With my first initial draft of the plot outline completed now I began to think of the framework that would accompany such a document if I were to actually attempt to pitch and sell the feature to a potential buyer. I began to look into the desired target audience for my film – which I have now firmly decided is being named ‘Witnesses’ – and how that would affect its popularity, and whether or not the film would be seen as profitable by a potential buyer.
With the film’s dark subject matter in mind I always envisioned the feature itself to be a mature affair, and whilst writing and researching into the topic and characters I aimed for a predominantly male audience of 15-35 years old. This meant that I could appeal to the largest proportion of UK cinema audiences, a platform I was aiming for with the film gaining a theatrical release, as 29% of cinema goers in 2015 were within the ages of 15 and 24 (BFI, 2015). The BFI’s handbook on film audiences for the year 2015 proved incredibly useful, I found that as my film features action in the form of comedic gore, and due to its darker subject matter by film will be more popular with male audiences too, as males tend to make up the majority of audiences for films that heavily feature violence.
Even though it’s a British film set in a spectacularly British town, I feel as though the plot and theme throughout the film is universal in its simplicity. Even with that in mind though due to the inherent society in which the film is based the film would stand less of a chance in doing well in terms of box office as ‘55% of the world’s box office’ is taken over by ‘American Films’ (Friedmann, 1995, 55). This is due to how large of a percentage the American audience takes up in terms of distribution, and how other cultures and countries often struggle to translate into the mainstream.
Friedmann’s book also offered a few rules to follow in order to try and achieve success with a film for American audiences including:
– ‘The Average American Movie contains approximately two-thirds of the dialogue of the average European Movie’
– ‘The Average American Movie scene is approximately half the length of the average European Movie scene’ (Friedmann, 1995, 56).
As ‘Witnesses’ features extensive use of dialogue throughout and only a handful of scenes within its entire running time, it would seemingly be doomed to fail in making much money over in America upon distribution, which would make it a difficult script to sell to a large company such as ‘Universal’ or ’20th Century Fox’. Instead, I propose a smaller, more UK-centric distributer and production company in the form of StudioCanal (Canal+, 2017), that way the company can focus more on a marketing and release plan within the UK. The film itself is so small in scale (the majority of the second act takes place in one location) that budgetary concerns would be minimal with such a project. The majority of effort would most likely go into set design, props and potentially gore effects for the film’s final third, and even then old techniques such as animal organs from local butchers and cornstarch and red food colouring would be a good place to start practicing such effects.
The film’s dark comedy genre will also help it attempt to tap into the ‘cult’ market, allowing for companies like Studiocanal to earn more from home release sales as more people view films from DVD/Blu Rays than theaters (BFI, 2015). In theory, this would all help in pitching the film and getting it funded, as it backs up the idea that ‘Witnesses’ could bring back a profit. Similar dark comedies released under Studiocanal such as Four Lions (Morris, 2010) released under ‘Optimum Releasing’ (a branch of Studiocanal) made a small profit and garnered critical acclaim despite an unconventional and controversial topic whilst remaining quintessentially British.
Bibliography:
BFI (2015) BFI Research and Statistics: Audiences. BFI. Available from http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-statistical-yearbook-audiences-2015-2016-08-25.pdf [accessed 22/02/17]
Friedmann, J. (1995) How to make money Scriptwriting. UK: Boxtree, 55-56.
Canal+ (2017) StudioCanal: About Us. London: StudioCanal. Available from http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-statistical-yearbook-audiences-2015-2016-08-25.pdf [accessed 22/02/17].
Morris, C. (dir.) (2010) Four Lions [DVD]. Optimum Releasing.