Welcome to the official Summer Heat crowdfunder. Summer Heat is a coming of age love story about a young girl named Lei as she experiences true love for the first time. Our short film explores the different types of love, and how impactful relationships can be on a growing teenager. 

We invite you to join us on Lei's passionate journey, as we explore the Summer Heat universe. We hope to provide you with a fresh take on the traditional LGBTQ narrative, and further offer to you a positive and uplifting short film. Our crowdfunder is aimed primarily at our short film. However, our creative team aims to further immerse you in our universe by offering to you two unique incentives, including: a short story about Lei's friend Richie, alongside an audio drama about Lei's mother. 

Through this campaign you can support the production of this short film, Backers of the various tiers can also obtain physical merchandise from signed posters to Summer Heat official branded mugs. 

We couldn't be more determined and enthusiastic about this project. As this project represents our collective efforts and experiences spanning the last three years at Southampton Solent University. Where this film will make its debut as our Final Major Project. This film however means a lot more to us than any one assignment, as we have all been working hard together for years with the sole purpose of making a meaningful short film.

With hardwork and a positive mindset we aim to make Summer Heat our best production yet. Feel free to check out our socials for the latest updates!

Summer Heat is a coming of age romance which explores a mother and daughter love story, a friendship and first experiences. It is a story that presents a moment in time, a snippet of a day in the life of a teenage girl. When in your teens, sometimes the small events in your life can feel so big in the moment and this is what we want to communicate with this film.

Ariana’s passion for directing began during her media and theatre studies at Ringwood Sixth Form. From there Ariana advanced her craft in directing, screenwriting and cinematography, all whilst progressing through her degree. Ariana is now on her final year at Southampton Solent University and is passionate about her stories, aiming to tell them to a broader audience.

Lawrence started off his production career online working as a Bioware Influencer for EA’s Star Wars the Old Republic where for three years Lawrence produced and edited content for the Bioware Community. Later on Lawrence attended Southampton Solent University to diversify his skills as a filmmaker. Going on to produce numerous short films, promos and other media for Solent Productions, Cellver Studios, Scriptworks and Skynight Productions. Lawrence is now entering the final year of his degree, pursuing his career of becoming a feature film producer.

Josh took part in the BFI Film Academy creating a short film, learning about the process. From there on he has continued as a freelancer and has worked on many film sets as a Cinematographer. Josh is now in his final year of University, where he has advanced within his craft. His approach to cinematography is focused on narrative dramas with real stories where audiences can relate, and using light to create a realistic feeling image - inspired by Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubeski. He aims to pursue a career as a Director of Photography in the Film and Media Industry.

Jacobs' career in production started at age 14 where he edited videos of him and his friends together for the internet. Ever since then it progressed into music production and furthermore into a film production degree. Taking part on multiple sets of music videos, directing ,editing and designing narrative themes within these videos. These core sets of experiences evolved his costume development and environment manipulation skills. Today Jacob is in his final year of film production looking to be a part of even more complex and driven narrative productions.

Jakub’s passion for sound and sound design has developed during his studies at Southampton Solent University, after previous interest in post-production. Since then, he has been working as a sound recordist/designer on the majority of his University projects. Now, in his final year of the film production degree, he is looking to expand his sound portfolio, by working on even more sophisticated and demanding projects. 

The primary risk to our production is the ongoing pandemic crisis. But with help from our professors at Southampton Solent University and other collaborators, we aim to take every precaution necessary in overcome this production barrier. We further aim to follow government protocols, and further minimise the covid threat. As a team we are deteminded to produce our short film in as safe an environment possible. 

As for challenges. We will also be attempting to film on location, again following government regulations. This may prove a hurdle if rules change during the production process. Meaning our production team will need to be vigilant and flexible when it comes to filming our short film. 

If you are unable to financial contribute to our project we completely understand. There are still many other ways you can support our final year project. Any and all support is greatly appreciated:

• You can follow us and engage with our social media accounts.
• Spread the word and tell your friends and family about our project
• Share and distribute our campaign, it helps us out greatly. 

Thank you all so much for taking a look at our crowdfunding page! We hope you enjoyed this insightful look at our short film and we look forward to sharing more with you in future.