FROM the moment she held her first camera, 19-year-old Ashleigh Harley has been obsessed by film and this week launches a Kickstarter project to enable her to make The Wall of Lyon, a fantasy film she intends to be the first of many.

"No one in the family is into film," says Ashleigh, who has been home schooled since she was 12 and hopes to go to the NFTS (National Film and Television School) next year. "But from a young age, I loved film."

"When she was just a toddler," adds her father Richard, "Ashleigh would take her own shots whenever we were filming videos."

Ashleigh soon progressed to editing her films on a phone, before moving on to software on computers and expanding into special effects.

"We would come home and it would be completely dismantled with one wall green, and everything rearranged," says Richard.

Ashleigh prefers to use her imagination and life experience in her films, but cites Wes Anderson as an inspiration - "because he's so quirky." As for a cast? Ashleigh admits to a wishlist that includes Alan Rickman, Jason Flemyng and Frank Dillane.

The Wall of Lyon, for which Ashleigh will also be composing the music, is, she explains, an exploration of fantasy versus reality, in which her principal character struggles to determine whether what she's experiencing is fantasy or reality. The inspiration, Ashleigh explains, comes from becoming really interested in ancient mythologies in her early teens. "It gradually filtered into my filming."

Ashleigh recently scored a short called Time Lapse, a horror film shot in Hereford. "It's a very different process from writing a solo piece of music," she says. "because you have to consider the point of view of the characters. Any director will recognised that music is at least 50 per cent of the film."

In addition to film-making and writing music, Ashleigh is also in the process of writing a fantasy sci-fi trilogy of which The Wall of Lyon is a part.

"I am going to try and push the boundaries," she says, "and continue to do it all. I want to be able to work in all areas and I'm going to try my best to do that."

If you'd like to support Ashleigh's ambitious project, click here.