PLANNING: INTERVIEWING OUR CHARACTERS

Open source HERE

For my character in my film opening entitled Gone, we decided to give our protagonist a questionnaire in order to develop his character further. We looked at an article written by Charlie Sierra about such questionnaires, and he quoted a book written by Pen Densham (an Academy Award nominated filmmaker) entitled "Riding the Alligator". In one of the chapters in the book, he provides a check list of questions every writer and director should ask of themselves when they are developing their characters. The purpose of this is to outline a deep understanding of your characters for both the actors and director, and for motivating your character’s choices or actions.



As my film opening features only one character in a world without anyone else, we decided that rather than a questionnaire interview, we would use a video diary of our character asking himself and answering the questions as if he is communicating through the camera to anyone who might find it, which is a creative way to handle the questionnaire whilst still keeping with the solitary theme of the opening


Script:
DAY 10: 10 days since everyone disappeared. I've been running out of the food at the house and i'm going to have to find more. Everyone must come back. I don't know why they're gone.




DAY 37: 37 days since everyone disappeared. I've been looting the food from the supermarkets. Still no sign of anyone. I'm starting to lose hope that anyone is out here and that it's only me.




DAY 70: 70 days. All I can think about is my family. Where did they go. I'm so sick of living this life. No one is going to come for me. I'm going to die here all alone.




DAY 99: I've managed to recover slightly from my mental relapse. I might finally start to get used to nobody being here. Local food supplies are starting to dwindle though, and more and more animals are appearing around the area. Never hit me how tranquil it all looks.




DAY 112: My fires have certainly improved since this all started. I hunted for the first time, yet it felt strangely empowering to have killed the animal. Poor thing. It's been tough adapting to this world on my own, but I think that I can finally make a life for myself here.

RESEARCH: DISTRIBUTION

Distribution is the process in which a film reaches the hands of a theatre chain, broadcasters, video stores and video on demand (VoD) operators. The companies that do this are called distributors. In general a producer uses a sales agent to license a film to distributors outside the producer’s own country. As I am making a film opening, I would look to a distributor to distribute my film (but because it is a student film, I will have to use social media) I looked at the FDA website as well as the Business of Film course to learn about distribution, and from these websites I learned that the film business is very heavily product driven. The FDA website laid out the main points of distributors challenge like this:

- identifying its audience

- considering why they'd go and see it

- estimating the revenue potential across all the formats of its release

- persuading exhibitors to play the film

- developing plans and partnerships to build awareness of and interest in the film

- aiming to convert as much interest as possible into cinema visits

 

Essentially, distributors have to make sure that a film reaches its desired audience, which it does by way of digital and conventional screenings,  managing cinema exhibition and DVD sales, releasing teaser trailers and posters, as well as utilising Social Media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter for a film that help to spread awareness of a film to its Target Audience. In order to gain a better understanding of Distribution's role in the Film Industry, I watched an interview given by Stuart Williams, the Deputy Managing Director & Marketing Director of Sony Pictures

 

From my research into the Hollywood Big 6 and other big studios, I learned that big budget films have a wide range of distribution strategies at their disposal. Examples of this include TV spots, theatrical trailers, billboards and prints. I had already noticed from my own interest in film how distributors drew my attention to films, such as London Has Fallen, as I had seen billboards and a trailer. However, low budget films like mine can struggle to find any distributor at all. I did a case study on the distribution of Tortoise In Love, having discovered that the BFI's P & A fund stepped in to help them distribute their film, rather than using one of the Big 6/s distribution companies (as the film was not involved with the Big 6, rather being a microbudget film relying heavily on word of mouth)


Gareth Lowrie of NBC Universal explained the campaign to his audience at the FDA. He taught us that he had worked on the marketing campaign of Jurassic World, which was extremely successful as it turned out to be one of the top 10 highest grossing films of 2015. He explained to us that the importance of Viral Marketing was key to the success that Jurassic World had at the Box Office, as well as through event marketing such as when Waterloo train station in London was filled with props rom the film and was decorated like the theme park depicted in the film in order to reach a large amount of people and fill them with wonder at the scope of the film, thus leading them to go and see it.

After researching many aspects of film distribution, I decided that for my film opening, I would choose Vertigo to distribute my low budget film, as Vertigo's ethos is to "create and distribute commercially driven independent cinema" as well as to nurture new talent, thus making it perfect for my independent character driven film opening

PLANNING: TREATMENT

A train returns from London and we see a man in a suit sitting in the train whilst the camera is in a close up of his face. As he stares forward there is a close up of a briefcase or mysterious package he is holding in his hands. There is then a flashback to the same man standing outside a skyscraper in London. He is then seen approaching a spy who is holding the same package and murders him, taking the package and running off. This then cuts back to the train as it reaches the protagonist's stop. The camera then follows him out of the train and down a street until he is stopped by mire government agents who corner him and force him to get into a car which pulls up to Claremont. As the protagonist is forced inside the Mansion he is dragged into an Office with a very important member of MI6. The senior executive then asks him what he thinks he was planning to do with the case. He refuses to answer. The executive forces the bodyguards to write a tally into the protagonist's arm. After a small conversation about the package, the protagonist is knocked out and wakes up on the same train going to the same platform hours earlier as if it were a dream. He then looks down, but sees the tally on his arm that has been marked on his arm hours in the future.