This year for part of our filmmaking assignment, my class will be entering the Kodak Commercial Awards. This is a 16mm film competition where a number of students from the UK compete to create the most creative and professional commercial following a brief. This year there a three different briefs from three different companies to create commercials for, at the minimum we need to do at least two commercials or we could even do all three, depending on time and quality.
The three briefs came in recently and each client is hugely different from the last. The first client is Scunci UK, they have a product called the Scunci InstaTwist that is an electronic hair tool that helps create braid effects. They are looking for a 30 second TVC that communicates the fun, cool nature of the brand and is aimed towards their audience of girls who are teenagers to early 20's. Upon first glance I was initially put of by this brief, but after been given time to think, this brief offers room for a lot of creativity and gives experience at working to a brief where I'm not the client and not making something for myself.
The second client is Go Outdoors, the UK's largest outdoor retailer for equipment used in camping, walking, cycling and climbing etc. They're looking for a commercial that is aimed towards anyone who enjoys The Great Outdoors and anyone who could or should as well. They want to communicate how fun and rewarding all these activities can be and that Go Outdoors is the place to get your professional equipment at great prices. It should be a confident, encouraging and fun commercial that shows all the important activities that Go Outdoors caters for. The first impression for this brief is that this will be a fun, outdoors shoot that will look great on camera, but looking further into it, many of the ideas for this are just so grand and epic and without any of the important equipment from Go Outdoors, it might just be too big for us to take on at the moment. I think weather or not Go Outdoors can supply us with equipment may make or break this commercial.
The third and final client for the commercial briefs is Think! the road safety campaign. Due to an article from The Daily Mail claiming pedestrian mobile phone injuries have doubled in the past five years, Think! want to make a film to make people stop and think about their behaviour when walking along streets looking at their phones. The audience for this is huge because everyone is guilty of doing this and although Think! want to get across the seriousness and the danger of this situation, they are also allowing room for comedy with how irritating this can be to over pavement users. The key is to show how dangerous this is or how much their missing out on by been sucked into their phones. The idea for this commercial is very open and allows for a lot of creativity, I'm drawn to the more comedy aspect of commercials and films so this helps me play to my strengths in many ways if I can find the right idea.
All three briefs offer the opportunity to make a creative and professional commercial and I'm so happy were been given the chance to maybe work on all of them. It very much comes down to which commercials can we make the best and execute with the highest quality. After we pitch ideas, this will become more clearer.
Sunday, 27 September 2015
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Filmmaking- Film Initial Ideas
After just returning back from summer and starting level 5 on the Creative Film and TV Production course at university, the first lesson back with our new timetable is Filmmaking. With the two new pathways that were introduced we had the choice between Digital Production and Filmmaking, I choose Filmmaking and this first lesson was to just introduce us to our new briefs and what we should expect and what is to be expected from us this year. Once we understood what each brief entitled and what we would be producing, we were asked to just briefly right down some quick initial ideas for any films we might try to write or create this year. We then went round the table with everyone sharing one or a couple of their ideas to see which ones stood out and got the room talking about it. These are a few of my quick ideas I wrote down.
Film Initial Ideas-
TRASH- Trash is a short film about the broad stereotype that is trash. It explores how people are viewed and what it means to be trash, some people embrace the term trash such as punk rockstars and also filmmakers who create trashy movies (Johnny Rotten and John Waters). Trash can also be used as a demeaning term to make people feel bad, because of maybe the wear people dress or if they don't have a lot of money. Trash would follow the story of two students who have recently started education in either college of university, these students will be the opposite of each other. One student will have moved out and living somewhere and struggling to get by and have a job, whereas the second student will be continuing to live at home and not struggling or working thanks to their parents. The first student will be judged for what they wear and how they look whereas the second student will be favoured upon greatly due to having nicer and more socially acceptable clothes. Then the story will start to examine how they act and how they treat others and show how the first student is much more caring and appreciative to people and life whereas the second takes things for granted and treats people mean because he thinks he's better than them. The film will try to show as much as possible between these two characters and allow the audience to decide at the end on their own definition of Trash and which if either they think is classified as it.
Critics- Critics is more of a feature length film idea that revolves around these three critics who are best friends. A film critic, a restaurant critic and a hotel critic, who once a year schedule one amazing weekend a way together because their jobs happen to cross over. They use this to their advantage to get away from wives and girlfriends and get a free weekend a way at a fancy hotel, with an normally expensive but free meal at a high class restaurant and finished off with a movie premiere. The plot is still under construction cause there needs to be something happening throughout this weekend or something to go wrong but still undecided.
Untitled Journalist/Political Drama- A more recent idea I had follows a young journalist who receives a tip from a source that this business tycoon turning politician is laundering money out of his companies. The politician of course denies all claims and tells the journalist to stay away. The journalist begins investigating and manages to get records of the companies income and spending expenditures and sees the missing money been moved to an unknown account. He then takes this information to a established newspaper/ news company to see if they would be interested in the story, a second journalist sees interest in the story but knows he needs more evidence, he points the first journalist to a man who might be able to see who owns the account and where the money is going. It is discovered that the account has been used or draws similarities to an account used by a hitman and that the politician might be trying to assassinate someone. The journalist has to uncover weather this is true and who the target is before its too late.
Film Initial Ideas-
TRASH- Trash is a short film about the broad stereotype that is trash. It explores how people are viewed and what it means to be trash, some people embrace the term trash such as punk rockstars and also filmmakers who create trashy movies (Johnny Rotten and John Waters). Trash can also be used as a demeaning term to make people feel bad, because of maybe the wear people dress or if they don't have a lot of money. Trash would follow the story of two students who have recently started education in either college of university, these students will be the opposite of each other. One student will have moved out and living somewhere and struggling to get by and have a job, whereas the second student will be continuing to live at home and not struggling or working thanks to their parents. The first student will be judged for what they wear and how they look whereas the second student will be favoured upon greatly due to having nicer and more socially acceptable clothes. Then the story will start to examine how they act and how they treat others and show how the first student is much more caring and appreciative to people and life whereas the second takes things for granted and treats people mean because he thinks he's better than them. The film will try to show as much as possible between these two characters and allow the audience to decide at the end on their own definition of Trash and which if either they think is classified as it.
Critics- Critics is more of a feature length film idea that revolves around these three critics who are best friends. A film critic, a restaurant critic and a hotel critic, who once a year schedule one amazing weekend a way together because their jobs happen to cross over. They use this to their advantage to get away from wives and girlfriends and get a free weekend a way at a fancy hotel, with an normally expensive but free meal at a high class restaurant and finished off with a movie premiere. The plot is still under construction cause there needs to be something happening throughout this weekend or something to go wrong but still undecided.
Untitled Journalist/Political Drama- A more recent idea I had follows a young journalist who receives a tip from a source that this business tycoon turning politician is laundering money out of his companies. The politician of course denies all claims and tells the journalist to stay away. The journalist begins investigating and manages to get records of the companies income and spending expenditures and sees the missing money been moved to an unknown account. He then takes this information to a established newspaper/ news company to see if they would be interested in the story, a second journalist sees interest in the story but knows he needs more evidence, he points the first journalist to a man who might be able to see who owns the account and where the money is going. It is discovered that the account has been used or draws similarities to an account used by a hitman and that the politician might be trying to assassinate someone. The journalist has to uncover weather this is true and who the target is before its too late.
Friday, 17 April 2015
Professional Studies- Primary Research
To enhance the credibility of the report and to make it more relevant and personal, I'm conducting a short questionnaire that features questions that are orientated towards screenwriters. This will give me a better idea of the answers I can form in my report and will help build up my research. There are many different services you can use to conduct a questionnaire, the popular services seem to be SurveyMonkey and GoogleDocs. I used GoogleDocs to develop my questionnaire because I already have an account with Google and I'm more familiar with their layout and services. The questionnaire consists of 8 Questions and range from multiple choice to written answers. I distributed the questionnaire on various different screenwriting forums to reach the audience I need for the responses, some of these included, Empire Magazine Forums, Screencraft and Reddit/Screenwriting. The results are compiled and processed by Google and offer two different ways to view them, either through graphs and charts or just a table of the responses. I expected a better response for the screenwriting forums but ended up with limited participation from them with only 26 responses in total. I was able to view these responses and calculate the percentages of the answers and include them in my report to back up some evidence that is in the report. The primary research was definitely worth doing and helped support views and answers in the report but I think I need to research better was of distribution or distribute it way earlier than I did.
Link to questionnaire:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10_SOZ1s86drB2NTHXuuZ8skY1L45kqI7mTncq0bxwDc/viewform
Link to questionnaire:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10_SOZ1s86drB2NTHXuuZ8skY1L45kqI7mTncq0bxwDc/viewform
Monday, 13 April 2015
Professional Studies- The Hollywood Blacklist
While researching historical events in screenwriting's history, I came across a hugely influential and important issue in the development of modern screenwriting as we know it. The Hollywood Blacklist is a term used describe the events that happened in the late 1940's - late 1950's where screenwriters, actors, directors and even musicians were denied employment because of their suspected political beliefs. A blacklist of names was created making employers aware of which individuals not to employ and this directly damaged the careers of many screenwriters and directors working in the film industry at the time. The main political belief the blacklist targeted was those in membership with the communist party. A group of ten screenwriters and directors were citied for contempt of congress and blacklisted after refusing to answer questions about their alleged involvement with the communist party. This group was known as The Hollywood Ten and consisted of:
This helps show that screenwriters have been struggling throughout time to sustain their career and events like this make it harder and harder for them to become successful, providing evidence for my report and backing up my assumptions about the screenwriting business.
- Alvah Bessie - Screenwriter
- Herbert Biberman - Screenwriter and director
- Lester Cole - Screenwriter
- Edward Dmytryk - Director
- Ring Lardner Jr. - Screenwriter
- John Howard Lawson - Screenwriter
- Albert Maltz - Screenwriter
- Samuel Ornitz - Screenwriter
- Adrian Scott - Producer and screenwriter
- Dalton Trumbo - Screenwriter
This helps show that screenwriters have been struggling throughout time to sustain their career and events like this make it harder and harder for them to become successful, providing evidence for my report and backing up my assumptions about the screenwriting business.
Professional Studies- Useful Reports
To help build evidence and key points to prove important issues raised in my report, I thought it would be useful to search for existing reports to are relevant to my topic of screenwriting and that could be used in my report. I previously looked into writers guilds and discovered they publish yearly reports on the organisation and a report called "Schedule of Minimums" that look into the minimum salaries for writers. There annual report on employment and earnings can be found here:
http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/annual_reports/annualreport14.pdf
This report includes important statistics that will be useful to my report, like the amount of members who are reporting earnings from screenwriting.
Another interesting report I discovered was developed by BFI (British Film Institute) and looks in to the film industries statistics and the film economy in the UK and international. They also offer a statistical yearbook that looks back at all the films of the year through the important numbers they generate. These reports can be found here:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-research/reports
A company by the name of Film L.A. Inc have a report into feature film production in 2013 and has numbers on the amount of films released and the popularity of filming locations which may prove to be useful in some parts of the report and should be considered just in case. This report can be found here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Embeds/2013%20Feature%20Study%20Corrected%20no%20Watermark%5B2%5D.pdf
Of course as well as these reports, I will be conducting my own primary research by developing a questionnaire and distributing it across screenwriting forums to achieve the best responses that will help my report. The questionnaire will have important and relevant questions that are personal to the report and the results will be used to argue its case in the report.
http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/annual_reports/annualreport14.pdf
This report includes important statistics that will be useful to my report, like the amount of members who are reporting earnings from screenwriting.
Another interesting report I discovered was developed by BFI (British Film Institute) and looks in to the film industries statistics and the film economy in the UK and international. They also offer a statistical yearbook that looks back at all the films of the year through the important numbers they generate. These reports can be found here:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education-research/film-industry-statistics-research/reports
A company by the name of Film L.A. Inc have a report into feature film production in 2013 and has numbers on the amount of films released and the popularity of filming locations which may prove to be useful in some parts of the report and should be considered just in case. This report can be found here:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Embeds/2013%20Feature%20Study%20Corrected%20no%20Watermark%5B2%5D.pdf
Of course as well as these reports, I will be conducting my own primary research by developing a questionnaire and distributing it across screenwriting forums to achieve the best responses that will help my report. The questionnaire will have important and relevant questions that are personal to the report and the results will be used to argue its case in the report.
Professional Studies- Writers Guilds
I've begun research for my report which is focusing on the successfulness and sustainability of screenwriting. I've decided to look at writers guilds and associations first, to understand how they work and why they are established. There are many different writers guilds but the three main well established guilds that appear most are:
The purpose of these writers guilds is to represent and support writers working in media, they negotiate agreements with studios and employers that cover contracts, minimum fees, advances and royalties.
The WGGB offers full memberships to writers who have accumulated 8 membership points. The way a writer can manage to get membership points are:
Web links:
- WGAW (Writers Guild of America, West)
- WGAE (Writers Guild of America, East)
- WGGB (Writers Guild of Great Britain)
The purpose of these writers guilds is to represent and support writers working in media, they negotiate agreements with studios and employers that cover contracts, minimum fees, advances and royalties.
The WGGB offers full memberships to writers who have accumulated 8 membership points. The way a writer can manage to get membership points are:
- For each single piece of written work of any description for which reasonable payment has been received under written contract, in terms not less favourable than those existing in current minimum terms agreements negotiated by the Guild (where such agreements exist) - 8 Points
- For each single piece of marketed written work produced or published commercially other than under the terms of the previous paragraph- 4 Points
- For each completed year of candidate membership (up to four years) - 1 Point
- For each self-published work- 1 Point
http://www.writersguild.org.uk/join-new/fullmembership
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_Guild_of_America,_East
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_Guild_of_America,_West
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers%27_Guild_of_Great_Britain
Professional Studies- Successful Screenwriters
With it getting close to start my upcoming report I decided to gather some basic research that will become helpful when I start my in depth research. The report is focusing on screenwriting and turning it into a career so I thought it would be best to look into some of my favourite screenwriters and some popular screenwriters to see how they started out and how often they create and sell there stories and scripts. Also to look into some screenwriters who have wrote popular and successful films who haven't wrote any scripts after that. I've also found that screenwriters tend to transition into directors as well so theres another aspect to the career for those who turned into screenwriters/directors and those who are only screenwriters.
Screenwriters to look into:
Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) - Transitioned into director
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers, Star Trek) - Writing Duo
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) Writing Duo and Directors
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights) Writer/Director
Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction) Writer/Director
Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball) Writer- Film & TV
Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) Writer/Director
John Logan (The Aviator, Rango) Writer
Highest Paid Screenplays:
Deja Vu - Terry Rossio and Bill Marsilii- $5 million
The Long Kiss Goodnight- Shane Black- $4 million
The Sixth Sense- M Night Shyamalan- $2.5 million
A Knights Tale- Brian Helgeland- $2.5 million
Screenwriters to look into:
Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) - Transitioned into director
Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers, Star Trek) - Writing Duo
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street) Writing Duo and Directors
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights) Writer/Director
Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained, Pulp Fiction) Writer/Director
Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball) Writer- Film & TV
Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) Writer/Director
John Logan (The Aviator, Rango) Writer
Highest Paid Screenplays:
Deja Vu - Terry Rossio and Bill Marsilii- $5 million
The Long Kiss Goodnight- Shane Black- $4 million
The Sixth Sense- M Night Shyamalan- $2.5 million
A Knights Tale- Brian Helgeland- $2.5 million
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