- Aria Starlight
Aria Starlight is, of course, the film our company is named after. It started out as a plan to write a series of micro-shorts, and I gathered a group of writers from the Talent Campus – a programme run by the London Screenwriters Festival at Ealing Studios, in the Autumn of 2025 – to set about thinking of ideas for each episode, each writer taking one episode and writing as a duo with me.
Then I changed my mind. As the ideas progressed and I thought about the practicalities of filming the series, it made more sense to combine the story ideas into one Academy Short, thereby needing only one shoot. With the help of feedback and development ideas from the group, I finished the screenplay in April 2026. We are now, as of Spring 2026, in pre-production, finding cast, crew and ‘angels’ to invest in the circa 25 minute film.
Logline: A grieving but determined six-year-old girl takes her magical friend to hunt for starlight to send her mother home to the stars, while despair itself hunts them, bent on stealing their starlight to trap the child in everlasting grief.
Our crowdfunding page is now live.
If you can contribute, you’ll be part of the Aria Starlight team and we’ll love you forever!
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/aria-starlight-an-academy-short-film
If you work either in front of, or behind, the lens, and would like to be part of this project, do get in touch with us at info@ariastarlightpictures.com. We are looking for people who are inspired by this story and are willing to invest their talent and time to help create a magical film, which we plan to enter into the major film festivals. Details below.
- The Websters
The Websters is a 93 minute comedy feature, made on the weekends while I was studying for my MA in screenwriting. Making a film wasn’t part of the course, but I thought it would be a good idea to show I had the determination and resilience to make a film out of pure will. We had zero budget and the cast and crew were made up of film and acting students from Plymouth University. They were fantastic sports, turning up over many weekends across a 9 month period. We had a lot of fun and all learned a lot. The result is available to watch on my YouTube channel, The Elvin Marbles. https://youtu.be/jbVd-sedUbs?si=fX1_pZmNyfNMN8EN
Here’s the trailer: https://youtu.be/QHva2GFFHHo?si=-iW9gOOBBUR8xxrD
- Pushing Up Daisy
I had some fun with this one. Having co-written a short for OutWrd (called Tranquility Cove) with a great writer and fellow alumnus from Falmouth University, Katherine Robinson, I decided to write something else for the same platform. They had been sent a lot of quite dark material, so I decided to write a comedy, and this is it. It’s based one a news story I remembered from the Covid-19 lock-down of 2021, so, of course being a writer, I thought: ‘What if…’ and ran with he idea. This led to something so much fun that I had trouble limiting the page count for a 40 minute audio recording. It’s on OutWrd now, and I narrated it myself, also composing the Speak-Easy TV ident featured in the score. There’s so much I had to leave out in the WW2 part of the story, I really must let it stretch its legs as a very British Comedy Feature. This is a very British comedy feature which I definitely want to film!
You can find Pushing Up Daisy on OutWrd here: https://www.outwrdplus.com/free
- Blink
Blink was originally a short screenplay which I wrote as an MA assignment. With the benefit of further writing experience, I revisited the story and refined it, also reducing the page count in order to apply for BFI funding. We’ll wait to see about that one, but I’m keen either to film it as a short or to develop it into a full screenplay. It’s a bit scary, but I love the magical realism in it. Based on an idea by my youngest daughter, Katie.
- Foxglove and the Silver Angel
Another ex-assignment from my MA, this is another story I’d absolutely love to film. It’s an uplifting ghost story about a retired investigative journalist who’s sent, a broken man, to a residential home. What he doesn’t know is that an event from his past is heading towards him in a most unexpected way. I can’t tell you more…it would spoil it!
