PLANNING: PADLET

Today me and my group decided to use a different approach and created a Padlet board. A Padlet is some sort of digital noticeboard that allows people to collaborate with each other. This is part of our character development for the film opening that we will be creating as it allows the audience to get to now the character more.

Open Source Here

RESEARCH: BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS

BIFA AWARDS

I have been interested in the BIFA which is an award ceremony for many different independent films across Great Britain.

I particularly became interested in this due to the BFI study day I had because I was introduced to American Honey on that trip in November 2016. The BFI study day was delivered by Rob Miller and was about Independent films versus Mainstream films.

I wanted to see how well American Honey did at BIFA's. It came to my attention as my film is going to be a British independent film with a low budget as well, therefore I thought it would be a good idea to research the awards.

I also retweeted many tweets from after the awards which show which films won what awards. When I clicked on the American Honey link on the first screenshot, it took me to a page that displayed the awards that they have won, and the trailer to the independent film that I have watched. I am particularly interested in American Honey due to the similarities there are between my film and American Honey; they are both low budget, featuring almost unknown actors. It is promoted as defining our generation according to the BIFA website.

At the BFI study day on November 2nd I learned that American Honey counted as a British film because it has British directors, cast and the key organisations involved. Andrea Arnold is also famous for producing the film Fish Tank in 2009 at a cost £1.3 million (this is in comparison to Star Wars' budget of £230 million). American Honey's key themes involve young people and their lifestyle, and how they live in the moment in a carefree way, which are themes and issues not normally screened in mainstream cinemas. there were no expensive sets as it was all filmed on location which is very similar to my film as I have used no sets, but used locations that I found. Part of the social realism of the film they used handheld camerawork which gave it a certain style to the film depicting urban youth, which gives it a sense of cinema verite. 

PLANNING: INTERVIEWING OUR CHARACTERS

OPEN SOURCE HERE

I was inspired by the Film Escape website which talks about the book 'Riding the Alligator' by Pen Denham. In one of the chapters of the book he provides a checklist of questions every writer and director show ask themselves when they are developing their characters. I feel as though creating an interview/ text message scenario will allow myself to get the audience to understand the characters personalities in more detail.

In order to pursue with the development of my film production, I decided that it would be a good idea to stage our characters in a interview situation in which they would undergo several questions that would give the audience a better understanding of each character.

I also decided to link the question that were asked to the stereotypical teenager in which they are represented as dangerous, outgoing and in some cases criminal. I have decided do do this as the basis of the film opening is based on breaking the law and danger.

The situation for the interview is going to be Emma who is one of the teenagers entering the mental asylum. When she is in the mental asylum her dad starts sending her text messages making sure she is okay, and the dad starts questioning her telling her to escape. Until the daughter (Emma) does not reply and the dad calls the police.


My Character Interview

One of my central characters in my short film is a mid teenage girl who has entered a mental asylum that is reportedly one of the most haunted places in Great Britain. We decided to create Whatsapp message conversation between the father and daughter to give the audience an idea of what Emma's character is going to be like.

PLANNING: THE TOP LINE AND BIG QUESTION

I recently watched a short presentsation in which I saw Frank Ash who is a creative consultant talk about what audiences want to see. He has taught storytelling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC. I learnt the top line and big question is a very important factor of identification.

My Big Question: Will the Teenagers manage to escape the mental asylum alive?

My Top Line: A group of teenagers stumble upon an opportunity that is life threatening and could haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Our Treatment

A group of young teenagers decide to visit an abandoned haunted mental asylum. Shortly after arriving they notice they made a massive mistake, as all the surrounding walls have been blocked by the spirits who live in the mental asylum and there is no way out. After searching for potential escape routes they encounter some paranormal activity and experience hallucinations, what they don't know is that the spirits that lie within the mental asylum are still alive, and kill. They use a Ouija board in order to communicate with the spirits for clues on how to escape the mental asylum, but if they get the clues wrong. They die. They must work as a team to escape, they must stick together otherwise they will be killed. They must find a way out, otherwise they will be killed by the paranormal activity that haunts the mental asylum. 

PLANNING: OUR TREATMENT

Film Idea No. 1

An elderly women has suffered a cardiac arrest in her house, the grandmothers grandson has asked the grandmas two neighbours to look after the grandmas dog while she is in hospital. The two neighbours are looking after the dog, one neighbour (Alice) is sitting in the living room watching TV meanwhile the younger neighbour (Luke) is playing with the dog in the garden. Suddenly, Alice hears an odd sound coming from the hallway. As she was walking towards the hallway the sound was unclear (almost like a mumble). Once she hears the sound more clearly she panics and sprints to Luke. Luke also hears the same voice but the voice said something different. They receive a call notifying them that the grandma had sadly passed away. They hear a knock on the window as they are being told the news, hey look up to her window and see her ghost staring down at them waving with a knife. 

Film Idea No. 2

A group of young teenagers decide to visit an abandoned haunted mental asylum. Shortly after arriving they notice they made a massive mistake, as all the surrounding walls have been blocked by the spirits who live in the mental asylum and there is no way out. After searching for potential escape routes they encounter some paranormal activity and experience hallucinations, what they don't know is that the spirits that lie within the mental asylum are still alive, and kill. They use a Ouija board in order to communicate with the spirits for clues on how to escape the mental asylum, but if they get the clues wrong. They die. They must work as a team to escape, they must stick together otherwise they will be killed. They must find a way out, otherwise they will be killed by the paranormal activity that haunts the mental asylum. 

RESEARCH: WHY TWITTER IS USEFUL

Twitter
In order to plan for my film for my A level coursework I have decided to create a specialist twitter account for media studies in which I will follow many different account such as UK cinema, institutions and many more, I am doing this as I feel as though it would give me a better idea of how to promote films, sell the film to the audience.

Twitter is an extremely useful social media platform for film, and there are many reasons why. One way in which twitter is a very good social media platform is the speed in which you receive new information about film productions and TV programmes. It is an amazing search engine that harnesses crowds from all over the globe. Twitter is also a very good why to bring strangers together to come up with many different ideas. Twitter can be used for some sort of inspiration as well as it allows you to learn from many great minds and experienced and skilled people. It is also extremely good for brand building, as it allows smaller brands to promote and advertise their products in order to increase their audiences through social media. This is a very clever way to advertise as it doesn't involved any money as twitter is a free social media platform. Twitter is also a good way of getting feedback from audiences and the public about film productions and any other aspects of film in order tweak and improve on future products.

RESEARCH: The Business of Film

Economic and Cultural impacts on film

Throsby's View of the Creative sector

In the Uk, the British film institute and its forerunner the UK film council have published many reports based on the the economical and cultural value of film. A fairly recent report on the economic impact have revealed that film has created a total income of £3.67 billion to UK's economy. Many studies on the cultural impact of film have shown how film can carry powerful political and personal messages, give new insights and views into many different and new cultures and also help reflect our own cultural identity back to ourselves.

Why film matters to the economy?

From the graph it is clear to see that the amount of money the UK have spent of domestic UK films (The Green Line) has been very constant over the course of the last two decades. UK have recently started to create many independent films that are identifiably British such as paddington, the inbetweeners, The imitation game, Mr Turner, pride and Philomela. 

Many of these films receive many different awards at several BAFTA and even some US ceremonies. This is a source of pride for the UK, and is one of these reasons that there are so many different Hollywood stars that are British.

Another increasingly important factor of film and screen production is tourism. Film tourism is a visiting a place that has featured in many different films or television programmes and is getting more and more popular as the years progress. Approximately 840 million of tourism spending by overseas visitors can be attributed to film- included tourism.

Film is regarded as a driver of the other creative industries, in that the film industry is of a high profile and often makes use of the high design and creative skill. In the Uk, film was the first creative industry in which was supported by many film incentives in recognition of its importance.Now Fiscal incentives are available for high-value television, animation, games and for many different types of theatre production.

In most countries all over the world, American films take the majority of the money at box office. UK's independent films only took a total of 16% of the money in 2014. There are absolutely no big British film distributions. American films which are distributed by american distributors take the majority of cinema goers money and the profit from that belongs to the American based hollywood majors. Many different digital devices make it possible for large online firms to distribute it worldwide, such as Netflix, iTunes and Amazon. 

The Benefits of inward investment

• There is a lot of investment in film production in the UK, however alot of the investment is coming from outside of the UK. For Example Star Wars is an american film that was brought over to the UK. The main benefit for this is that there is a knock on effect for investment in skills and other training. 
• All of the studios and a lot of the visual effect companies who are being funded through their work, pass on quite a lot of benefits to independent producers and lower budget filming at a lower cost. 
• The UK has a very supportive funding system, through the tax relief, through ourselves, and the money that its put into film through the lottery. 
• The Uk also has two broadcasters that invest heavily in film production as well. This means that our films tend to do well all over the world. 
• The UK train up filmmakers, producers and on screen talent who move quite comfortably between independent and studio filming, and also who move between UK filmmaking and worldwide filmmaking. 

Thinking about the Value Chain

The word value chain is used in the film industry to describe the series of steps that run from the start of a film production to the very end of a film production. There are seven different stages involving the value chain and they are distribution, development, concept organisation, finance, exploitation, creative packaging and production. The main person who generally accompanies the whole film from beginning to end is the filmmaker until its in safe hands of the distributors. 

The Stages

Development- getting a film idea, and film script, right before the project ‘goes to market’ to be financed.

Finance- each film is financed on its own terms and in its own way. For example major films are able to fund their own needs however for independent films it is very difficult to get sufficient funds.

Pre Preparation- The film is not officially financed. However, money needs to be spent in order to secure key cast and crew, and start to find locations.

Distribution- Distribution is the process win which films are screened in cinemas, broadcasters and video stores. The companies that deal with this stage are called distributors. 

Exploitation- Exploitation is the process in which the consumers actually get to experience the film. The most important exploitation market is through cinemas.