Research Dossier

Cinemagic Film Festival:

Cinemagic is an international film festival for young people based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was established in 1989 and over the years it has developed a worldwide reputation for excellence in children’s programming and is currently the largest award-winning children’s film festival in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The festival includes international film screenings, movie premieres, industry Q&A’s, discussions, competitions and master classes in all aspects of filmmaking. Cinemagic is an annual, competitive film festival presented by Cinemagic Ltd., a non-profit media arts charity dedicated to programming and exhibiting international film and television for Young People. The Festival now in its 28th year, is the largest film festival for young people in the UK and Ireland. This competition will take place in many venues near Belfast with satellite events in selected towns throughout Northern Ireland and the UK. The competition has a deadline for entries on July 24th. There are two sections which can be entered to, they can either be entered into the feature films for over 60 minutes and under 60 minutes for a short film. I am entering into the short film section. Whichever section someone is applying for, the competition states that it must be suitable for an audience of youth (under the age of 25).

https://filmfreeway.com/CinemagicFilmFestivalBelfast

Slug line:

This is the setting of the shot. This will tell you whether the shot is interior or exterior along with the location and time of day. Often the scripts will say either day, night or time of day rather than a specific time unless it is needing to be specified.

Scene directions:

These are the screen directions and actions that are happening in the scene. This will tell you what is happening in the scene and will say things such as movements or visual acts that dialogue cannot show.

Dialogue, Character Cue and Actor Directions:

The characters name must be in capitals and the name must be above what that person is going to say in the centre of the page so that there is a clear distinction between the person saying the dialogue and what they are saying. There can often be a way in which the person will be saying this dialogue above it in brackets. This will be for certain pieces of speech where they may need to specify. An example of this would be if someone was running then stopping to talk to someone, they may have to specify that the person is saying it whilst out of breath. Example:

MARTHA

(Heavily breathing)

how did you do that?

Transitions:

This small direction on the bottom right side of the end of a scene shows the type of transition what will be happening in between the two shots. There are many types of transitions that can be used to go to the next scene however, the most popular ones are the Cut, Fade, Wipe and Dissolve. These transitions are all used for different effect in the production. Cuts are used for commonly putting clips together. Fades are used to either show the passing of time or to end or bring in a scene softly and at a slow pace. A wipe is for more of a comedic or wacky kind of film however, it is commonly used in some serious films in walk-by transitions. Dissolves are used throughout both films and series and are often used to show the passing of time similarly to the fade.

Development of character:

This first page shows that "Martha" is a very sociable person and is very close with her family. This is shown through outer presence when she has a lot of her family calling her in the morning. 

This extract of the script shows all three. Inner presence is shown when it says facing another day at work. This suggests that she does not enjoy work and instead puts up with it. This also shows that she feels very insignificant when it says she is just another face in the crowd. The "hold on this" context shows that she will be an important character in this as it holds on her instead of the crowd or another person. As it holds on her, it shows she must be important to the story as it makes her stand out. The only outer presence in this is saying that she is 23 years old. 

Dialogue:

This conversation in the script is a good example of juxtaposition of the characters and their conversations. One character called Martha is talking about their plans for the evening whereas her sister Tish is talking about the rain outside. This shows a good use of dialogue through how Martha continues to talk about the evening and shows little attention for both her sister and her colleagues concern for the rain. Juxtaposition is where two people are placed together to create a relationship meaning. The juxtaposition in this scene shows that one person is talking about their plans for evening because she may be trying to avoid the conversation about there being rain outside. This is the subtext behind it, which means that it is the hidden meaning behind the text which is not actually stated in the text.

Scene Directions:

This is a good use of screen directions in order to introduce the character to the audience. This starts of with clear imagery that give you a way to picture the camera blur and stetting.  This is also good screen directions in the way that it shows who the main character is going to be just through camera movements. This shows that Martha will be the main character when it focuses on her after saying that she is just another face in the crowd.

Referencing:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/doctor_who_3_ep_1.pdf

I like this short film as it is quite clever in the way that it is constructed. The dialogue is very vague and leaves most of the work to the scene directions and actor directions. The storyline is mainly shown through flashbacks which slowly explains the story as it goes on. The dialogue and scene directions explain a story without properly saying what is going on. This film is also very appealing in the idea aspect.The way that this film tends to tell the film through a switch between the past and the present is a very good layout and the way they have executed it through the girl being normal and the girl then being the controller. The way she has so much power and they need her but she just wants a normal life with her boyfriend is interesting as it allows you to see both points of view and understand each. This also maintains a sense of mystery throughout the story line until it is all finally clear at the end.

This short film is very well made. The story line was interesting and made me maintain interest throughout the whole film. This is clever in the way that it shows the main characters in this are good men in an unfair life. The main character is shown to only be wanting money to pay for his house and his family. This film is aestetically pleasing as it has very good shots and visual effects. The characters inner presence is very clever as it starts the short film with him looking after his possible younger brother and his possible mother/grandma, this shows he is a good person. This story shows how badly people with "powers" are treated, throughout their low class and very low pay. When the main characters are cheated out of the pay that they had agreed on it makes sense on how it all builds up from being discriminated against and then being cheated out of money.


Create your own user feedback survey

This is the survey which I have used to receive some feedback on my film idea. I used a questionnaire to get feedback on my ideas on my short film concept. These are the results:

I originally planned to have this production in a prohibition era but then later realised that a scene where a mobile phone is used, will mean that I am unable to use this era so will instead have this production take place in the early 2000s so everything is not as technologically advanced however, just enough to have mobile phones with photo attachments.

Themes:

The main theme for the screenplay is the theme around gangsters, because through out the entirety of my screenplay the characters and their actions are based around being a gangster, which is a person who is involved with a group of people or a "gang" and the are mostly involved in organised crime, some of these gangster became famous like "Al Capone",  who got famous for being a gang leader, which I will draw inspiration from for the boss character of my screenplay. Another theme would be the characters, especially the main character as the inspirations I got for most of this is from "Live by Night", which I talk about more in the influences section, but the most of the characters in my screenplay will be based off characters in that film to make the characters in my screenplay, act like them, as that film did an amazing job making them act and talk like gangsters would in that era. With the Locations theme is exactly the same as the characters which is based on the place used in the film "Live by Night", the location being in the Boston area in the era of early 2000s. This is a great location as well because Boston is known for it's gangs especially during the prohibition era, with it mostly being the Irish and Italian mob that controlled most of Boston, so this will fit perfectly with my screenplay as the main character's gang could be one of them and use historical events from the gang's histories in order to add some realism to the screenplay if possible.

Influences:

I have had many influences for my screenplay across both locations, themes styles and films. The main inspiration for my idea is the film "Live By Night". This is a film set in the prohibition era where alcohol was banned and gangsters found an empire based around rum. After watching this film recently, I feel that this will be the perfect setting for the gangster which I will be having for my screenplay. I also liked the smart outfit gangsters with class over the modern gangsters which i also feel will be very fitting for my screenplay. For this screenplay, I would like an olden day gangster setting and feeling to it which means I will have to have a heavy use of costumes and props. However, this look can be easily made through colour grading. A location I feel that would work well for this production is my friends house as his downstairs is a converted bar which could easily be made to look like a working bar again. This would be good for my setting of the bar scenes which is a large amount of the screenplay. As his house is divided into two sections through a toilet in between it means there are two different sides to the bar, one with a pool table which would be very suitable for the opening scenes in the bar where they are playing pool and the other side when they go in to confront people about who has grassed on them. I also took inspiration for the walking along the river scene, similar to where they are driving down a river in a boat in "Live By Night" from a location at the side of the ASDA bridge in Great Yarmouth. This has very nice sunsets which are very similar to the ones in "Live by Night". I have also looked up old school gangsters for outfit/costume ideas.



Another influence for my script is a film called "Legend", which is about the British gangsters, The Kray Twins, and how they rose and fell from power in London and the different crazy stuff that happened in their lives in between that. The reason for this is the mainly the same reasoning behind the main influence of "Live by Night", with the way that they dress and act and because the one of the main location of the screenplay is the bar both "Live by Night" and "Legend" have good scenes for that, but "Legend", goes further with its bar scene making it unique and I will use that in order to get the same feeling with my screenplay and this is also the same with there fight scenes as "Legend" does have a creative fight scenes which I will use as inspiration when writing the fight scene in my screenplay.

Bibliography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangster
https://list25.com/25-extremely-notorious-gangsters/5/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Hill_Gang