Make a Film in a Day is a dynamic one-day course that enriches teamwork, inspires creative thinking and challenges staff to work as a team as they race against the clock to produce a masterpiece!

The day begins with film-themed icebreakers (such as charades and ‘two truths, one lie’) before participants discuss films that have been made in a day. Our award-winning film tutors then offer a short introduction to camera, sound, screenwriting, storyboarding, planning, directing and editing, before the filmmaking begins.

A key element of the course is breaking down barriers and giving all participants an equal platform to voice their thoughts and ideas. Working in teams of four – arranged to combine staff who don’t regularly engage with each other or to mix home-based and office-based colleagues or balance junior with senior staff – each group is challenged to develop and write a short film together, based on the new knowledge they’ve acquired.

The film is informed by available costume and props, and by the age and gender of the actors attached to each film (we can provide professional actors or participants can be the stars of their own films). Planning and executing their shoot and edit, each participant will experience camera, sound, directing, and art and editor roles, fostering skills of negotiation, decision making and problem solving as they navigate each stage to a tight deadline, while ensuring a consistent aesthetic is maintained throughout their film.

The day culminates with each film being screened, and a discussion about the experience, skills and knowledge gained by individuals working as part of a team with a common aim.

Screen Education Edinburgh was founded as Pilton Video in 1981 to develop filmmaking in people living in deprived communities in North Edinburgh.

Edinburgh-wide from 1995, we rebranded as Screen Education Edinburgh in 2011, with novelist and screenwriter Irvine Welsh becoming our patron from 2014.

As a leading UK filmmaking education provider, our learning, training and production programmes develop skills, knowledge and opportunities for young people, adult learners, schools, communities and film talent. We support individuals along a pathway of development, increasing their confidence, wellbeing, attainment and film skills, as well as progressing learners to further and higher education, and into the Film and TV workplace.

Specialising in developing people from diverse backgrounds, people living with a disability and people living in poverty, we give access to film as an artform, and nurture new and undiscovered talent. Our programmes operate in Edinburgh and Southeast Scotland and UK-wide, through our British Film Institute funded academy programme and our lead role in moderating the Preparing to Work in the Film Industry qualification. Our strategic partnership with Screen Scotland sees us lead on teacher development through our design and delivery of the first General Teaching Council for Scotland filmmaking qualification, and we also lead on a Scotland-wide Film and TV skills vocational programme and qualification design.

Between January 2022 and January 2023, we recorded a 91% increase in learners’ film knowledge, an 84% increase in learners’ filmmaking skills and a 77% increase in learners’ confidence from course start to end, on all of our programmes aimed at developing children, young people and adults.