Filmmaking & There Are Bees In The House

By Emma M. Cooke

March 12, 2025

"Plan the shoot, shoot the plan—but always be ready for chaos."

If someone would had told me that my responsibility as a film producer would be to manage frozen bee corpses, I would not have believed them. But there I found myself, late at night, shuffling the containers around and inspecting them. The corpses needed to be ready for the next day’s filming.

Producing the short film There are Bees in the House was a bigger project to tackle than expected. I already understood that the role of the producer is quite a large one: managing a whole team, budget, schedule, food, storyline, etc.;through to post-production and into the festival circuit-it’s no small feat.

In early September 2021, I, alongside the rest of my class of a technical film school in Canada, all signed on the Heads of Department positions across four different projects. All four projects were pitched by our classmates, and we all voted as a collective on the stories we wanted to work on. Ours being a psychological thriller on the topic of intergenerational trauma.

Emma Cooke at NFMLA

There are Bees in the House was originally pitched by (Screen) Writing student, Erin Wood, as a thriller about a horde of bumblebees that live in the walls of the house. Director, Morgan Saelens, developed the idea further by proposing that the bees could act as a metaphor for a larger theme. The calm, attentive, and well-intentioned individual at the helm, it was sure to be a successful project. I considered myself lucky that Morgan wanted me on board as Producer, to help them steer the project until the end, ensuring the vision remained true throughout all the inevitable chaos of production.

It was going to be a big task, but with the support and guidance of each other and our instructors, we were sure we’d be able to pull the project together within the four weeks we had. The rest of our crew came together easily—everyone in the class was keen to support the project and help in any capacity, this, therefore, was one of the easier parts of production for me to handle. Through extensive meetings and pre-production work, There are Bees in the House was born. A psychological thriller following Asa returning to her childhood home after the death of her grandmother, who on arrival begins to hear the buzzing of bees in the walls, and decides she needs to understand what this means. The buzzing of bees and the bees themselves were a representation of intergenerational trauma, something that begins as an irritant in the head that grows the longer one stays in that environment. The longer Asa spends at home, the more insufferable the bees get, and the harder it is for her to escape the house and the trauma that seeps through the walls. As with all films, the biggest challenge, is money. We were off to a good start, however, as we had all the equipment, and a third of our final budget provided to us by the institution. As pre-production carried on, however, I began to realise that an excess of resources can also be a challenge.

This was the first major project and film for many of us in the class and we crowdfunded the remaining amount of our final budget, which was $10,000 CAD, using an online platform called Indiegogo with most of the money coming from friends and family, (as with most short films, much of the ‘Special Thanks’ section have the same last name as the key filmmakers). There were moments in the weeks leading up to production where I felt we had too little budget.

Other days I felt we had too much. Some days our Production Designer would be requesting money, as we needed to create a frame to hang real honeycomb from, or we needed to somehow source real dead bees in the middle of October, in Canada. On other occasions, however, I felt that when I needed to submit budget changes to my instructor, the allocated funds didn’t make sense because we had too much money, and seemingly nothing to do with it. As always, one can always find other ways to spend the money. For me, it was actually a very easy fix—our catering cost way more than originally thought. I was thankful we had room in the budget in order to pay for all the food (a well-fed crew is a happy crew after all).

The biggest tell of good preparation during production is a smooth shoot. I was always taught “Plan the shoot, shoot the plan”. As with anything, though, these things rarely go to plan. Part of your ‘plan’, however, is to have backups and precautionary measures should matters go awry. As the producer, everything falls on your shoulders when something goes wrong. You need to be able to think on your feet, put out fires, and keep everyone happy. With a cast and crew of 35 people, that’s a daunting task. I will forever be grateful to the team for being on hand to help, and for handling the stress and problems with grace. The key creatives on a project really become a family throughout the process, and I got myself a very wonderful little family.

For most of the cast and crew, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief once the shoot is over. For most of them, however. The producers, director, editors, composers, sound editors, colourists, and many more, the real work begins.

We had a tough 3-month slog into early 2022 to get the edit finished. The post-production process is where all the tiny mistakes are discovered, and often a tiny error blows up into a much bigger issue, but these are dealt with, and the project is ready for delivery. The colour correctionist tweaked, all the airplanes one could hear in the background are edited out, and the shots not featuring the boom pole are used.

Even after There are Bees in the House was screened and we had all graduated from the program, there was still work to be done regarding to marketing and distribution of a film. For short films, this is often limited as there is much less of a platform compared to feature length projects.

Short films will often go on a film festival run for 12–18 months, hopefully gaining attention for the project and the filmmakers themselves. On our small project, we didn’t have a distribution team, so I took on the work myself.

There are Bees in the House was accepted into many festivals across the world, and with them came some exciting opportunities. I was invited on podcasts, did written interviews, and the most exciting for me was to attend New Filmmakers Los Angeles Film Festival (NFMLA).

NFMLA runs monthly festivals each with different criteria, mainly targeted at new filmmakers in the industry. I was able to travel to LA to attend the Canadian Films screening. Ours being a fully Canadian production made by up-and-coming filmmakers, it was a shoo-in for the festival. It was special to be able to watch films made by creatives I knew from Vancouver, as well as meet other Canadian filmmakers and watch their projects alongside them.

Film festivals are a golden opportunity for networking. Whether meeting local filmmakers or established creatives in given departments, it can be a great step to get your name out into the world of film. You never know which individual might get you your next job. I was very grateful to give a Q&A, and to have a recorded interview the next day with the festival organizer. I had people reach out to me afterwards as well to arrange interviews, and I believe it’s important to seize every opportunity. Seeing others’ reactions to art that you’ve had a hand in creating is a very special thing.

There’s always going to be an element of nerves with presenting a project to an audience, to speak and answer questions about your work. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone will yield positive results. It’s very encouraging to continue down that path, and film is a challenging one. People receive so many rejections in this industry, and one needs to have a tough skin, and trust in the process that good things will come.

I had a lot of fun in the blistering heat of LA that weekend, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity and I’m so glad I made the decision to go ahead and do it.

Filmmaking can and is often stressful, with long hours, and unique challenges, but I have found that it is also the most rewarding work when you can physically see the vision someone has had in their head come to life on the screen. It makes absolutely all the blood, sweat, and tears well worth it. Sometimes when diving into a new project I feel like I’m making a terrible decision, that I’ve got a few screws loose in my head, but all I need to do is remind myself of these previous experiences and I feel secure in those decisions again.

Who would’ve thought that me arranging bee corpses and honeycombs would’ve brought me all these opportunities and joy? Welcome to the quirky world of filmmaking.

'There Are Bees In The House' Emma Cooke