High Beams

WRITTEN & Directed by Flora Scott

produced by Diana Amado, Flora Scott and Charlotte Favre

In the early hours of the morning, two best friends must journey home from a party off the M25 amidst a visitation from the past which tests their limits and their friendship.

ABOUT THE FILM

HIGH BEAMS premiered online with Girls in Film and was a Semi-Finalist at our very own Kino London Short Film Festival. Online festival & screening highlights include Minute shorts, Somesuch Director’s showcase, and Filmfiles Emerging Filmmakers showcase. It also screened at The Photographers Gallery in July 2024 for the exhibition ‘Meditations on Love’ and was a special selection at Women winemakers Biennale.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Flora Scott is a photographer and director born, raised and based in Hackney, London. After picking up her dads old camera at the age of 16, Flora began capturing the lives of the people around her, exploring how family can be formed outside of the traditional sense of home.

Flora has exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery London, and been published in Women CineMakers Biennale 2024, Guap Mag, 6 FT Zine and online at I-D, Dazed and Vogue.

Flora is currently freelancing with the long terms of directing feature films.

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH FLORA

Welcome to our Short of the Week series. Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.

Thank you for having me and High Beams! This is my debut short film, finished in early 2024 with a debut performance from Connie Swift who plays Dani in the film and has never been on screen. My filmmaking background was birthed as an only child left to their own devices - watching countless films on my own. I came to understand early on what I loved about a film is its uniqueness, especially across drama, horror and sci-fi. Over time and after attending Ravensbourne’s Foundation diploma specialising in film and a BA at London College of Communication in Film Practice, making films became more tangible.

**Tell us about the genesis of High Beams. Where did the idea come from and how did you develop that idea into the short that's now made its way out into the world?**

High Beams is heavily inspired by experiences of my own as a young person in tandem with some of the things I was witness to in my friends’ lives - I wanted to write something that could speak from the point of view of a young woman grieving whilst also the friend on the other end trying their best to be there. It felt important to me to make both points of view feel felt. It also felt important for my first short to be grounded in my own experiences. The rave scene at the beginning is directly inspired by a squat rave we attended as 15/16 year olds off a motorway in Barnet.

**What were some of the main obstacles you experienced when making High Beams and how did you overcome them?**

My producer unfortunately fell ill (she is ok now!) a week prior to filming was to commence and as she was in Portugal, was unable to come back for shooting. As you can imagine, this made me panic slightly, but in the end we were still able to make things work. Instead for our two days of filmmaking we had two PM’s to save the day - Leyla and Alicia. Aside from that, typical filmmaking travails ensued - we got locked out of a van hired to transport kit, working with a horse for the first time (Ember the horse was very patient) and a super tight window to shoot. All in all I think we did pretty well aside from this!

Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences and some of the festival circuit highlights and/or online release.

At the moment, although it is now available to watch online at Minute Shorts and Girls In Film we are still submitting for more festivals. We were lucky enough to be a semi-finalist for this years Kino fest! I think our main challenge with this has been the price point of submissions, I’ve taken it as a learning curve to ensure for us to budget appropriately for festival fees for the next one! However, High Beams has screened at some wonderful places so far including The Photographers’ Gallery, for Somesuch’s new director showcase at the Curzon Shoreditch and with Filmfiles at their emerging directors showcase. As this is my first short, I’ve definitely had a welcomed lesson in making sure that the festival side of things is thought about from the inception of the film.

What advice or hacks would you give to other short filmmakers?

1. Stay true to your vision.

2. Collaboration is the root of a film

3. Look at art outside of cinema

4. Welcome the mistakes, they are inevitable and can lead to better creative solutions