Welcome Home - Student Short Film On Homelessness

We are a group of film students at Messiah College who wanted to use our senior film project to bring a problem to the forefront. With that in mind, our film settled on homelessness. The basic plot follows a teenage girl who left home at an earlier time. We follow her as she fights through the harsh realities that homelessness presents ranging from the struggle for food to finding a place to lay her head. Also, throughout the film we will see flashbacks of her homelife which involves her hiding her personal issues from her family because of her incorrect embarrassment that comes with such problems. The end goal of the project is to raise awareness to a concern that continues to be prevalent in this country and tell a compelling story.

With the funding, we would use it towards a higher quality of asthetics (make up, props, etc) to make the portrayal as realistic as possible. Also, films require many crew members who need to eat. The majority of the funds will go to these areas, as well as minor purchases. Luckily, we do not need to rent gear since we are students.

We will start filming before all the funds are gathered, but we will be paying out of pocket. Since we are in school, filming will primarily be taking place on the weekends throughout our Fall semester. However, specific dates are hard to narrow down due to our sparatic schedules. Luckily, we have until the end of the semester to finish filming and then the rest of our school year to have a final product.

In the end, we hope to submit to film festivals to further raise awareness. 

As stated before, we recognized that homelessness is an epidemic that not many people talk about. Just look around any major city. Streets are lined with those without homes due to problems that affected them at an earlier time. Our film wants to show these realities and not take the family approach. These creative choices are necessary to show what homeless people actually go through. Also, we are not going to ignore the side problems that can come with homelessness, such as substance abuse. The end goal is to encourage people to take action and make a difference. Homelessness can no longer be ignored, and we want to start that change.

Please view the following links to see some of our personal work:

https://www.michaelbowlin.net

https://www.instagram.com/zac_stephan/

https://www.laurahill.weebly.com