Behind the Scenes: First Sign of Love It's My Shout: Short Films from Wales

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First Sign Of Love deals with a young girl who is partially deaf.

She has to cope with going to secondary school for the first time.

It was filmed in and around Bridgend.

Casting for the main role proved difficult.

Challenges on this film have been, first of all, finding a suitable

lead actress.

Our hunt was very wide, across the country...

and then, low and behold, we found our lead actress,

literally, just under our noses, actually.

She turned up to an It's My Shout audition, literally, a couple of

days later and we found her and I'm so glad that we did, because she's

absolutely perfect!

Shawna Workman auditioned for another role in It's My Shout.

She had become deaf after being ill as a child.

'I had meningitis when I was a child,'

that's how I'm deaf.

OK, so how is your hearing, generally?

Because we're talking fine now.

Yeah...well, I'm actually lip reading you.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-That's really strange.

I'm completely deaf in my right ear, I'm a little bit deaf in my left ear

and I can't hear high frequency sounds, so if a train was to stop

in front of me, I wouldn't be able to hear it.

Shawna had originally been taught sign language by her grandmother,

but she had to have a refresher course for this production.

I learnt a lot of sign language growing up and then my grandma

passed away, so I wasn't able to keep up with the sign language.

So, finding out last week about all the different videos and that,

cos I watched them all, about sign language, it just came back to me.

The drama is based in the 1980s, when attitudes towards disability

were different.

We, kind of, set the film in the '80s, because in the '80s, it was

starting to see the integration of deaf people

and people with disabilities into mainstream schools.

So, that's why we set it back then,

cos it was showing the actually first time that this was happening,

that these situations were happening

and I think that's a really important story to tell, as well.

For lead actor Lewis Coster, it was an insight into the world

of 30 years ago.

You know, hearing that any kind of impairment or disability

wasn't as catered for, in terms of technology,

but also in terms of how society, kind of, views them.

So, the kids would have been a lot

more horrible to Megan than today.

And I think you see that and I think Jake represents the change in, like,

view towards this kind of issue, because Jake actually does um and ah

about it, but in the end, he goes,

"Do you know what? Actually, I don't care what Elliot thinks.

"I don't care what the school thinks, I like this girl,

"regardless of whether she has whatever,

"and I'm going to go and speak to her."

The thing about Shawna is that she's so natural in her acting,

it's very easy to forget that you're making a film.

And it's very easy to relax when you're playing

alongside her, because she's so effortless in her acting.

That's made the process a whole lot easier, is Shawna, basically.

Making the film made the production crew

consider their views on disability.

Anyone with disabilities now,

they are just going into mainstream school.

No-one is segregated any more, which is obviously a brilliant thing.

You know, why can't kids with disabilities just be teenagers

as well? They don't have to be segregated

into different schools, obviously.

For Shawna, who has made films before,

First Sign Of Love was a very important production.

I hope that it gets shown,

like, across all different demographics

and I hope people actually enjoy it and I hope that they actually learn

about all these different disabilities.

I hope they actually,

like, when they walk down the street and see someone with a hearing aid,

they take the chance to notice know that person could be lip reading,

that person could take a long time just to be able to hear what

I'm saying.

That's what I genuinely hope,

I hope people have a better understanding of deaf people.

Shall we do it again?

That's J-A-K-E.

This is A.