"They killed June at Blue Sky Harbour, and now they’re coming for me."

Early last year, Scott Hurley brought together a group of people from Department of Theatre, Film, and Television at the University of York to make a short film entitled Soren. We’re incredibly proud of what we ended up producing, but this summer we want to make something even better.

The Story

Tess, a young and talented computer programmer, is recruited to join a network of anti-corporate hacktivists by the enigmatic Ryan Kavanaugh. But when she uncovers a violent conspiracy with Ryan at its heart, Tess is forced to flee for her life - pursued by her former mentor, a man above the law who will stop at nothing to protect his secrets.

Why we need your help

We’ve already got an incredibly talented team ready and willing to make the film, we just need your help to take it to the next level. While creativity, technical know-how, and the will to put in hours and hours of work are essential to making a great film, there are a number of elements that bring it up to a higher standard, which we simply can’t get without money. Detailed props, better costumes, and more adventurous locations would help us stay true to our ambitious vision and produce a film even better than anything we have created before, but to do this we need your support.

The Team

“Picnic is made up of a group of students from the University of York, most of whom are second years from the Department of Theatre, Film, and Television. They like making films. They want to make better films. They'd like you to want to help them make the best films they can, unfettered by the usual constraints of time and money. They also enjoy discussing themselves in the third person. You'd like them, they're sure.”

– Jack Wallis, Picnic member

Where will the money go?

If we hit our full target we will be able to: make our film look much better by giving our production designers more money to work on set design, costumes, and props; go to more adventurous locations; and allow us to promote it through film festivals to gain exposure.

Exceeding our goal could mean being able to bring on a make-up artist, hiring a van to take cast and crew to better locations, submitting the film to high-profile festivals, purchasing back-up drives specially for the film, and perhaps even buying equipment that would not only support Blue Sky Harbour, but also help Picnic make even better films in the future.

Any amount of money that we can raise would be fantastic, but a rough breakdown of our budget if we were to reach our funding goal (with some money from members of Picnic) would be as follows:

Set design, props, costumes: £200

Catering: £100 (in order to secure a large number of supporting artists for a scene, we will be offering them dinner)

Transport: £30

Publicity/rewards: £80
Expendables (pens, gaffer tape, etc): £20

Rewards

We’ve got some brilliant rewards for everyone who donates, so be sure to check those out in the side bar! Absolutely any amount – however big or small – would be greatly appreciated by all of us, so please donate as much or as little as you can.

If you can’t afford to donate but would still like to help us out, you can do so by sharing this page on social media and with friends, to try and get as many people to find it as possible. There’s no physical reward for this, but you will be sure to earn our eternal gratitude!