A DALE actor has launched an online fundraising appeal in an effort to finance her debut film.
Phoebe Lorenz, from Barnard Castle, is hoping to raise £10,000 to bring I'm Still Ethan to the silver screen.
With times hard for all involved in the arts sector, Ms Lorenz decided to follow advice she was given at drama school and make her own work. When a planned trip to Germany proved impossible due to the Covid-19 alert, she sat down to write the script and plan its production at the start of lockdown.
“I’m Still Ethan follows the lives of a young boy and his mum Steph after his father is sent to prison,” said Ms Lorenz. “It follows their journey navigating their new life when their support network is gone and Ethan has lost his dad, how the local community perceives them and how they become outsiders.”
She said she was making the film as a “proof of concept” to show people what she can do as both an actor and writer – and to see if there was interest in developing it into a full length feature. The film will be directed by Oliver William Smith who, like Ms Lorenz, is well known in the dale for his work with the Castle Players.
It is being developed in partnership Freida Films, with a production house in London, and the cinematographer is James Alexander.
Ms Lorenz will take the part of Steph and though not yet cast, she said she had somebody in mind to play Ethan.
All that is required to get the project off the ground is the finance.
She has received a grant from Barnard Castle Rotary Club to kick things off and the Crowdfunder appeal runs until the middle of October.
“The £10,000 is the minimum we could work with. We want everybody to get paid a wage they deserve for their job – I wanted to avoid mate’s rates and freebies.
“If I can create income for fellow professionals, that's a good thing,” she said.
Ms Lorenz graduated from London’s Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in 2018, staying on in the capital as an usher at the Queen's Theatre (now the Sondheim) while continuing efforts to further her acting career before heading back north.
“I was planning to go to Germany to market myself as an actor over there, but when that was not going to happen I decided this was the time for me to start writing,” she said.
“I reached out to Oli and James and they wanted to get on board and the production house approached me, read the script and wanted to take it on board.”
Once the film is completed, Ms Lorenz said she planned to enter it into festivals and aimed to find a distributor to bring it to as wide an audience as possible. To support Ms Lorenz’s appeal, visit https://bit.ly/3iPr0zx
For more information about the project, email phoebelorenz@outlook.com.
