People Like Us - Pilot Episode

'Secret Santa" is the pilot episode of a proposed sit com featuring the lives, preoccupations and relationships of a group of disabled twenty-somethings in Ōtautahi Christchurch today. In this proof-of-concept episode, stickler for the rules Emily is thwarted when she discovers everyone's been cheating in the gang's Secret Santa game. She insists they start again, but everyone's distracted; Luka is trying to go viral, Emily's brother is trying to stop her from interfering in his love life, and Haiti is just trying to fix everything.

We want to raise enough money to hire a professional crew to make this episode something really special. There is a subversive and quirky undertone to this series, along with comedy and heaps of charm.

The Inclusive Performance Academy runs two performance classes and a Screen Stuff class. This is a Screen Stuff project - with many students also being performance students. The Academy is run by mother/son duo, Fiona McKenzie and Jasper Sutcliffe. 

Fiona started her career as a TV Writer before training with South Pacific Pictures as a Drama Director. In the 90's she freelanced as a Writer/Director across many genres including fast turnaround multi-cam TV,  single cam location comedy and sketch comedy. Her daughter was born in 1998 - significantly disabled. In 2009 she directed The China Cup, an independent feature film made in South Canterbury. Her short film, Peninsula, (2019) opened at Tribeca Festival and played at 4 other international festivals, winning its section at Bengaluru Film Festival.

Jasper is a recent graduate of Massey University's Screen Arts degree, majoring in Film Production. His first short film, "Who Do We Have Here?", was selected for the Show Me Shorts Film Festival, NZYFF, and Third Culture Film Fest. 

Last year the Inclusive Performance Academy entered the 48 Hours film competition for the first time, making the Christchurch city finals and winning the audience favourite in our round. Fiona and Jasper (as co-directors) were also nominated for Best Director in the city finals. As a mother (Fiona) and brother (Jasper) of a person with intellectual disabilities, this team is uniquely - and perfectly placed - to make this series. 

We need to shoot over a two week period from October 1 according to cast availability. We need to book a professional crew to support us to ensure this pilot is the best it can be. We need camera and sound crew, a composer, sound design and full post production.  

Our families and students never get to see themselves on screen through their own lens. Disability is usually depicted on screen in two ways. The first is a lone disabled person being applauded for striving to be like everyone else (and mostly getting away with it). This is what we in disability call 'Inspo-porn" and it's as damaging as it is annoying. We are sick of seeing people being applauded for trying to be like ordinary people. It's time disabled people got applause for being exactly who they are. 

The other way we're depicted on screen is in "reality" shows about disabled people - where their support staff and families are invisible. This is not only dishonest but adds to an ableist narrative that disabled people don't need help. We ALL need help! And right now we need YOUR help now to make this thing, to show the layers of reality around People Like Us!

We think the world is ready for People Like Us - the world needs People Like Us, because we're ready to show, through scripted comedy, what our lives are actually like and have some control over how we're seen on screen. The students' lives and stories inspire the scripts and we work together in class time story-lining. We know people will love People Like Us because people LIKE us already! We have 21,000 followers on Tik Tok and each time we've gone viral the comments are overwhelmingly asking for MORE of us on their screens.

Please see above about our community and the lack of meaningful on screen presence. This is a scripted comedy based on real people playing slightly different versions of themselves in a world that's part fantasy, part scripted comedy and part brutal reality. 

No one has seen anything like this before. Our real life actors are so endearing, so unique, so fabulous, we want the world to meet them. And boy are they ready to get their stories out there!