SXSW 2025: 4 Tips on How to Make a Screenlife Film like 'Lifehack'

Lifehack is probably the best example of a screenlife movie to date.

The film premiered recently at SXSW, and its premise is simple enough—a bunch of lackadaisical gamer teens, passing their time in Rust lobbies and with some idle scambaiting, decide to take things a step further when they realize they can easily break into a billionaire's crypto wallet, stealing millions.

For those unfamiliar, the new genre of screenlife films features action that takes place entirely on screens (computers, phones, security footage, etc.). But Lifehack uses the setting perhaps most naturally, as Gen Zers (much like these characters) do live the majority of their lives online, with friends around the world—and sometimes little thought for how their web activities impact the real world.

This is a modern cyber thriller that is genuinely a nail-biter, and it accurately captures that feeling one might have when they realize the things they do online can hurt people in reality.

It's also incredibly smart and scarily accurate. Anyone who grew up a digital native will feel right at home in these characters' frantic Discord conversations as the lead character swaps between windows at a breakneck pace.

NFS chatted with the co-writers, Ronan Corrigan and Hope Elliott Kemp, to ask them about their experience making the film. Corrigan also directed, and Lifehack is his debut feature. You'll want to learn from them—they're about to go far.

"No Magic Buttons"

The film was produced by Timur Bekmambetov and the team behind screenlife films Unfriended (2015), Searching (2018), and Missing (2023), and it was developed through Screenlife Accelerator UK, a talent program launched in Liverpool in 2021 by Bekmambetov and British film producer Joann Kushner, with support from BFI.

They shot the film in two weeks but required a year of post to put the whole thing together.

"I keep saying the idea came out like 3:00 a.m. on a Call of Duty lobby," Corrigan said. "So it's been five years now making this film."

Kemp said they would write separately and swap scenes, breaking them down and putting them back together.

"Sometimes there are a couple of scenes I remember that we did actually go on Zoom and try and act out," she said.

The film opens with a fast-paced scambaiting sequence where the teens take down a financial scam call center. It drops the audience right into things without really explaining much, but even those who've never watched famous scambaiter Jim Browning will understand what's going on.

"I love horror films," Kemp said. "We both love horror films, and you have to start with a great kill. Scream did it perfectly. With this we were like, we're a heist. We need to start with a scam."

"We kept calling it the boulder scene, the Indiana Jones boulder scene," Corrigan added. "We need to start early and fast because again, we're always so paranoid because the world is mundane of being on a screen. So we're like, how do we keep it exciting?"

They also wanted the film to be accurate, without any gimmicky hacking sequences.

"Our main rule was no magic buttons," Corrigan said. "There's no button that said 'hack.' And you press that and the black and green text comes up and it reflects off the glasses. We didn't want that. We tried to keep it simple, hacks and social engineering, where you're hacking people rather than computers."

Use Limitations and Constraints as Creative Opportunities

The filmmakers noted that the screenlife and found footage genres force creative constraints like the character being limited to their one location—his bedroom.

"With this genre, it is about working with friends, I think, and about working with your peers," Kemp said. "You can absolutely make this kind of film from your home, from your bedroom. There's a creative restraint of thinking around budgets, thinking around the technology, and how you can write a film through this lens, but it's absolutely possible to make this film from your bedroom."

They see these limitations as "allies" that drive more creative storytelling and problem-solving.

"I think it forces you to write from the point of view that your character can't leave his bedroom," Corrigan said. "That's really cool. All my favorite filmmakers when I'm looking at their first films have some stupid limitation that must've been really annoying, but it also lets you creatively flow."

This limitation also helped with tension, Kemp said, since they had to do all the principal photography in just 10 days.

"You have that feeling of pressure, you have that feeling of stress," she said. "So use anything that comes in your way to your advantage, and think through your obstacles, and then come over them as hurdles, then you'll be great at hurdling too."

Start Creating, Even Without Full Funding or Approval

This team had a unique approach to the project since they came through Screenlifer (a Black List-style community) and Screenlife Accelerator UK. But they started working on it long before then.

They said they didn't wait for an official green light to start making their film.

"So the first three, four years, we just kept making the film over and over and over again and making it slightly better each time," Corrigan said.

After doing the teaser version, they continued improving.

Corrigan added, "Then we just started making the pre-vis of the film. So even before we had all the actors cast and we'd been green-lit, we had a version of the film. It was kind of ugly, but it was still telling the story and cast, still showing the vision of where we wanted to go."

Their advice is to not wait for permission but to start creating and improving your work.

"There were so many points in this film where it could have fallen through and so many things that went wrong, of course, but we made it," Kemp said. "If you keep up and you keep beating down the door, eventually one will open and you'll get there."

Embrace the Filmmaking Community

I asked how they felt about SXSW and what they'd learned so far. For Irishman Corrigan and Londoner Kemp, this was their first foray into American film.

"We flew over last Thursday, and we've just met a whole new side of the industry," Corrigan said. "We've been talking to loads of cool people who, again, we've been fanboying over for a long time. To play SXSW is so fun, so punk. It's real friendly filmmaking. Sometimes people can stick their nose up a little bit and get a little standoffish, but as soon as we came up here, people were, when they saw our film, they were saying hello. We saw their film, we were saying hello. And it just felt like an exciting community to be welcomed into."

Kemp agreed that the spirit of indie film was alive and well at the festival.

"You read in the news that people aren't interested in original storytelling or original film anymore, and it's just not the case," she said. "And our experience here has been everyone is interested in that, and everyone is so excited. That has been the most wonderful feeling in the world."