COMPANY: Civica Scuola di Cinema
CLIENT: Hypothetical investor (training)
TASK: Production and layout
SOFTWARES: Adobe Illustrator, PowerPoint
SECTOR: Film production
The last exam of my film production course at Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti consisted in writing a “dossier” that explained every detail of a short film in order to convince a client to buy it. The dossier was combined with a final speech in front of the director of the school, all professors and students.
The team was composed of four students from the production course and other four from the film script course. The screenplay we analyzed was “The legend of the pink rhinoceros”. The final speech was held by one writer and me, as spokeswoman of the group of production team.
This training was an important educational experience for me and very challenging. The case study had lots of “obstacles” and we wanted to limit the budget to a reasonable amount without any waste.
We discussed creativity and production issues: the length of the story, the target of the short film, the possibility to adapt to a different format, the distribution, to write down a realistic business plan, the style of the animated sequences and the original soundtrack, the locations choices, an hypothetical crew list and casting.
All that without forgetting the whole mood of “fairy tales” the author wanted to convey: and that’s why, as a professional graphic, I did the layout of the dossier like a children book. Even the page about the budget was “softened” by a floral graphic.
I learned that the key point in explaining a film to investors is that you have to be sure to convey the emotions of the script well: you can talk about the weirdest creative idea of the world, but if you are coherent, and convince them you can actually solve any problems just sticking to facts without lies, than what is left is just make them picture exactly how great it would be and that you can make it succeed with them.
It will feel like giving a wand in their hands and making magic into reality. That’s the irresistible power of the cinema and storytelling.
I’m used to giving speeches since my degree in product design, where I had weekly project expositions, and after so many years of acting courses I feel pretty confident in standing up in front of an audience, and in this case it was also fun to do.