For their second filmmaking mentorship, long time collaborators Nyima Murry and Jim Stephenson worked with a group of young people from underrepresented backgrounds to create a new film about the architectural live-build summer school, Studio in the Woods. Tong Hao, Jaime Nelson and Hamani Altraiji were selected from an open call. All three are architecture students with a keen interest in film making, but with little to no experience in that field. Together, Murry and Stephenson led a series of workshops on storytelling, editing and equipment before taking the group to the AA’s Hooke Park campus to make a film, following a brief from Studio in the Woods co-founder, Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio. The participants camped in the woods for four days, each day documenting the three live builds spread across the site. In advance the group had written a treatment, which formed their story outline. They interviewed a series of the participants on site and filmed their progress - from Day 1 nerves and uncertainty, the ups and downs of Day 2 and 3 and the quiet euphoria of the final day, Day 4. The finished film is titled “Crossing, Lookout, Horizon”, named after the three structures created over the weekend. Over 14 minutes it covers the emotional highs and lows of life on camp, and the growth in confidence of the live build participants who, although led by experienced architects and engineers, like the film making mentees, had little to no previous experience one a live site. “Crossing, Lookout, Horizon” combines reflective scenes of the beautiful nature in the woods at Hooke Park, with candid and informal interviews and live action construction footage. It is a reflection, and celebration, of what it means to build something in real-time with your hands, away from computer screens. The mentorship program was established by Stephenson and Murry to widen diversity within the architectural filmmaking industry, providing a unique opportunity for on site experience and mentorship support throughout the process. Studio in the Woods is a renowned educational and research initiative established in 2005 by architects Piers Taylor (Invisible Studio), Kate Darby, Meredith Bowles, and Gianni Botsford. Conceived as a counterpoint to traditional architectural pedagogy, the program fosters a collaborative, hands-on exploration of design through the act of making at a 1:1 scale. Each year, over the course of a three- or four-day summer workshop, groups of students, architects, and non-architects converge in a rural woodland setting to collectively conceive and construct timber structures. Through its recurring format, Studio in the Woods has become a key site of inquiry into how architecture can emerge from embodied processes, contingency, and material negotiation rather than predefined formal intentions. At its core, the workshop challenges the epistemologies that dominate architectural production. It resists the modernist ideal of the architect as an all-knowing author, and instead positions design as a contingent, co-authored process shaped by material flows, group dynamics, and immediate environmental feedback. Echoing parallel models such as the AA’s Design & Make program, Rural Studio at Auburn, and initiatives by practices such as Assemble and Baxendale, Studio in the Woods reclaims the role of making as integral to design - an approach supported by emergent digital fabrication tools but grounded in traditional craft sensibilities and direct engagement with place. What distinguishes Studio in the Woods is not simply its physical outputs - often humble, exploratory timber installations - but the pedagogical framework it provides. Projects begin with prompts rather than prescriptions: strategies or ideas that set the tone and direction without dictating formal outcomes. These prompts are not aesthetic proposals, but conceptual triggers around which teams can coalesce. This method has evolved in response to early challenges with unfocused group discussion and hierarchical authorship. As Taylor reflects, it became clear that when groups were given form-based questions too early, consensus was elusive and authorship skewed. However, when anchored in a shared strategy or material condition, the group’s collective agency flourished.