‘Short Changed’ was the result of collaborating with Waverley Community Living Program (WCLP) to design and facilitate a ten session inclusive film making workshop series to produce a short film for the 2016 Focus on Ability Film Festival.

The aim of the inclusive workshops was to hand over the controls of the creative processes and production elements to the participants and guide people through the steps for making a short film.

This entailed developing and writing the script as a group, planning the scenes, shot lists, shooting schedules, wardrobe, shooting the film over three nights, operating the cameras and production equipment and editing the film together in post production.

During the workshop activities and script writing processes, three main themes emerged from the group that centred around being independent, navigating relationships and proving people wrong. These became the driving messages throughout the film and lead to many interesting group discussions, personal perspectives and developments.

The result, a completely unique and inspiring story and perspective with so many of the personal themes from the group activities intertwined, to form a cohesive and engaging storyline. The ‘dessert’, the film was entirely created and produced by a group of people who identify as having a mild intellectual disability with little to no film making experience.

A further unexpected achievement was our film’s lead actor Dina Franks winning the award for ‘Best Australian Actor’ at the Focus on Ability 2016 Film Festival and a six week acting training program in the USA.