Latitude at Creative England

This year, Creative England is launching a series of Crew & Facilities Get-togethers around the country.  The aim of these networking events is to bring together Crews, Facility houses, BBC & ITV employees and Production companies across the the Film, TV and Digital sectors.

You might be a Production company looking to find a new member of the team, a student looking for contacts to find an internship or a crew member wanting to know what production opportunities are going on in your region. Everyone is welcome.

This is the second event of 2012 so myself and a few others from the Latitude crew will be heading to Birmingham next Thursday (23rd February) to have a wander about talking to professionals in the industry (and promoting our film to them!). Primarily we hope to gather a list of contacts and get people involved in the film, or at least knowing about it. The event will take place from 6.30 -9pm.

More on Creative England can be found here:

http://www.creativeengland.co.uk/film-support/filming-in-england

Iceland Profile Photo

Today I had my portrait photograph taken for my role as First Assistant Director for ‘Snowblind’. Bellow is my profile photo.

That’s the way the cookie crumbles…

Too cheesy?

Latitude: Press Photo Shoot

We have recently contacted Alex Roache, the external press and media relations officer at Coventry University, in regards to getting our film in local news around the West Midlands. We have handed Alex our press pack who will be writing up an article on us in the next few days and today the Latitude crew had their professional photo shoot. We should shortly have our names in local papers, so look out for us!

Here are a few photos taken on an iPhone during the shoot:

Newspapers we are aiming for currently include The Coventry Telegraph, The Coventry Times, The Warwick Times, The Birmingham Post and the University paper Source. This is of course just for starters, if all goes well we aim to push the boundaries further and get the film known on a more national basis.

Latitude: The Crew (Updated)

Snowblind Treatment

A psychological thriller set on a desolate, icy road in Iceland. A young female struggles to come to terms with her disaterous mistake. She chooses to hide her dark secret, but is haunted by the memory of what she has done. In short we follow Elin, a depressed alcoholic with a past unknown to us. But there is someone else who knows her secret, and wants revenge…

Final Media Product – Latitude: Presentation

The Crew: Video

Here is a short video of some of the key roles involved in the making of the film. This was filmed in our ‘meeting room’. As you will see it looks brilliant with the right lighting set-up.

• Peter Woodbridge – Director.
• Mick Le Mare – Producer.
• Adam Davies – 1st AD.
• Sam Soane – 2nd AD.
• Jame Humbles – DOP.
• Rebecca Pittam – Executive DOP.
• Alex Hacking – Camera Op.
• Richard Neal – Editor/Casting.

Latitude: The Website

The website for our film is currently in development. Click on the about section for more details.

http://www.lattitudethemovie.com/

 

Final Project: Latitude Feature

For the past few months we have been meeting for the California Road Trip in large numbers, however recently it has become apparent that maybe have not been so heavily involved in the project so we have set up a CORE team which includes the main key roles for the project. It is our heavy involvement within the project,  these roles which will be classified as our FMPs. I am 1st Assistant Director.

After many discussions in our secret cave/basement storyboarding room beneath our University building we have come up with a detailed story for a film, with plot twists and in depth character representations. In short, it is a feature length film which follows two geeks across countries to search for the ultimate technology, through the form of geocaching (see earlier video). They encounter many situations/characters along the way that either aid or seek to destroy their mission.

Pitch

Here is the pitch for our film, which can be found on our website.

Title: Lattitude

Logline: Two tech geeks go on a quest for the ultimate piece of technology in a Lord of the Rings for the Google Generations.

Max and Percy, the unlikely heroes in our story, are tech geeks through and through. As best friends since school they spend all of their spare time, and much of their work time, involved in a modern day treasure hunting game called Geocaching- in which participants use GPS to hide and seek containers that are hidden across the globe.

Percy (mid 20s/early 30s, overweight) is an awkward IT man, he works in a computer store, and thinks he knows everything- with character traits based on a Windows PC.

Max (mid 20s, stick thin, better looking) is a hipster-geek-apple-fanboy who worships everything Apple do- and has many of the characteristics of the brand he models his life by. He claims to be a blogger- but really he is on the dole.

Their best friend, Linux, died in a mysterious geocaching incident and while out retracing the geocache mission that killed him- they are visited by a ‘technological God’ (whose character is modelled on Steve Jobs) who tells them about a piece of awesome technology that was created in the early 1980s out of the experiments of the Homebrew Computer Club.

This piece of technology is so powerful, and dangerous, that he had to hide it from the human race back in 1983 (when he departed Apple). The world just wasn’t ready to deal with its consequences and until now the secret had been hidden- and was known only to a few.

The problem is, that since that time, a few other ‘evil’ companies (Google and Facebook), with their hearts set on technological domination and power- have rediscovered the secret and want to find it- so that they can use it to take over the world.

As the chosen one’s, Max and Percy must stop them by going on a modern day treasure hunt- that spans two continents- to find a series of hidden objects that will unlock the code to the greatest piece of technology the world has ever known.

Context

The story portrays just how much we rely on modern technology to guide us. There is a section in the script whereby they are rendered unable to use thier geeky devices and they have to discover things for themselves. Being the nerds they are they cannot come to terms with this reality and are driven apart. As the plot of the film progresses, we will see the two friends fall out and it raises the concerns of friendship values and how they truly need each other, though they have their differences. The symbolic ‘Apple’ will have references throughout, as well as technology-related puns and in-jokes such as “Percy you take forever to wake up” etc. The use of character representations being personifications of well known technology should enable the audience to interact with the characters.

Distribution

The finished film is guaranteed to be shown at the Third Year Media Production Degree Show in June, which is to be held at BAFTA in London. As well as this it will also be shown at the Coventry event venue around the same time. I’ve also had a look at London Independent http://www.londonindependent.org/ and Zero Film Festival http://zerofilmfest.com/.

Budget

We have been Granted £300-$500 per person for our trip. This all depends on the numbers we have. But we currently have around 9 people thoroughly involved, coming to a total of £2700-£4500 coming off the cost of the film.

• £8000 flights (9 crew 2 actors).
• £1500 equipment costs/insurance.
• £3850 catering (10 days for 11 people ~£35 a day).
• £2500 hotels.
• £1000 car hire.
• £500 petrol.
• £250 script editor (unless we get Clifton on board).

The total budget comes to around £18,000.

Sponsorship and Fundraising

This section is vital for our film to be developed it the way we envisage. Currently we have had a response from Jaguar willing to provide transport while we are out there and we have heard back from ByBox http://www.bybox.com/ who are willing to put in some money for the project. We are thinking we could perhaps use their product in one of our scenes, as well as label them in the credits at BAFTA for their advertisement campaign. We have also contacted Geocaching themselves who are supportive of the project however will not be offering us any money towards the budget. We still have a couple of months to raise the money, and we are in the process of producing documents to send to more companies related to our film such as TomTom, Sony, Apple and even Google. This will be done within the next few days.

A Bit on Geocaching and California Road Videos

Here is the link to the Geocaching website. The focus of our storyline.

http://www.geocaching.com/

This is an in depth guide into what Geocaching actually is for those of you who are unaware of it:

Here is the road we will be aiming to travelling along.

And another of the scenery and locations we will be encountering: