PLANNING: INTERVIEWING OUR CHARACTERS

I read this article by Charlie Sierra, where he refers to award winning Pen Densham, he mentions about how to get to know our characters. We are going to do character interviews so we get to know the background story of our characters and our film. He writes about how we should think of it like a questionnaire which the characters need to fill out. For our film we are going to interview the girl character from the Dad, so we can see the turn of events that happen.

My Character Interview

One of the main characters is a teenage girl, so for this we decided to use a What's App message interview between her and the characters Dad. Here he shows anger about asking where she is and is worried. She replies saying where she is and that she is just trying to have fun. This then turns badly 

as she then realises she is in danger. Here are the screen shots from our interview

RESEARCH- BIFA

I have been following the nominations at the  BIFA this week, especially since I have been introduced to the film American Honey since seeing the trailer at the BFI on a study day given by Rob Miller on An Introduction to the film industry in November 2016.

https://www.bifa.film/awards/film/american-honey

I am interested in American Honey because of some similarities of this film and the film we are making ourselves. At 2.7 million pounds budget it was not expensive to make, it featured almost unknowns except Shia LaBeouf. It is promoted as defining our generation according to the website. 

I first saw this film at the BFI. I learnt that American Honey counted as a British film as it had a British director, Andrea Arnold. and cast and the key organisations involved. It is an example of a BFI funding model. The director also made the film Fishtank which was funded at a cost of 1.3 million pounds in 2009, (compare this to Star Wars, which was 230 million pounds). American Honey's key themes involve young people and their lifestyle, and how they live in the moment in a carefree way, which are themes and issues rarely shown in mainstream cinema. In addition there were no expensive sets as it was shot in location, as the same for our films. Part of the social realism was created by its camera work: the film was hand held, exploring the urban youth, which gives the cinema verite. 

There are similarities between the film I will be making and American Honey, because ours will be low budget, with unknowns and taken on locations.