Students from the School of Digital Arts (SODA) have collaborated with over 40 cast and crew to create new horror film, The Silent State.

The Silent State saw students from Filmmaking, Music & Sound Design, Future Media Production and UX Design work together with other Manchester Met courses as well as external cast members to create this new original which will be showcased at the Manchester School of Art Degree Show 2025 opening on June 5th with a private view.

Following a successful public crowdfunding, The Silent State team was given the green light to go ahead. The process allowed students to get a taste for Filmmaking in a real life, professional environment as they had to write, direct, produce, shoot, edit and market the film entirely by themselves. The result is a short horror film that will be screened at the Degree Show.

Writer and Director, Rhys Millington explained that it was a hugely rewarding but daunting process: “As a director, I hadn’t actually had the opportunity to work with like proper actors before this. So, getting the ability to sit down with experienced actors and collaborate was a great experience. It was very daunting at first because I was working with people who’ve been on loads of other film sets and who’ve been working with directors for a very long time but I put that thought to the back of my head and did what I needed to to get the best performance out of them that I could”.

He also added that were many unexpected issues that arose: “We encountered a lot of problems that we didn’t think of going in. For example, the batteries we were using were dying really quickly. There’d be a shot where we’d be having external lighting into a big hall and then we’d be in the middle of a take and then all of a sudden two of the lights would die!”.

Another vital part of the process was refining the script, making sure that the vision of Rhys Millington was being accurately brought to life and portraying the characters in the intended manor. Co-Writer and Script Supervisor, Dylan McNaught played a big role in this, working closely with Rhys to edit his initial script. Dylan said: “It was a really good script initially. You could have not had me and it would still have been a great film but I saw a lot of potential in it which could be explored further. A big thing that me and Rhys talked a lot about was character, specifically the main character. We wanted to make her less a victim of circumstance and more of a fully fledged protagonist. So when I was going through the script, I was really thinking about her and her actions and her motivations and trying to give her more of the onus in the plot”.

One of the standout features of The Silent State and its filmmaking process was the amount of cast and crew who collaborated on the project. Lead Producer Halle Parker commented on this: “Working with a lot of different Manchester-based creatives was a really fun experience. I think the beauty of the Silent State is we weren’t just working within our degree. We were really trying to expand outwards so worked with people studying Music and Sound Design, with Creative Writing and English Lit students, with people from UX design and graphics and Future Media Production; so many different people from different courses. I think that’s the beauty of it because the whole thing about filmmaking is collaborating with as many people as possible. I think we were able to successfully do that. We were bringing on people with a wide variety of experience and had up to 50 people at some points including four people working on sound which is unheard of for a student film. Organizing that was a logistical nightmare sometimes but it was worth it“.

Although the logistics may have been complicated, it is this ensemble crew that allows for the film to have so much finessed detail. Sound Designer Chris Gray from Music and Sound Design said: “For me, the sound in this film is so interesting because its a horror and needed some quite gory sounds creating. The foley sessions that we were doing with like all my sound team were amazing. We were able to capture some really gory and unique sounds. I’m on the Music and Sound Design course and most of my collaboration normally takes place in little studios so coming over to a massive film set with 50 people was so fun for me and I learned so much from the project”.

This collaboration also allowed those less experienced to learn a great ideal from their fellow students, namely first-year student Izzy Hambury. Talking on the experience, she said: “On the first day I was petrified because I’d never been on a film set but it was so good because I learned things that I hadn’t learned in my course yet. Obviously, in first year everyone else is learning so you’re all kind of on the same level of experience but working alongside people who had been studying for three years meant I learned so much from them. It meant I could really trust everyone I was working with which allowed me to focus on doing the best I could. It helped me gain some confidence which I then took back to my own year. When I started working on a first year project after working on this I felt like I could contribute loads because of everything I’d learned working on this film. It made me feel loads more professional”.

Be sure to visit Degree Show 2025 from June 7-20 to see The Silent State alongside many other student films from SODA as well as work from across the Manchester School of Art.

The Silent State crew:

Writer/Director – Rhys Millington

Lead Producer/Location Manager – Halle Parker

Lead Producer – William McLauchlan

Assistant Director – William Stogden

2nd Assistant Director – Izzy Hambury

D.O.P Caitlin Fenton

1st AC/Camera OP/Grip – Rhys Gannon

1st AC – Elliot Hicks

1st AC Daily – Linus Daykin-Ayres

2nd AC – Xavi Hodgson-Bussy

Co-Writer/ Script Supervisor – Dylan McNaught

Sound Designer – Chris Gray

Sound Recordist 1 – Jack Wilson

Sound Recordist 2 – Aaron Leadbeater

Sound Recordist 3 – Ben Moore

Score Composer – Veronica Manuel

Editor – Jamie Daniel

SFX/Green Screen – Leah Campbell

Unreal Engine- Joe Sammons

Gaffer – Callum Bentley

Spark – Alex Fellowes

Lead Lighting Technician – Jacob Williams

Lead Graphics/BTS Photography- Saffron Bowen

BTS Photography/Videography – Xavi Hodgson-Bussy

BTS Videography – Dillon McNamara

Production Design/Costume – Hope Smith

Production Design/Assistant 1 – Saffron Bowen

Production Design Assistant 2 – Jessica Azoulay

Production Design Assistant 3 – Bethan Porter

Production Design Assistant 4 – Elwyn Jones

Puppet Technician – Ronan Phillips

SFX/Lead Makeup Artist – Emily Morgan

Makeup Artist – Aisling Beegan

Runner – Harry Pollock