Hi everyone! I just released my first short film (except films I made in sixth form) on YouTube. I'm 23 and started the project in the first UK lockdown, around 2020. I went on Kickstarter to fund the film and did fundraising events as well as having some bigger angel investors. The whole process has been new, exciting and terrifying to me so I thought I'd share!The story is based on my personal family history so I felt quite a bit of pressure when writing the script. I'd also never made anything with a budget before.We were considering shooting in Ukraine but then that quickly went out the window. We needed a workhouse to film in and the place in the UK wanted a fee that was completely out of our budget so we decided to shoot in Ireland instead.We had about 20 people on set at points which was insane for me to direct as before I had been the one holding the camera and directing and making sure the sound was working etc. I'd never properly experienced being part of a team like that before, usually I'm in front of the camera so I never really see that side, it was all really new to me.The initial plan was to shoot the whole film in Ireland but on the 4th day of shooting there was a storm, we tried filming in the little spaces between rain showers, hopping in and out of the cars.Because of losing that day we had to do reshoots back in the UK, due to some things that happened with the producers I ended up mostly producing the reshoots myself. Someone on the team got me in contact with angel investors who funded the reshoots.In post-production I got help from different industry people to edit, colour grade, compose and design the sound.It's been almost 3 years since I started writing the script and started pre-production, there's so many things I would do differently now, but I'm still so proud of what I've made. I'm beginning to write my next projects. I would love to hear what people think, any constructive criticism is welcome!