Creating A Film

In class, we were given a task to come up with a pitch for film idea. The better the film, the better the teachers funding for your film would be. However, there were two target market groups you could aim your film at: Infants or African-American men. We went for African-American men. At first we had to discuss what we thought the interests of African-American men might be and then this gave us a stimulus as to what our film could be about. After a few minutes of "err"ing, we thought it'd be a good idea to create a British version of the American film "Freedom Writers" as that would intrigue a similar kind of audience as to what we were aiming our audience at. We had to come up with all of the above the line and below the line costs and find out how much exactly everything costs.

The basic summary of the film is as follows: There is an awful lot of violence caused by gangs in a college to a point where the college is shut down. There are five different groups, some split by race, others split by class. There is one teacher in the school who see's an opportunity to complete a project by taking one member from each of the gangs and making them work together. The project goes well, things are clearing up and gangs are starting to be civil with one another. The college, after a year of hard work form this teacher is finally due to reopen. But the night before the college reopens a single member from one of the gangs shows their true colours and sets hell loose with what he really thinks of making peace.
For this idea, we got £5 million. Which, we soon came to realise is not a lot of money. However, we were given our budget by a tax schemes company so we have no extra taxations which could have lowered our profit before by 17.5% or more.
We thought a good start would be to use the college that "The Inbetweeners" use - Ruislip College. We thought this would be an ideal place to film and to audition people as it would make them familiar with the set they would be working with in the near future. Obviously, the budget is low, so we would have to use new, upcoming actors and actresses.
When we were deciding on directors, editors and script writers etc. we thought it'd be appropriate (and cheap) to use the same director as "Freedom Writers" (Richard LaGravenese) due to his know how of these sort of films and the same editor (Andrew Mondshein) and script writer (Will Fetters) of "Remember Me".


So, overall, our budget spending looks like this:
Director - Richard LaGravenese, £2million overall

Editor – Andrew Mondshein, £10,000 a week (10 weeks)

Location – Ruislip College, £100,000

Cinematographer – Barry Ackroyd, £50,000 overall

Cast – Open Auditions, £1,000,000 overall - Venue: Main hall at Ruislip College (Place of Filming)

Script Writer – Will Fetters, £50,000 overall

Plus the below the line costs, amounting to a maximum of £1.7million