Film Idea's

                                                      Idea for short film

Idea 1 (chosen Idea):

A group of 17 year old photographers pitch up for the night in a seemingly haunted forest. As the night progresses there are a number of extreeme hallucinations shown with lots of dress changes such as cowboy features etc that randomly appear on everyone (they are under the influence of acid in the forest but it isn't directly shown at the early points of the film), As they "trip" in the tent they are all encountering actual "hauntings" from the forest. Whilst they are being haunted they also beleive to be under attack from a few different types of mutated human figures although this has been their imagination and because of the acid, which at this point you see being taken. Throughout the film I would try and script it so that the viewers perception is dynamically changed with the characters as they hallucinate, strongly suggesting which parts are real and which are hallucination as it progresses.

                                                      Research Plan

If I chose this idea I will have to research the effects of Acid on a human to check the accuracy of my references. I would have to lookup avaidability of certain props such as contact lenses to make pupils appear dialated and how safe they are to use. I would also have to research haunted woods and create a bit of backstory that the characters can speak about to increase tension.

Generally in Hollywood new scriptwriters are found through an agent, so a scriptwriter will often seek one through various services such as the WGA.

WGA stands for the Writers Guild of America, it is a very valuable tool for scriptwriters attempting to obtain an agent, including a list of available agents (http://www.wga.org/agency/agencylist.aspx). The process for television is also similar.

 

“Ever since the war France's cinema industry has been heavily backed by the state. Artistic merit was one criterion. Much of the funding for this aid came from a 10% levy on tickets - meaning that Hollywood, which always dominated the French box office, was subsidising its French counterpart” [2]

When writing a script it is important for the scriptwriter to consider carefully if they will be breaching existing copyright when producing the script.

For instance the court case around “Finding Nemo” (Walt Disney -2003) has been criticised for copying “Pierrot Le Poisson Clown” (Pascal Kamina -1995). Although Disney denied the claims [1] there are several plot elements and character similarities (main character and supporting characters) that are very similar. Pierrot Le Poisson Clown was said to have been distributed in screen treatment form around French production companies much before finding Nemo. 

sources:

[1] http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/3840185/ns/today-entertainment/t/author-claims-finding-nemo-plagiarism/

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/may/05/filmnews.film

Writers role in the Production Process of a Feature Film

The script writer  is responsible for producing a written form of the entire film making process. This starts with a spec produced  by a screenwriter, (this is self financed) and is for sale to a production company or with a producer commissioning (paying) a screenwriter to write the screenplay based on a concept. This could be a range of things such as existing media or a novel, story, play or poem .

Not all screenplays are published, just because they are well written and well structured doesn’t guarantee anything will ever be good finished but it is still vital in the production process. Some company’s such as the BBC have been slandered for “threatening the livelihoods of writers and independent drama producers.”. [1]  The claims say that the time scale between an idea being thought up and then actually commissioned could be up to 2 years! This process can be derogatory for writers and related companies that financially rely on this commission. The claims say that “the situation was being compounded by clauses in BBC contracts which prevent scripts being taken to other broadcasters”(quote [1] ), this is of course then detrimental as the BBC hold the contract from others and could leave you stuck for 2 years then just reject it anyway.

The screen writer is considered the centre of the script writing process although it is still team work from other aspects of the film industry such as: Writers Agents, Script readers, Producers, Development Executives, Script editors and lastly Directors.

[1] http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/21492/gannon-accuses-bbcs-commissioning-process-of - Published Wednesday 6 August 2008 at 15:15 by Matthew Hemley

Joe faulkner