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