across a variety of categories, and I have no doubt that many of the students will be advised to enter their work in national film competitions, just as George in Year 10 has done this year, with his stop-motion account of the Battle of Brest picking up a nomination for Into Film’s “Film of the Year” Award, to be presented in June at the BFI in London: Many congratulations! 

You can read the article about his film and watch it in full here: https://www.intofilm.org/news-and-views/articles/fotm-the-siege-of-brest-fortress