TMU film students’ documentary film receives over one million views on YouTube

Film students at Toronto Metropolitan University created a documentary titled THE GIRLS BATHROOM (external link)  for their third-year production class (MPF 502) that has garnered more than one million views on YouTube.

Mackenzie Chang was creating a pitch for a documentary film assignment, when she thought back to high school. She remembered the significance of the girl's bathroom as a gathering place at their school.

“Everyone… would nap in that bathroom, we’d eat lunch in that bathroom,” she said. “Everything went down in that bathroom, and I felt like ‘this is kind of a universal experience.’”

Chang pitched the idea of an early-2000’s inspired documentary film that captured experiences of girlhood that happen in the girl’s bathroom, as well as touched on the broader conversation of having safe spaces for women.

Lindsay Watt remembered taking note of Chang’s pitch and putting it in her list of the top three documentary film ideas that she’d like to work on. When Chang’s pitch was approved by their professorWatt was one of the people Chang contacted in the class to join the crew — alongside Kennedy Forstner and Hannah Tuplin.

The team immediately felt like a natural fit for the project. “It always felt like we were friends meeting, rather than a [film] crew.”

The crew had the span of a semester, including two shoot days, to put together a 10-minute documentary film. They divided roles — Chang was the director, Watt the producer, Tuplin the director of photography and Forstner, the editor — but agreed to help one another make the documentary shine. The film work began with pre-production — which included booking a bathroom on campus for them to film in.

“There’s a guy you can email at TMU, and you can book out any space in Kerr Hall, or in TMU,” Watt said, who worked on parts of the pre-production process. The group wanted to use a specific bathroom on the third-floor of Kerr Hall, because of its pink tiles.

Next, the crew put out a casting call for background actors to recreate “the beautifully chaotic experience of using the girls [sic] bathroom.” They conducted interviews with women about their experiences in the girl’s bathroom, which they filmed in the Kerr Hall bathroom stalls. They also spent some time getting B-roll for the documentary, relating it to what their interviewees told them about their experiences in the sacred space.

Forstner said creating the documentary on the girl’s bathroom was like a meta experience.

“Every time we were in the bathroom filming, we were actively making friends and having good experiences and we joked constantly, like, ‘oh my god, we need to make a documentary about the documentary because we were just living the experiences all over again,’” Forstner said.

The editing process was the most difficult part, Chang said. She and Forstner were seeing each other often as the film came together, locked up in the cozy IMA editing suites to bring their vision to life. At long last, the documentary was ready.

Their professor told them they could either submit a Google Drive link to the video, or a YouTube link. Chang decided to upload the video to her YouTube channel, where the group only thought their professor, and maybe their friends and family would see the final product. But over the course of several months, the view count kept climbing up — to five thousand, then 10 thousand and half a million.

“There were hundreds of comments, people DMing me on Instagram from across the world, being like, ‘I just saw your film,’” Chang said. Many commenters said the documentary was recommended by their algorithm, and gushed over how relatable the experiences captured in the eight-minute video were to them.

Then, the video hit one million views. It even ended up on Letterboxd (external link) , where it received more rave reviews.

“I don't think my brain can even process that it’s at a million. I don't even know what a million people look like,” Forstner said. “I’m so proud of us. We worked very, very hard on it, and we had an incredible experience making it, which makes it even better.”

To celebrate the occasion, the crew and members of their cast met back in the pink Kerr Hall bathroom where it all started.

“We had our cake, and we were all sitting on the floor in a big circle, and we were taking turns reading the comments under the YouTube video,” Watt said. “We're like, ‘oh my god, people are connecting to this, and finding community within our zero-budget film.’”

The crew said working on the documentary was a great learning experience, and that they’re grateful for film school for putting them in the same space as other like-minded creatives. They also celebrated the experience of working on a film set with all women as a “refreshing experience” in what is still a male-dominated industry.

“It was four girls and a camera for their film program class,” Chang said.

“And a dream,” Watt added.