A team of students from the School of Digital Arts (SODA) have collaborated to create a unique short film ‘Under The Rug’ for their third-year final projects.
The film tells the story of a lonely widower whose quiet routine takes a bizarre turn when severed body parts start mysterously appearing in his home. The film centres around themes of loneliness and human connection, blending disturbing surreal elements with a surprisingly touching narrative.
Writer and Director, Tallulah Green, commented: “I aimed to tell a complex story of loneliness and companionship, I wanted to use surreal themes and subject matter to discuss the difficult topic of loneliness, particularly in older people”.
Producer, Eliza Peterson, added: “For short films, it’s really important to keep people’s attention with something a bit different and memorable. At its heart, Under the Rug is about loneliness; it’s a story about people seeking human connection – which I’m sure is something a lot of people can relate to. However, by using a blend of horror and comedy conventions, and by constructing these strange metaphors of body parts and monsters, we’re able explore these themes in a really unique way”.
A key factor in providing this distrubiting surrealism and one of the most-eye striking features of the film is the stunning prosethics and make up. The collabroative process of designing, testing and implimenting these practical effects lasted four-months and required a lot of input from other people around the project.
Speaking on this process, Eliza Peterson said: “It was definitely a very collaborative process. Despite the fact that we had a very limited budget, people seemed to get really genuinely excited when we described the concept to them. This meant that we were able to work with lots of different people with different specialisms – makeup artists, composers, prop designers and illustrators“.
“The director had sketched up some initial ideas, then it was about working with the makeup artists to translate these into something that would actually be practically possible with the resources we had available. We spent around four months designing, refining and testing the makeup looks. Everything was very busy and chaotic on the day we shot the monster scene, the make-up artists only had about two hours to complete the design so it was helpful having already planned out the process”.
The film was created as the students’ final project for the Manchester School of Art Degree Show and was shown in SODA as part of the showcase alongside other final-year films. Eliza Peterson commented on how the team developed over the course of the filmmaking process and the feeling of seeing the public react to the final film: “We definitely grew a lot as filmmakers during the process. The whole shoot was pretty ambitious with all the costumes, props and makeup – plus, we were limited for time and filming in a really confined space. There was a lot of trial and error to make things work, but my main takeaway was just being resilient with it and communicating well as a team.
“It’s definitely a bit scary showing the film to a wider audience. After spending so much time working so closely on it, it’s hard to judge how people are going to react. When I first read the script I was really excited by how unexpected the narrative is, you think you know where it’s going and then it surprises you – I hope people have the same reaction when watching it”.
View the work of SODA students from the 2025 Degree Show via the digital showcase.
