The 25th Anniversary edition of Leeds Young Film Festival has successfully concluded, celebrating the engagement of over 3,500 participants who enjoyed a diverse showcase of family-friendly films from various countries, cultures, and genres. We are especially proud of the achievements of our returning Movie Club, now in its second year and want to celebrate all the participants and the wonderful work they did.
This year we were joined by lots of children from in and around Leeds for a hands-on adventure through the entire filmmaking process, in partnership with Screen Yorkshire and our team of filmmaking professionals; Movie Club also included a film screening from our programme of family-friendly films to help spark the imagination of our new filmmakers.
For the creative workshops, zombies stormed the LYFF film studio and the Movie Club kids had to make a news report to inform the public about the catastrophe! They needed to set the scene, create mood boards, then get on set with cameras, lights, microphones and a green screen before editing and adding effects to the film.
Mood Boards
We started the Movie Club sessions by making mood boards - something used in film preproduction to visualise how the film is going to look. From the colour palette to the overall tones of the film, participants cut up old magazines, books and newspapers to create their mood boards which portrayed their ideas and plans for the zombie themed movies.
Filming
Now that we knew what we wanted the films to look like, it was time to start shooting. The participants of Movie Club arranged themselves into crew members and actors, each with an important role, such as lighting, sound, camera, and actors for the news anchor and of course, the zombies!
Editing
Once the films were filmed, it was time to edit them. This included cutting the clips together, and putting the fun backgrounds onto the green screen footage.
We had so much fun at Movie Club this year and were dazzled by the talent, enthusiasm and imaginations from all the young people who participated and the end results. We really hope our Movie Club members come back next year to learn even more filmmaking skills and watch some fantastic films. Here's a big thank you to everyone who took part including the amazing film practioners from Screen Yorkshire.
If you are interested in taking part in Movie Club when we return next year for LYFF 2025, you can sign up for our mailing list to receive an update when we have more news about next year's festival.