Budding movie stars at Macquarie College, Wallsend have created a musical film about high school students "doing what they can do to connect" during lockdown.
"It was very similar to real life. A lot of it was set in online school classes so it replicated the students' moods and you could see us getting tired of lockdown," Mia Trigg who plays the lead role of Jessica in the film said.
The film Disconnected stars a variety of students from years nine through twelve. Not being able to do a live performance in 2020-21 the school decided to create a film in the form of a "jukebox musical".
"That means the students and teachers worked together to write the script but we use already popular songs like I Want to Break Free by Queen and Shake it Off byTaylor Swift," Mia said.
Recording of all twelve songs was done at the school along with the rest of the filming. Mia said one single-bedroom set was transformed into the rooms of eight different characters throughout the film.
"It was genuinely heaps of fun. We had so much choice about the set, what our character's room looked like and giving the characters a sense of our own personality," she said.
"The characters fit some high school stereotypes and in a large part were just these massive exaggerations of our own personalities."
The movie was originally planned to be filmed over a week in August Mia said, but lockdown got in the way.
"We got 4 days in and Gladys [Berejiklian] announced a snap lockdown. We left the set as it was, thinking we would only be in a short lockdown, then didn't return for about twelve weeks," she said.
"Everyone's hair was longer when we came back and there's definitely a few inconsistencies on set."
Mia, who was in year eleven this year, said being part of the Creative and Performing Arts department was difficult.
"We usually rely on live performance and bouncing off each other's energy which made lockdown hard to get through. We've had to cancel about 10 different live performances."
The film was shot and edited by ex Macquarie College student Elliot Swift and will be showing 7pm this Wednesday November 24 at Event Cinemas Glendale.
While she's not as nervous as she would be before a live performance, Mia Trigg said the screen size is "a bit off putting".
"I went into the movie theatre the other day and realised my face is going to be huge on the screen."
