Creating a film

As a group we were given two audiences that we could pitch a film idea for, they were infants or African-American men. We chose to make a film for the African-American men audience because it was a bit different than making a children’s film, at the same time it was more challenging to come up with ideas that would attract that very particular audience. We did take some time to think of an idea but then we all had watched the American film ‘Freedom Writers’ in school and thought it could be a good idea to make a similar British film that would attract a different type of audience. As a group we decided to set our film in the college that the ‘ The Inbetweeners’ is set in, Ruislip College. We chose this college because people who watch the show would recognise it, and also we could hold the auditions there so the actors/actresses could get use to the set before we started filming.

The college gets shut down due to too much gang violence between five different groups. One of the teachers at the college tries to create peace between the groups by taking a member from each gang and getting them all involved in a project to get the college back open. As the project meetings go on all the members of the different gangs feel as one, but on the night before the college is due to re-open one member from one of the gangs shows their true feelings towards ‘making peace’.

When we were choosing directors, editors and script writers we thought that it would be appropriate to use the same director as ‘Freedom Writers’ (Richard LaGravense) and the same editor and script writer of the film ‘Remember me’.  

As our film was given a budget of £5 million we have used new and up-coming actors and chose to do open auditions so get the cast of the film. Seeing as our funding has been given to us by a tax schemes company we do not have to pay any extra tax on the film which could have lowered our budget by 17.5% or more.

Director – Richard LaGravenese, £2m overall

Editor – Andrew Mondshein, £10,000 a week [10 weeks]

Location – Ruislip College, £100,000

Cinematographer – Barry Ackroyd, £50,000

Cast – Open Auditions, £50,000 overall
- Venue: Main hall at Ruislip College [place of filming]

Script Writer – Will Fetters, £50,000

Plus the below the line costs, amounting to a maximum of £100,000