A SPECIAL short film competition has been launched inviting residents across Darlington to share their ‘Stay at Home Stories’.

Creative Darlington and Undivided Pictures are looking for short films featuring ‘Lockdown’ as the theme to enter the competition, which offers a prize of £100 worth of vouchers to Darlington Hippodrome for the winner.

So if you’ve ever fancied making a short film or are looking to find a fun way to keep your family entertained, this could be a very good opportunity.

As long as you stick to government guidelines, you can be as creative as you want. Creative Darlington and Undivided want to see a mixture of drama, comedy, dance, song or anything that you think will be entertaining.

The competition has been created by Susie Potter and Dalton Deverell, of Undivided Pictures, whose creative roots both started in Darlington.

Dalton and Susie said: “We think now is the perfect time for people to flex their creative muscles and we’re excited to see the entries.

“Short films can make a welcome break to your everyday and we’re hoping people enjoy the experience of creating the content.”

Councillor Andy Keir, Darlington Borough Council’s cabinet member for local services, said: “Stay at Home Stories is a great chance to have some fun with filmmaking and to enter a fantastic competition.

"A selection of five films will be put to a public vote in June and the winner will receive a great prize.

“Fantastic films can be created on phones and tablets nowadays and we’re not expecting big budget productions.

“We hope people living or working in Darlington will be keen to share their own ideas, talent and enthusiasm and I’m sure we’ll see some fabulous films made safely at home.”

The competition is open to anyone who lives or works within the borough of Darlington, but all films must be under four minutes and include no more than four characters. The competition opened yesterday and it is open until noon on Friday 22 May to submit entries.

The films can be shot on a phone or laptop using one of the group apps like Zoom. They are looking for zero budget masterpieces so check with whoever pays the bill if you’re using someone else account.

Creative Darlington and Undivided are also offering post production editing to help spruce up any short films that are entered.

They also recommend using WeTransfer as it’s free and you can send bigger files.

A panel of judges will whittle the entries down to the top five, which will then go to a public vote online to choose the winner.

Questions and entries are to be sent to darlingtonshortfilmcomp@gmail.com.

More details can be found at www.creativedarlington.org.uk/stay-at-home-stories.