Welcome

Welcome to the IndieGoGo campaign for our film 'BLUE'. Thank you so much for taking the time to have a look. Like many projects on this platform, this film has been a labour of love from the beginning, and we are incredibly excited to begin this journey.

In order to bring our story to life, we are looking to crowdfund the majority of our budget and it would be amazing if you would join us on this journey.

BLUE is the story of two fishermen, John Winter, and his son, Charlie, who are struggling to make a living on their small commercial fishing boat. Their relationship is tested and they must both overcome challenges in different ways.

Writer's Statement - 'David Smith'

The screenplay has taken me over a year to complete with many, many coffee shops and a lot of sitting by the sea but I can't explain how happy I am with the current draft - and as a writer this is a rare feeling. Writing this screenplay has been by far the most challenging for me to date, not because of structure or length, but mostly because of the characters journey; it needed to be right, to feel right, and it took a while to get there. Character is one of the most important factors to me in a story, and trying to figure out each individual inside your own head, who they are as a person, what's their struggle, passion, personality, arc is all as important as each other, but having that bouncing around in your thoughts and trying to put that down on to paper can be very draining. Anyone who has ever attempted to write a screenplay, book, story or article knows that writing is a discipline, and I myself have a love/hate relationship with writing, and I know some of you will relate to that.

Over a year of writing and we have a finished draft that I am so proud of, and I honestly cannot wait to begin filming and bring to life the most passionate project I've ever worked on.

First and foremost, the most important aspect of any film should be the story, to connect the audience to the characters, to capture an audience and take them on a journey. One powerful way of achieving this is through the visuals.

Through the moodboard below we are portraying the visual style for this film. The entire film will be shot in the Southwest of England and we really want to capture the beauty of this part of the UK. 

As shown in our campaign video, we have produced a range of shots for concept purposes. This should give you not only a general feel for what the film will look like aesthetically, but also giving you an insight into the overall tone and atmosphere of the story.

All of the stills in our moodboard will have a huge impact on the final look of the film. One factor we think is important to the visual identity of this film is the aspect ratio in which the film will be captured. If you look at the above images, they all have one thing in common: They are all shot in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 or similar. This is important as it will allow to us show more within a single frame and capture more information on screen, compared to a more common aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

Pre-Visualation and Story Boards

For some select scenes we have begun the process of putting together some pre-visualisation sequences. This will help us plan and develop our shot list, blocking of scenes, initial editing decisions and allow us to be as prepared as we can for when we come to principle photography, because, as we know, filming doesn't necessarily always go as smoothly as we hope.  

A look at some of our pre-vis can be seen below:

Below we have designed a location moodboard using real locations we would like to use for the film. These are all locations situated in the South West of England, including locations in Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall. Some of these locations have been confirmed, others are still pending due to dates, permissions, finances etc.

Setting

The main backdrop for our film will be the beautiful coastal fishing town of 'Cadgwith Cove', located in the Southwest of England. This small, quaint, character-filled town is really the perfect setting to tell our story.

Below there are some images and videos to introduce you to this beautiful place:

Our crew have a range of industry experience and each one brings value to the production. From the director, to the concept artist, every individual involved has the passion and drive for this story and cannot wait for it to be transferred to the big screen.

In 2019 we produced our very first feature film which was made for only £7,000, this film was a massive achievement for all of us and is called 'Bear', which can be found on Amazon Prime and has over one million minutes streamed to date.

We premiered the film in late 2019 at a multiplex cinema to a packed out auditorium:

Roles and Responsibilities

Casting

We are in the midst of compiling our cast together, in total there are 12 principle characters within this film, main and supporting roles. The story follows our two main protagonists John, and his son, Charlie.

John Winter - Paul Breen

Paul is a wonderfully talented actor, classically trained at drama school and early on in his career was lucky enough to work around the country touring multiple theatre productions. He also has experience within Film and TV. This is where I met Paul and we then went onto make a feature film together, with Paul in the main role. So pleased and engrossed in his performance I actually wrote ‘Blue’ with Paul in mind to play the main protagonist, John. After we shot some test footage it was even clearer to me that Paul was the perfect man for the job. I’m thrilled and excited to be working with him again and cannot wait for you to see what he will bring to this new, challenging role. If this wasn’t challenging enough Paul is also taking on the role as one of our producers, so not only is he giving his all on screen, but off screen also.

In total we are asking for £5,000. This will be the minimum we would need to produce this film.

This money will help cover the costs of:

- Location Rentals - Some locations will be sourced locally and will be given to us for free (Friends/Family etc), but there are multiple locations which require a fee e.g. Protagonists House, Town Hall, Local Pub, Market Stall etc.

- Equipment Rental - Lenses, Rigs, Lights and Sound Equipment.

- Travel and Accommodation - Majority of shoots will be local but there are two locations that will require travel and accommodation, one of these we will be staying at our location.

- Food and Services - Everyone knows that a hungry crew is an unhappy crew, so we do intend to provide craft services on the majority of our shoots.

- Costumes - There are some specialist costumes for this film that will need to be bought/hired.

- Rental of Boat - We will be hiring a small fishing boat for the necessary scenes. We have already found a boat which we think is perfect and we have permission from the owner, and we are now just waiting for dates and finance until we can commit (this boat can be seen in our test footage).

As a thank you for your donation/pledge, there are a variety of different rewards available to you. This could be a copy of the screenplay, a T-Shirt, a Screen Credit and more! Have a look below for a summary of all the rewards:

Thank You!

Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to look at our IndieGoGo campaign. We are super excited to begin filming this story and bringing it to life. We hope that you will join us!

Here we go!

Risks and challenges

As with any project that is being made on a lower budget there will be added/more risks. £5,000 is a very modest budget for what we are trying to achieve, but in the hope of putting some reservations at ease our last film was a feature film and was made for £7,000, we were very proud of the film we had created and is available on Amazon Prime and we have had over one million minutes streamed to date. As well as the funds we raise from crowdfunding we will be putting as much as we can of our own finances to help towards the costs of production. Another huge risk during these times is the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, yes we are moving in the right direction but as we plan to begin filming January/February there is always going to be an uncertainty regarding regulations and restrictions. To hopefully help us in the event of any restrictions being placed we have some contingency locations that are available to us, these locations being a closer distance to us.