TWO film-making friends with a budget of just £7 have become an internet sensation.

Olivia, Explorer, the latest film project by Francesca Sophia, 19, and Hayley Stuart, 20, has chalked up more than a million hits and scores of rave reviews after being picked to appear on YouTube's global website.

The short film - which stars Francesca's seven-year-old niece, Olivia - follows the adventures of a girl who gets left behind when her family go on holiday to Wales.

It attracted more than 100,000 views within 24 hours of going online in Britain and the pair were contacted by YouTube's editors to congratulate them on one of the website's most popular videos yet.

The film's meagre budget was spent on adapting an old clothes horse into a steady cam. Francesca edited the film in just one night, staying up for 14 hours after her computer crashed and destroyed the original edit.

Another film by the pair, Absentee, is a 25-minute surreal drama about a workaholic insomniac who starts hallucinating and becomes alienated from his son after becoming addicted to sleeping pills.

The film was made with professional actors - so the budget ran to £1,500. But the investment paid off, since the film was screened in the Short Film Corner of the prestige Cannes Festival this year.

At Cannes, the film caught the eye of organisers from the International Women's Festival, who agreed to enter it into their competition and waive the fee.

The film is also tipped to appear at the Raindance London Film Festival this winter.

Inseperable

At school, Francesca suffered from Tourette's syndrome that affected movement. After Hayley began protecting her from bullies the pair became inseparable and Francesca's symptoms are now under control.

The friends, from Chorlton, who take inspiration from French cinema, recently had experience behind the scenes on Channel 4 drama Skins.

Francesca, who is preparing to study film at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: "I have been experimenting with video since I was 13 and using computers since I was six.

"Hayley and I are both published poets and share the many roles we take on when we start a film project - everything from planning to writing, directing to editing.

"The last two films we have created have been our most successful and our biggest projects yet. Olivia, Explorer is about exploring childhood imagination and the naive innocence that makes being a child so magical.

"It also shows how much danger children unwittingly put themselves in during this naive innocent time."
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