Research Dossier

Submission of work

One UK based screenwriting competition that young writers can enter scripts into is the BBC writers room. Some of the rules/guidelines of this competition are that it must be a minimum of 30 pages (excluding title/character pages). Writers can enter either individually or as part of a team of a maximum of two people. As well as multiple submissions not being aloud or re-submissions, and scripts cannot be written in other languages other than English or come from overseas. One of the prizes has been the opportunity for a radio 3 or radio 4 drama commission, or a pilot commission for a radio 4 comedy.

Source - https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunities/script-room

Another screenwriting competition is the ITS flash short story competition, some of the rules/guidelines are entries must not exceed 500 words, excluding title, headers and footers. They must be in the form a short story written in English and entrants may enter as many stories as they wish, but each story must be submitted separately including separate entry form and fee. The prizes for young writers include a cash prize depending on what place they finished in as well as a gift voucher for book illustration and publication.                                                                                                                                         Source - https://givemechallenge.com/its-group-flash-fiction-short-story-competition/28350/

A UK based commissioning body that will accept unsolicited scripts is the BBC, this can be entered by submitting via the online proposal system BBC pitch. If an idea matches there commissioners strategy they may ask for further development, then at the right stage discuss the right channel.

Research (for an idea, once conceived)

Some primary sources that could be used to gather specific information for a script include photographs taken, things such as letters and diary's, and government documents.

I have watched a couple of films and as they are fictional and I'm looking out for certain aspects like narrative techniques and cinematography, this counts as being a primary source. By doing this I can make by idea go further in improving it and filling in any plot holes that may be there.

Some secondary sources that could be used to gather specific information for a script include non-fiction books or autobiographies, journal/news articles that comment on research, and dictionaries and encyclopedias can be used.

The secondary source that I have used was a news article to get my original idea which was based of the story that the article had written about. What the article wrote about may not have even been completely true but it gave a good starter point and idea for me to then add further on to it and make it into a more interesting story.

Lockdown Screenings

I watched 3 films during lockdown that relate to the idea I have come up with, which have all given me some inspiration to take away. The first film was The Cabin in the Woods where the most similarity is and what I will take most inspiration from is when the group of friends are looking around what's in the basement of the cabin and they are all looking at different artifacts/objects, and whatever one they kind of open and the group is around it, activates whatever monster is linked to that item come after them. The aim being to kill off each member of the group by the end of the film. This then inspired me to look and go into slightly further depth with the antique shop seen in my screenplay. 

The second film I watched was Drag me to hell  which was about a woman who was cursed to go to hell in three days time for "shaming" this older lady. She then is spending a lot of the film trying to find ways to rid of the curse and when she thinks she has at the end it turns out no she was mistaken. So from this film I want to take the the ways in which she is looking for different ways to get rid of the curse and add those ideas to my own. 

The last film I watched was Final Destination which is about a group of students and a teacher who manage to cheat death because of a vision the main character had at the start of the film and in consequence of this Death comes after them. They then figure out a pattern in the order they are being come after and carry on to find ways to cheat no realizing its a cycle every time. So from this I could possibly take an idea similar and link it with the inspiration I want to take from Drag me to hell. 

There is also a TV show that I am currently watching called Heroes which is about a group of people with different abilities. One of those characters has another version of herself that lives within her which is kind of an evil version, and they are able to see and communicate with each other through their reflections. This being very similar to the reflection idea that I had so I could take some slight inspiration from this. 

Prepare material (for your own idea, once conceived)

The advantages of primary sources are that its original material so it hasn't had time to be misinterpreted by outside parties, as well as being generally able to be tracked and attributed back to the original creator, giving more weight to the points being refereed. The disadvantages of primary sources are that they can be incomplete or unusable, when you rely only on primary sources you are also relying on your knowledge and interpretation.  

The advantages of secondary sources largely address the disadvantages of primary sources. As secondary sources aim to expand upon the material in original sources, they can help provide a lot more context and meaning. The disadvantages of secondary sources is that you are viewing the original materiel through the lens of a different writer or content producer. Their experiences and biases will color how the information is presented. Secondary sources are unreliable as primary points of evidence. Instead there are better served as sources of commentary and interpretation.

Source - https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/grammar/writing/primary-vs-secondary-sources.html

The material that has been most useful for my idea was searching online 'weird news stories' to help me get some inspiration to come up with the idea, from different things that people have experienced and been reported. As well as when we had a class discussion to talk about all of our ideas some information that was shared there was very helpful for me to be able to expand my idea much more, rather than it being just a very basic idea of what it will be about. Something else that has also recently helped to give me ideas to expand my idea and improve it, is watching films that have a similar sort of
idea to what I have come up with. This has helped to give inspiration to add extra details into my idea that were previously missing.

Some of the information that I have disregarded is from when I first did the research to find my idea which was finding a news article, which was more based on technology and that's what my original idea was mainly going to be. But after a class discussion I have decided to drift slightly more away from that original idea and have decided to go done more of an ancient objects sort of direction, more classical.

I am managing any new information I have found in a note on my phone, where it is all organized, and I can easily add things, etc. whenever I need to. I tend to keep everything in short sentences that I understand as well as keeping it all in a bullet point kind of format so its easy to read.
  I find this to be an easy way to take notes as I always have my phone on me or nearby. Further research on what I have written down can then be taken place when I want to look further into ideas later on. The main notes that I have been making have been if any ideas have came to me at any point or if watching something has given me some sort of inspiration.

In my script proposal I made some changes in terms of how things were layed out and mainly the overall presentation of the slides. In the narrative overview slide I put 3 different pieces of writing onto one slide which was way to much as well as it not having any pictures. I then separated it all out into a couple more slides with added images on all of them. For both appeal and in terms of it being clearer to read for anybody looking at it.