The London Independent Film Festival is a festival which is committed to the independent filmmaker, they have a screenplay contest hosted by them in 2017. Every April they recognize the best new screenwriters their objective at LIFF is to recognize and support new and unrepresented screenwriters, submissions are scored on character development, story, dialogue, structure and originality.
The London Independent Film Festival is open to screenplays in one of the following categories:
-Best international
-Best UK
-Best Sci-fi/ Horror
-Best Short
You can submit the screenplay through a third party that they are associated with called Withoutabox where it information is automatically filled or you can email a completed entry form with the screenplay including personal details, a 1-3 sentence synopsis, contact name address and phone.
Rules are it cannot been previously produced, if it has been written by two or more writers one author should be the designated prime contact, they must be English,
- This is an extract from the 2014 film thriller Night-crawler which deals with a somewhat mental thief who becomes a camera man for the local news station, recording crime scenes. This scene takes place during Lou's first encounter with Nina the women who is in charge of the footage shown on air. From this we can see Nina's character has a very strong,in demand outter presence with her quick short sentences and taking charge of what is being shown for example "tie it in" and "get a quote you know what to do" also she is almost telling Lou how much she is going to pay him. It is evident she is a strong female lead, having Lou almost pine over her "from someone such as yourself" her inner presence tells us that she is very head strong, likes to take command and almost radiates confidence in what she is doing and saying "that the most i'll do" and "I'll help you anyway I can" coming across as stubborn she almost softens up towards the end towards Lou telling him he has a good eye, and you can almost tell by the way she says "that's right" she is giving Lou that confidence boost.
From the script we can see Lou's character development throughout his cocky confident outter presence almost drops when he is intimidated by how confident Nina is, he starts off by demanding ten thousand then settles for one thousand, the scene direction telling us that he is standing there alone looking around gives off the isolated loner impression then he is thanking her for even giving him an opportunity- a gateway into this industry. The use of dialogue helps establish the type of characters each of them are, and how they interact with each other discovering that two over confident personality's necessarily wont work well together, Lou having to dial it down to give a good first impression to her - One of the short films I chose to analyse was called 'Butterflies in My Head (Bipolar Shortfilm)' It is a short film about a girl who has bipolar, and how she eventually learns to use her mood swings to create. From a screenplay perspective the dialogue throughout the short film is used as a voice over, with visuals and shots which connects with the dialogue for example when she talks about falling in love we see shots of her on the beach and in bed with her boyfriend, showing happy emotions. There is also a lack of dialogue which creates this restricted narrative for us, the scene where they fight about 2 minutes in we see him smoking and a time lapse of her shouting. We do not hear what she is yelling at him but the fed up tired expression on his face and the anger on hers tells us enough, the voice over tells us her experience of her mental disorder saying how she feels like "she's lost everything" with counter acting black and white shots of her throwing things around the room and screaming. The scene directions in this script would be vital because the only dialogue that we have is the voice over, also the boyfriend in the short does not have any lines that we can hear, only restricted. So the actions both characters do are most important to bring across their relationship.
Audience research
For my screenplay I built a survey on surveymonkey so I could receive feedback from my target audience, my short film would fit both genders with having both male and female main characters and not having any typical gender norm themes within. Because of the nature the age range would definitely be above the age of 17, with things such as death and mental illness also with things such as two- sided narrative and psychological aspects the younger age range would find it difficult to understand and hence have no interest in it.
I pitched my idea to the class and my peers and Sean gave me feedback on the story, what they liked about it and any questions they had, most of the feedback I received was questions about what exactly the storyline detailed as it came across as quite confusing to other people.
Below is a slideshow detailing all of my survey results from the questionnaire I sent out, the feedback was good it gave me the confidence that people would be interested in my short film from the favourite genre question (that being my genre). And people enjoying a confusing ending and dark themes within, also the majority of people who answered my questionnaire watching over 5 short films meaning they would show a general interest.
Research into themes, locations and characters
For my short film the main theme is really a psychological, mental health battle with aspects of a virtual reality alternative universe theme throughout. I wanted the theme to be based around Man vs. Himself my character Dannie is struggling with his mental illness, his ex- addiction problem and the fact that he has an estranged family and is currently unemployed due to being made redundant.
For the mental health aspect of my short film I done some research at https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/mental-health-problems-introduction/types-of-mental-health-problems/#.WUD_eRPyvow
This website gives a brief introduction to different kinds as evident in the film he struggles with a lot, from an obvious depression and separation anxiety, also severe psychosis and BPD, I also looked on the NHS website for information on Psychosis so I had enough knowledge to not ruin or offend anyone with my writing. http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/psychosis/pages/introduction.aspx
For characters I looked into existing media texts so characters that I knew from films or TV shows that were similar to Dannie, two of the characters that I used to inspire mine was first Donnie Darko from the film Donnie Darko (2001) he is a teenager who's been under psychological attention and medication. He starts having vivid dreams and finds himself interacting with a bunny like costume character called Frank, this happens the night a jet engine falls into his house throughout the film we find out he's in an alternative universe a time vortex to say. This inspired my character because of the nature of this guy, being on medication from having Psychosis and dealing with self and family problems this greatly relates to Dannie from the mental illness and the estranged personalities.
Other media texts I grew inspiration from was an episode of Black Mirror focuses around a guy Cooper who hits up for a quick job — testing a video game that manifests your darkest fears — to earn cash for a ticket home, are more than accommodating. I found this element intriguing because it explored the deeper-rooted issues at bay, with cooper having ignored his mum throughout due to his dads recent death of Alzheimer’s which is a recurring theme appearing during the dark twist at the end. Also the 2013 film Enemy it is a psychological thriller which has two meanings to it, it deals with a professor who watches a film recommended by him and sees an exact look alike of him and tracks him down and becomes a stalker, this is the plot that the audience see but it is not how it is meant to be. The main character Adam is actually a victim of psychosis and deals with these two lives and split personality and its driven his wife away and effects his work life, my main character is a mix between Adam and Cooper both very different personality wise but merged together form the ideal character for my film
For locations I wanted the main location to take place on a big sea front, with some cliffs and rocks nearby to cause waves crashing also for the high street and village scenes i would use a small nearby village with hardly any occupants to give the isolated and lonely film, making the character stand out alone. I thought possibly Rushmere in Carlton Colville there are many small back alleys with big fields and small houses, for high street scenes I would use parts of Gorleston high street during a cold weekday to yet again bring across the dark and isolated theme we wouldn't want hardly anyone in shot.
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