Research Dossier

I have researched online for different places to enter my short film into a competition and i have found a website called "Blue Cat Screen Play Competition". This is where i will be entering my short for competition.

Here is what there website logo looks like.

The main reason i have decided to go with this competition is simply because blue cat is a great competition for young writers who would like to be found as screenwriters and develop their skills. Blue cat offers opportunities to every young screen writers such as myself. It works by a writer submitting there screenplay into the website and blue cat will pick winners which will be entitled to a prize, in this case money. Also another good thing about blue cat is that the winners original screenplay will be out for others to see.

Just like any other competition there are obviously rules that everyone must follow.
Here is a list of rules i have taken from there original website.

  
Obviously there are other rules that we must follow too, such as how to enter the competition, the cost, and also meeting the deadlines. Again i have found this list on their website.

 Looking at the entry deadline for this competition is very unlikely that the time i have is enough to write my script and have a final draft by then. However i am determinate to submit my script into a competition so i will have it ready to go for next year competition.

Before starting to write my own script I decided to have a look at someone else script to analyse. This is just to ensure I am doing the writing properly. I went to BBC website and went on the writers room where i have found a lot of scripts to choose from when examining. I decided to go with a script from Mark Brotherhood, named "Worst Year Of My Life Again".

Script example from The Writers Room (evaluation):

Outer presence:
This is seen as the exterior of the character. This is what creates the firsts impressions of the character and its surroundings. We are not given many outer presence on this script but we can find a little of it at the start of the script. looking at the script and Alex actions we are given the impression that Alex is not very old, i would say on his 13/14 years old. And by the name we assume that its a male.

Inner presence:
The inner presence is created by the characters interior, an example would be their attitude. We are given some inner presence from the start in order to get us involved straight way. The writer tells us about the shooting covers which already tells us a little about his attitude and gives the impression that something is about to happen. The he tells us that Alex has "a big grin on his face". This is already getting connected to the characters feelings. It shows us that he is happy for some reason or he is in a good mood. The fact that the writer tells us that is a special day already lets us know why he is so happy.

Context:
The writer immediately starts with a context by describing what Alex has on his room. He tells us about the "calendar alarm clock" which tells us the the exact day of the year. We also know about the bed and wardrobe and the upturned plug in which Alex steps on it. We also see a radio in scene which then starts playing and announces a something very important.

Dialogue:
From the script above i particularly like this bit of dialogue:

It is a short bit of dialogue but i think it says a lot, especially about our opening character "Alex". The fact that Alex wakes up all hyper and and jumpy gives the audience an impression that he is happy and something especial is about to happen, however we as an audience don't know what it is. When reading this peace of dialogue we already start to have ideas. Alex anxious reactions to the dialogue gives makes it obvious of whats happening. Without the script say we as an audience get the feeling that it is Alex's birthday. It is then confirmed to the audience that it is Alex birthday when Samantha wishes him happy birthday.

Here are two examples of my favorite 10 minutes short I have found online.
This is a 10 minutes short presented by iQlik Movies. It is called "7 Minutes, Every Second Counts".


This is a shorty story of a normal hard working man who had his daughter taken as hostage. He then faces a series of challenge in which he has 7 minutes to do each one of them. His last challenge was to suicide however when he was about to his daughter comes running to him with a letter from the kidnapper who explains why he has taken his daughter. The reason was simply because the man had had an accident where he was driving drunk and killed the kidnapper's daughter. The kidnapper wanted the man to fell the pain of losing a child.

Act 1- The set up: We have an establishing shot of a man fixing his motor bike. From the first shot the audience can already tell that the man is from a poor country, because of the old styles motorbikes and cars, and also the poor living conditions such as tends and dust in the air. As the opening scene starts we also hear the man's  mobile ringing at the same time.

Plot point 1- This starts from the moment the man picks up the phone and finds out that his daughters life is in trouble. Because of this we now know that this man will be the protagonist of the story and the man behind the phone is the antagonist. The man gives him seven minutes to complete a task otherwise his daughter dies. Based on this information we get the feeling that the film will be an adventure film where the protagonist has to go through series of problems to accomplish something.

Plot point 2- This is when he gets to the last stage of his adventure to find his daughter and realizes that he might not ever see her. Once he finds out the antagonist once again calls with more sets of information he has to follow. This time he had to kill himself by jumping from the bridge.

Act 2- Confrontation: This is when the man was standing at the top of the bridge bracing himself to jump in order to complete his last task. He was confronting the antagonist by completing his adventure.

Act 3- Resolution: When he was just about to jump his daughter runs to him calling for his name. He grabs her and ensures she is safe. She gives him a resolution letter in which explains why this was done to him.

Again this is another ten minute short in which i quite like and enjoyed watching. It does not have anything to do with what i actually intend to do but i think the background story is strong and powerful. This ten minute short is called "10 minutes" by Ahmet Imamovic.

This ten minutes short is set in two different locations, it begins in Rome where a tourist is looking to get his photos printed in 10 minutes. He then goes out to have a cigarette. We then cut to a different set, this time in Sarajevo. The story there is about a young boy who goes out to get some water for his family. While he is out the city is attacked, by the time he returns home he goes sees the horror of his all family dead. What makes this story so powerful is that 10 minutes for some is long time, for others is short time. The time it took the tourist to have a cigarette, it was the same amount of time that killed hundreds of people. A lot can happen in ten minutes.

Act 1- The set up: On this short we have two set ups in different places. First we are shown Rome back in 1994. We as an audience we see a tourist taking pictures and wanting to reveal them. We are then taken into a different set in Sarajevo where we see a poor family living in the middle of war. Buildings and roads are all destroyed. Based on the date

Plot point 1- This is when his parents get him to go out and bring some water fro the family so that they could eat.

Plot point 2- This is when the story changes pace from slow to fast. Everything was fine and all of a sudden the boy has to face, bombs, gun fires, and grenades. There town was under attack.

Act 2- Confrontation: This is when the protagonist, in this case the boy faces or confronts his horror. He runs home in the middle of the war to find out his family had all been killed.

Act 3- .Resolution: This story ends much different, we do not see a resolution for the second story about the little boy however we cut back into the first story where the tourist is given his photo that had been done in 10 minutes. At the same time that the town was all destroyed.

Audience research:
Having done all most of the research and gathered enough information to start writing my own ten minutes short i only had one more research to take in consideration, which is audience research. I first dropped down ideas about my ten minute short. I then resumed my idea into a page long pitch. I then pitched my idea to my class and teacher. We then discussed good and bad sides of my idea, we also look into whether this could be made in a 10 minutes short. My story is about bullying, however because the characters are around 11 years old demographically my primary audience would be around the same age, both male and female. Because bullying is so common today at such young ages psychograpically I think most of my primary audience will be able to relate to the story.  Getting feedback from audience such age was pretty impossible for me. However because the story was about bullying at young age some people around my age who had experienced it before could relate to it and give feedback. The feedback i got from my class was enough to get me started.

Themes, location and characters:
When witting up my script i did take in consideration that I may not be able to make this as getting hold of the characters, themes and locations would be not impossible but improbable. My story is based in London, however i could still film most of the scenes around my area as they mostly happen indoors. One of the problems is that my story involves a whole class of 11 years old in middle school. I would have to film at a middle school with students from that school around that age, during my college time meaning it is also their school time too. This would be very improbable. Another scene is set at a hospital room, again I would find this very difficult to do as i would have to find a free room at a hospital and get legal permission to use it. When writing it i did take in consideration that i might of been able to get permission to film at a near by hospital called "James Paget Hospital". Other scenes were set in places such as houses, I could use my own house to do this. And parks, i could also use a park near by as we have plenty around Great Yarmouth, such as Saint Georges Park.

My idea
I originally got my idea for the story from a book that i came across when i was still in Portugal. I must of been around 10 years old and at time it was one of my favorite book although there was a collection of them around 8 different book that one was my favorite. The book is called "Cherub- O Recruta", This was written by Robert Muchamore. When i red this book it was in Portuguese however i have found a copy of it online in English.
It was not the whole book that influenced me into writing my story, it was just a short scene that had happen early in the book where it demonstrates that bullying is never acceptable and can sometimes end up bad for both the bully and the person being bullied. I found this scene quite touching as I knew a person who had gone through a similar situation.
I done some research online and have found that bullying is very common at young age, it tends to start at around 8 years old sometimes even earlier than that. Children all around the world start suffering from bullying at young age. Bullying can vary, it maybe be physical, verbal, social exclusion and even rumor spreading. My idea is to show young children that bullying can result in bad situations that they may never had though about, or even had intention of it happening in such way.

With my story i am hopping to reach into most children heart and reduce the number of bullying. It is said that 70% of all children have experience bullying in some way. And also 1 million kids suffer from bullying every week. These figures are ridiculous especially for such a young age. Knowing this influenced me a little more into writing a story that may bring good in children while they are still young and innocent and reduce bullying.