Project Pitch short film entry – How to Make a Baby

With the Forest City Film Festival returning for its tenth year this weekend, this weekend the city brimming with creative talent sharing their work. The festival is bringing back Project Pitch, a pitch competition where filmmakers can submit pitches for a chance to win support and funding. In the short film category, winners will receive $17,000 in production funding. Taylor Mendonça, London resident and instructor in the faculty of information and media studies at Western University, will be pitching her London-set short film — How to Make a Baby.

Tentatively shooting in London’s Old South, the script follows a lesbian couple on the night of their first at-home insemination attempt and hopes to share the tenderness of family planning that isn’t often seen on screen.

I spoke to writer and director Mendonça on how she’s feeling about this year’s FCFF, the story behind the pitch and her hopes for the future of film in London. 

Emmanuel Akanbi: You’ve kept a strong family focus in your previous short films. What do you believe is the importance of seeing stories like this on screen?

Taylor Mendonça: I’m drawn to stories about intimate moments in people’s lives that we don’t normally get to see, and I think family is a really interesting space for that. We all have one and there’s just so many dynamics and layers of context and history and relationships to mind there.

EA: What separates this pitch from your previous work? 

TM: This is probably the most personal film I’ve done. It was inspired by the journey of trying to start my own family with my wife, and just how unexplored that is in the media landscape in general. 

EA: You are also quite established as a filmmaker. You graduated from Columbia with an MFA, and you have documented work in the industry at major studios like DreamWorks, Warner Bros and Netflix. What brought you to London and the Forest City Film Festival?

TM: My wife and I made the move from Los Angeles to London at the end of last year, beginning of this year. I’m from Toronto originally, and it was the right move for our family at the time. And London is a really interesting city with a really enthusiastic creative community that’s really trying to get stuff going locally, rather than having to go to Toronto or Hamilton or other major Canadian centers. Everyone we’ve met has just been so excited and supportive and wanting to make more local content, and there’s a ton of talent here to do it.

I think anyone in the film community in London knows about the Forest City Film Festival, it’s huge locally, but also it’s doing a really great job about bringing attention nationally and within Ontario to the London film scene and it’s really exciting to be a part of that. It feels like a great fit to rally local talent and tell local stories at a local film festival. It feels like a really great fit for our project.

EA: Is there anything else you’re excited about this year at the festival?

TM: There’s some really great panels. One of our producers, Kelly Peckham, is going to be leading a panel with a filmmaker [Craig Thompson]. So I’m really excited to see her up there talking. I’m excited to go see some really great local films as well. It seems like it’s got a really good lineup this year. 

EA: This is your first semester teaching at Western in media production. How’s that been, and what are you hoping to inspire in the students for film?

TM: Yeah, my class has been great. I’m at FIMS and the faculty has been so supportive and welcoming. So it’s been fantastic. And in terms of what I’m hoping to inspire my students, it’s a first-year course and so it’s really about getting [students] comfortable with visual language and finding your voice in it, and that’s going to be a process, and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s going to work and sometimes it’s not going to work, but the whole point of the process is to try and take risks and be creative and have fun with it. 

EA: What are some other film inspirations behind your short film? 

TM: I’m particularly inspired by both nineties indie cinema that was coming out of New York, and the filmmakers that came from that era. I tend to lean comedic, but I like natural comedy. Trying to thread the needle of something that feels natural and realistic, but is also really that can be quite funny without a joke setup or a sitcom lighting. The Squid And The Whale, one of Noah Baumbach’s early films does that really well, threads the idiosyncrasies and that kind of New York comedy, but being shot still quite with an indie cinematic feel.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.