Extras wanted for West Sussex horror film The Death Of Us

Bella is also the director and female lead for the feature which will complete filming in Selsey from April 4 to 7, for which she is looking for around 20 extras – or “the more, the merrier!” – to provide the crowd at a fake book signing. Anyone interested should get in touch with Bella at [email protected].

Bella and the team did most of the filming in early February. Locations included just outside Chichester and also the Ashdown Forest.

“It went really, really well. I had a really great and supportive team that were all used to independent film-making, and I just would not have been able to do it without them. Everyone worked so well together. You get good teams and then you get teams that are just superb, and we had a really superb team. For all the stress of it, it went incredibly well. You plan as much as you possibly can but there is still a huge amount of pressure and a lot of stress but we really did pull through.

“We're already into the editing of the film. And it's looking very, very good. It looks like it was made on a much bigger budget than we had.”

They managed to raise £12,000 through www.indiegogo.com. Bella expects the final cost is going to be in the region of £35,000 to £37,000, but as she says, it depends how the final four days of filming go, plus the fact there are always additional expenses, plus the cost of entering the film into film festivals: “We are going to do another crowdfunder for £6,500.

“We are hoping the film will be ready in the summer. We're hoping to have it done by August 1, but we'll be contacting festivals before it's finished. You can submit a rough grade version or a version that is not quite completed. But August would be the earliest that we could be in a festival, we hope.”

In the piece Bella is playing Casey, married to Danny: “And she is a distraught character, an angry character, and it was quite a challenge to switch between playing this distraught and angry character and into producer mode but everyone on the film liked the style of it and understood the film.”

“The film follows a couple that have just hit fame and they are subjected to a home invasion that goes wrong. The whole thing puts them in disarray, and because they are in the spotlight it is all put across YouTube and so on.”

The point of interest for Bella is that they are a healthy couple: “I couldn't find any films where the couple really was actually healthy. Usually they've cheated or they've done things and that's the way they find the conflict. But I needed to find the conflict in other ways which made it quite an interesting film to write.”

During the home invasion their child is murdered and so is the babysitter: “The film follows Casey’s character and Danny’s character in the aftermath of it all. They are in separate stages of the grieving process. Danny's character is depressed but Casey is furious. She is furious throughout the film. Before, women just used to cry a little bit on screen but now we're seeing women who can really show anger throughout a film and you can really see her emotional development, all of her anger and there's also quite a lot of gaslighting towards her.”

Horror is Bella’s speciality: “I love the independent horror scene in the UK. I think it was because my mum and I used to get together and watch all the horror films all the time, and we still do. And I think there is something beautiful in horror. It is not just blood and guts. There is an underlying meaning as well. And I just used to love the special effects especially once I'd figured them out.”