Research Dossier (screenwriting unit)

It can be very difficult for younger, less experienced writers to get into the industry, there are a range of competitions that are accessible, in one country or internationally, that give young writers opportunities, some examples of these are:

BAFTA Rocliffe Competition

They have different competitions for different genres that run throughout the year, for example, Drama, comedy, writing for children etc. The competitions are only open people who live in the UK. all entries receive feedback. Although the entry fee is £42.
BAFTA. 2020. BAFTA Rocliffe Ne Writing Competiton. http://www.bafta.org/supporting-talent/rocliffe. [accessed 3rd April 2020]

Channel 4 Screenwriting Competition

This contest is run by channel 4, 12 writers will get an idea of how the TV industry works. The prize is to develop your script with a professional script editor. After developing your script Channel 4 may option it for 6 months, this contest is free to enter.
BBC. 2019. Channel 4 Screenwriting Course 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunities/channel-4-screenwriting-course. [accessed 3rd April 2020}

The Script Room

The Script Room takes in unsolicited scripts from the public. It isn't really a competition, it's a way for the BBC to discover new talent. They're not looking for a specific genre, they're just looking for original scripts. Submission are open in December and January to the public. They're not looking for any kind of adaptations, they want purely original scripts, they're much more likely to get produced.
thescriptroom. 2020. Welcome to the Script Room. https://thescriptroom.com/ . [accessed 3rd April 2020]


This is a short example script of different terminology often used.

There are many different places you could find inspiration, there aren't any limits, for example many movies and TV shows take inspiration from news and real events, for example, actual events from the Normandy beach landing in world war 2 was referenced to make Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg. 1998). IMDb. 1998. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/. [accessed 3rd April 2020]

Games are also another avenue that have inspired many films, for example, it's clear that Sucker Punch (Snyder, 2011) was inspired by action games, although nothing specific, the imagery looks heavy inspired by over the top action games. IMDb. 2011. Sucker                 Punch. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/. [accessed 3rd April 2020]

 Life experiences also heavily influence films, it would be hard to not have your life impact a project at all. For example, Boyhood (Linklater, 2014) was a retelling of the life of the director, the whole film was influenced by their life. IMDb. 2014. Boyhood. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1065073/. [accessed 3rd April 2020]

Also paintings have influenced a lot of film makers before, for example, this painting by Edward Hopper influenced the classic Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960). Dusty old thing. 2020. The Fascinating Story Of The House Behind The Bates' Mansion In Hitchcock's 1960 Classic. https://dustyoldthing.com/hopper-house-hitchcock-psycho/. [Acceseed 3rd April 2020]

There are many different types of primary sources that can be used to gather information about an idea for a script, for example, you could conduct a survey about what people think about your idea, if your survey consists of yes/no or 1-10 questions you'll gather a lot of quantitative data which is very good for analysing and putting into graphs and charts, although this is very limiting and doesn't really show peoples opinions on your idea. If you ask more opinionated questions (this is called qualitative data) you'll get more opinions which could be useful, but you wouldn't be able to see this data in graph or charts.

Taking pictures is also a good primary source because you can visualise where scenes could possibly take place. This could possibly be extremely helpful in describing to people your idea.

Making a mood board is also a good way to visualise what you want the project to look like, this method is useful because it doesn't take much time but could generate a lot of ideas and inspiration.

I will take pictures of potential shooting locations, this will help me visualise what the finished project will look like. This is good because I can decide where I'd like to shoot my short film.

I will also give people surveys to fill out to see if they would potentially like my idea, the themes and ideas included. This would be good because it allows me to see generally what the public think about my idea.

There are many different types of secondary sources for example, reviews on other films, reading these could be useful because they could give you an idea of what to do, things to avoid and generally what the public like and dislike.

Watching similar films to your idea is a good source of secondary research, this is a good way to gather ideas and figure out what you actually want to happen in the project, although it is very important to not copy and films, or other peoples ideas, this would be plagiarism and against the law.

reading books that are similar to your idea could also be a helpful form of secondary research, because they could give you new ideas of things to include in your own idea, although, the same goes for when you're watching a film, you can't completely just make the same thing.

I will watch similar films to my idea for inspiration, and to see how the pacing is (although with my idea being a short film the pacing would have to be different). This would also help me seeing all the different styles and themes used in similar films.

I will also research different reviews for films like these, this will help me see what these films did right and what they did wrong. When doing this it is very important to look at multiple reviews because some websites may have a biased opinion on them.

The advantages of primary are that, it is very trust-able because you conducted it yourself so you know exactly where it came from, this can't be said for secondary sources, they most likely are true, but there's a chance it's completely fake. Although it is much easier to gather secondary sources, it is also much quicker. Primary research takes much longer to gather because you have to go and conduct it yourself, which is usually very time consuming.

The bit of information that has been most useful to me has been the box office figures and budgets for the movies that are similar to mine, this is because they showed me that these kind of movie can be very profitable and successful. A good website for this is imdb.com it has a lot of box office information available.

 I haven't disregarded any information I've found, it's all been useful to me and has helped me develop my idea. I thin disregarding facts could possibly have a negative impact on the finished product. If you're disregarding something just so you don't have to take something into account it could have a negative impact.







I'm mainly managing all the information I've found using cloud storage, this has worked really well for me because it's easy to access any of it where I am I don't have to carry a USB drive with the files on. I've got all the research in one folder on my one drive account. I also have a PowerPoint I used for my pitch which contains a lot of the information that I've found.

editing techniques

This post describes some of the editing techniqes i have used in premiere pro.

This technique is called live editing, this allows you to switch between different shots while the project plays. This method is a lot quicker than manually lining up the clips with the audio and cutting them. It's also very easy to use and set up.

This is the colour panel in adobe premiere, this allows you to colour correct different shot in the project. There's a lot that can be changed, it could look quite daunting to a new user but it's all very simple to use, after a few minutes of figuring it out it became very clear where everything is and how to use it all. Colour correction is useful to make shots of a project more appealing, for example, make some of the colours pop more 

This is the start of creating a multi-cam sequence, you have to select allt he clips you want but they have to have audio because the multi-cam sequence syncs all the audio from the cilps together, the main audio for the track also needs to be selected it sync it all together.

This is the next step to creating a multi-cam sequence, after selecting 'create new multi-cam sequence' this screen will pop up. From this screen you can change multiple things with the sequence, But generally you don't need to change anything

When the sequence is created this will be on the timeline. This is useful of you want to put a few extra clips in there to make it easier to edit in the future.

This is a different part of the colour panel, in this bit of the panel you can select certain parts of the shot, as you can see in this example, the part of the background  that used to be orange is now pink. This could be very useful to manipulate differnet colours in different shots.

This is the ripple tool in Adobe premiere. The ripple tool is when a shot is changed in length the other clips will move accordingly. This is very useful because the user won't have to move all the other clips manually.

The Roll edit toll is very similar to the ripple edit tool, so much so that some beginners wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two. The difference is with the roll tool when then the length of a clip is change instead of everything chnging around it the clip next to it will extend to fit the timeline. This

tool is also very useful to get very precise things fit.

This is the drag tool, it allows you to quickly look across the timeline, although you can't interact with anything else while in this mode, which can be a good thing if you don't want to accidentally chagne anything on the timeline.

These are video markers that you can easily line up video clips to, this is very good for editing music videos because it makes it easy to edit to the beat. This could be useful for other types of editing although would be most affective with a syncing video to audio.

This is the fade tool, it can be used on the timeline, it's very easy to use and there's lots of creative potential, just creating a simple fade in and fade out could hugely change the feel and the implication of the shot.

This is the slice tool, it can be used to cut clips of audio and video on the timeline, this can be useful to cut parts out of the middle of clips.

Sherlock character description

Sherlock Holmes: An extrovert, he's not shy although the way he talks can come across very robotic and rude. Justs like he's trying to gathr information instead of actually have a converstion with someone. He calls himself a 'consulting detective' so the police can consult him when they need to. Although he doesn't get paid so everyone he works with are a bit suspicous of him. He's a high functioning sociopath, although often mistaken for a psychopath.


John Watson: Balances out Sherlock, he's considerate and respect full, this is why they make a good duo, they're very different from each other so their personalities balance each other out. Watson is an Ex military doctor, he was diagnosed woth PTSD from being in the war, although it's later found that he misses the thrill and danger of it. This is part of the reason he teamed up with Sherlock.


Detective inspector Lestrade: Is one of Sherlock main police contacts. He's honest and he respects Sherlock, (unlike some of his co-workers). Although he does have a level of respect for Sherlock we can tell he does get cery frustrated with him quite often.


Mycroft Holmes: Sherlocks brother, made to seem like an enemy of his at the start of the episode, but at the end of the episode it's revealed that he is actually just looking out for him and wants to help him. He works in the UK goverment, this is how he got access to the CCTV cameras that saw Watson.