Tea Leaf

A LiveWire Studio film funded by First Light

The making of Tea Leaf took place between Wed 27 July and Tue 9 August 2005.

Tea Leaf is a film idea based upon discussions held with a group of LiveWire participants, aged between 14-18 years old. Within this meeting it was established that they desired to develop a character-based story, which would lend itself to a variety of visual styles and genre exploration. Examples of existing film styles identified by the students included Big Fish, Amelie and Secrets and Lies. A recurring theme throughout this discussion was the visual representation of the contrast between fantasy and reality.

The basic idea for Tea Leaf was a development of a student’s own comical observations and character studies whilst working as a young waitress. It is an original take on what seems to be a mundane, everyday scenario, a simple but potentially insightful study of voyeuristic human tendencies and fantasy.

Tea Leaf is about a young waitress called Alison, who passes her time in the tea room she works in by imagining what lives the regulars have. There’s Beryl, a kleptomaniac piano player, who has a liking for tea-drinking paraphernalia. Warren is a redundant insurance clerk who passes the time of day away from home as he struggles to hide his unemployment from his young and demanding wife, and Bernard is a mature man whose obsessive tendencies are directed towards the oblivious Beryl. But this tea room isn’t at all as it seems.

Film Festival Success

Since its completion, Tea Leaf has screened at: exposures UK Student Film Festival, Warrington Film Festival and Leeds Children's Film Festival. It has also been shown on the Big Screen in Manchester city centre.

Production Team

Esther Springett, Alison Kennedy, Kate Wieteska, Daniel Lundy, Pippa Brown, Rebecca Allen, Chris Liptrot, Barry Smith, Francesca Orr, Amanda Carrington, Maria Sokolovski

Workshop Leaders

Heir Productions - Dana Bruce, Daniel Harris and Hayley Saull

Project Assistant

Alice Harland

Youth Projects Officer

Rebecca McKnight

What the participants thought of the film

“I thoroughly enjoyed working on Tea Leaf. Everyone involved was fun and enthusiastic. There is always something new to learn when on a film set, and on the set of Tea Leaf, there was always someone about to help and explain things.”
Alison Kennedy

“Participating in this LiveWire project was a great way for me to get a taste for film making, it definitely enthused me to present my own ideas. The workshop leaders were fantastic. They were very well organised and professional. I enjoyed meeting like-minded people and also casting our own actors. For me casting actors introduced a whole new level to film making, the beauty of it was finding an actor that was such a perfect match to the character we developed in the script. I feel really proud of what we’ve achieved.”
Esther Springett