507

Made by Isabella Odendaal, Laura Hardy, Ringo Chu and Tegan Page

2025

MetFilm Summer School Production

There are some great film education establishments around the Midlands including the Pauline Quirke Academy and the Midlands Screen Acting School and another one to add to the ever growing list is the MetFilm Summer School.

And it’s during one of their programmes that a new film called 507 was created. The 18-minute short opens with a woman lying face down on a plain white background. This is Eve (played by Sharni Tapako-Brown) who awakes dazed and confused from her coma wearing what looks like hospital clothing. Unsure where this “purgatory” is, she glances around at her predicament and runs into the void yet the white continues to envelope her.

But arriving suddenly is a well-dressed man (Stefan Davis as Adam) and I got echoes of the ‘construct’ area where Neo and Morpheus converse in The Matrix (1999) - including a couple of chairs too!

The man explains she is experiencing “Test 507”, the outcome of a global pandemic that saw a virus mutate to ‘become’ human and this experiment needs to access memory in order to prove she is uninfected. Failing to do so will result in her termination.

Using a nearby diary, Eve begins to read and experience flashbacks about a baby and a hospital which then makes her faint in confusion. Subsequently Adam is told by his superiors that this testing method is nearing the end of its lifespan and will come to a conclusion after this final examination.

The film has an interesting backstory given it was created during the summer school programme at MetFilm School in Birmingham. It involved four overseas exchange students (aged 15–17) who had never worked with a camera before and received a crash course in technical and creative aspects of filmmaking.

Within days, the four developed the story and script and by the end had learnt the ropes, shot the film and even completed post-production - with only just a little final help from a course tutor on colour grading. An ambitious fortnight for sure!

And so the film has to be viewed within this context. BUT in spite of that seeming limitation, the filmmaking is solid, script is good - basic for sure but very clear to understand - and the young filmmakers coax some great performances from the two leads.

With some sci-fi nods to THX 1138 and Total Recall’s memory-confusing plot, the main influence visually is clearly from The Matrix - the limbo land, religious symbolism, the green computer text and use of mobile phones. But the pupils have chosen well by borrowing iconography from such influential sci-fi movie to help them learn filmmaking ropes of editing, dialogue, plot and lighting.

The film does have some limitations though. Whilst the dialogue is filmed in an interesting manner, most of the film is two people talking and may not stretch their filmmaking learning with an absence of landscape/external shooting and more varied locations.

That said, we pick up the story with an exciting running scene and then our leads traverse a corridor of doorways leading to the patient’s memories. And credit where credit is due - the students Isabella Odendaal, Laura Hardy, Ringo Chu and Tegan Page do a tremendous job utilising their new skills during the short course.

Without spoilers, the film has an emotional reveal that discloses a more intimate relationship between Adam and Eve, which finally tugs on the heartstrings after a short mostly filled with rigid and stony sci-fi concepts.

In the end, if this is a first attempt at filmmaking - albeit with serious support and access to great equipment no doubt - then it’s very impressive. It’s simple (and should thank The Matrix in the credits) but you’ve got to learn somewhere. And filmmakers need to learn these basic principles to get a good grounding in filmmaking. And here in 507, with decent writing, a knowledge of the genre tropes and a sure footing in the fundamentals, they’ve created a superb sci-fi film of which they should be extremely proud of.

★★★★

4 / 5

Michael Sales

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