What is Ruling Class?

Ruling Class is a brand new family comedy web series. Through a host of eccentric power-hungry teenagers, even more absurd teachers, the next best rock band in the world, and an extra silver spoonful of utter chaos, Ruling Class pokes fun at the British elite. 

It's set in a mid-league British private school, St Olive's, which has decided to scrap the position of headteacher, and instead offer complete power to the head boy and head girl. The catch? The head boy and girl will be chosen by their fellow students in a hard fought parliamentary style election. 

The story follows prospective head boy Quentin, a self-proclaimed future rock star and political idealist. He'll attempt to outwit arch-nemesis Julian and his Year 8 secret police, in order to gain the votes of his fellow students, and win the heart of his true love (head girl nominee Emma). But "They who must not be named" (The Board of Governors) will do everything they can to stop him... 

What would you do if you ran the school?

Ban lessons, buy a herd of llamas, organise a teacher-student paintball match? Or would you just build a massive statue of yourself in the middle of the playground?

Featuring a team of aspiring film-making and acting talent from Cambridge University, as well as other young film-makers from around the UK, 'Ruling Class' is a high school comedy, with a political spin. Think School of Rock meets The West Wing.

We need your help to shoot a 1-hour pilot for the show, which will be broken down into 4 'webisodes', each of them 15 minutes long. If successful, we will then seek a commission to produce the full series, which will consist of 6 full length episodes.

What makes Ruling Class unique?

Young people are often left out of the political process. As they are not able to vote, they are often ignored by mainstream political parties. There is a real danger of a culture of political apathy. With a general election on the horizon, it is more important than ever that young people care about politics.

'Ruling Class' encourages this interest, and explores the themes of elitism and social mobility, without seeming preachy or dry. By situating political processes in a school environment and presenting them in an entertaining and satirical manner, Ruling Class will get young people interested in politics.

On top of that, there is a musical element to the show. Featuring music co-created with up-and-coming indie band Dirty Blonde, Ruling Class will rock harder than any other show on TV.  Can Quentin juggle his new political commitments with his love for music?

Dirty Blonde live.

It is the unique blend of music and politics that makes Ruling Class so distinctive. With your help, we can make Ruling Class a huge success and inspire and entertain young people all over the world.

Marika McKennell playing around with her character Flo.

Flo is a debating society prodigy - she only debates in rap She's tired of Melissa's traditional management of the society.

Why do we need your help?

As much of this as possible has been sourced from generous friends and contacts, meaning that we only need a minimum budget of £4500, which is very small for a project of this scale. Of this, we have already sourced £1300, from the Dryden Society and the O2 Think Big campaign. However, we really need your help to source the remaining £3200, which is essential for us to be able to shoot the project. 

Any donations will be put to good use. Some of the things that we still need in order to complete Ruling Class include:

• The remaining equipment required to shoot the pilot - In particular, we still need to buy video and audio storage. A project of this scale produces many terrabytes (TB) of data, and as such we need very large hard drives to be able to store and edit all of the data. Additionally, there are certain bits of key equipment that we need to rent, including a Dolly and specific lenses for the cameras.
• Transport for the cast and crew - We are lucky to have a team of passionate young creatives working on our show. However, some of them live all across the UK, and we need to be able to bring them down to London for the shoot.
• Insurance for the production - It is essential that a production of this scale has insurance, including Public Liability, Employer's Liability and Full Equipment Cover. In reality, the project will not be able to go ahead without this insurance being appropriately secured and in place.
• Costumes - We want to make the costumes of Ruling Class as vibrant as possible. Though most of the characters wear school uniforms, it is really important that we can highlight their varied characters through unique costume quirks such as satchels and accessories, you know, like trombones and capes.

• Props and Set Dressing- We are lucky enough to be able to shoot in an active school. This reduces the need to completely transform our locations. However, to truly make St Olive's come to life, we need to buy or rent a substantial number of key props. We probably won't get our llamas but it would be nice to be able to cut to the infamous paella food fight.
• Catering- Our cast and crew will reach nearly 40 on the biggest shooting days. This means that there will be a lot of hungry mouths to feed! The school have kindly allowed us to purchase school lunches (really helps to get in the spirit), but we still need to get the money together to pay for these.

All the cast and crew have generously offered to give their time unpaid. We are so close to being able to shoot now, and it would be crushing for the project to collapse at this late stage.  So please help us to make Ruling Class a reality.

What's in it for you?

It takes real trust to invest in an Indiegogo campaign. We really value your faith in our project and hope you see the potential in Ruling Class, and are as excited as we are to see it through to completion. 

To say thank you for all of your help, we have lined up a great set of perks for those who donate. These include a chance to have a character named after you in a future episode, a signed copy of the original script and even a VIP Premiere Experience at an historic Cambridge college.

However, what's really in it for you is the chance to see this great concept come to life. It's a compelling script, with a wide appeal that will simultaneously serve a crucial social purpose by engaging young people in political discourse.

Ana is Emma's spin doctor. Always has a camera around her neck. Loveable and very bright - she's a little more calculating than she let's on - and that's why Head Girl favourite, Emma, hired her.

She gets on well with wannabe rockstar Quentin - as he's more than happy to stop and pose for her.

Patricia Vlad starts experimenting with her character Ana - trying out her Italian accent and fun, flirty personality.

Risks & Challenges

This is an extremely ambitious project, and as such there are plenty of challenges that we have faced so far and will continue to face, all the way through the production process and even going into post production. Given that you are being so generous in your help, we think that it is only fair that we let you know about some of these risks:

• Weather- We will be shooting many scenes outside, and in the UK you can never be sure that it's not going to rain! However, we have many contingency plans in place, with B and C plans including alternative inside locations for many key scenes, and a schedule that is flexible enough to allow us to accommodate any unexpected weather changes.
• Cast and crew co-ordination - We have an enormous cast and crew (nearly 40 core members, not including extras), and this makes the shoot a real challenge to organise. However, we are being as organised as possible, and are currently drafting full call sheets for the production. Further, we have a lot of faith in our team, and they are all hugely committed to the project.
• Creative challenges - we have a lot of characters to bring to life in unique ways on screen, lots of visual gags to pull off and some funky cinematography with lots of moving camera on dollies, steady cams and drones planned. To make this work, we've been planning the shoot for a good six months now to know it inside out before we even press record for the first time.
• Location Difficulties- We are extremely lucky to have the support of Ibstock Place School in Roehampton, which we will be using as our main location. However, shooting in a fully functioning school brings with it its own set of difficulties, such as working around the busy timetables of the staff and students. Fortunately the Ibstock staff are being so helpful that we are confident we can sort out any issues that may arise. 

How else can I help?

Thanks for taking the time to read about our project. We hope that you are as excited about Ruling Class as we are. If you want to help us out, but don't feel you can make a donation at this time, it would be great if you could spread the word. So please do share this Indiegogo page with your friends and family, and don't forget to like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter! 

Thank you so much for helping us make Ruling Class a success!