Institutional Issues & PPT

I considered the issues and constraints on pitching my film to the institutions I studied:

• Funding. The British Film Industry rely mainly on American funding, and it would be extremely hard to get funding for an independent film like my own.
• Promoting my film. This also relies on funding from a distribution company.
• Competition. There are other independent directors and companies who might be after my target audience and will also be pitching a teen comedy film to Paramount/20th Century Fox. How can I make my idea grab their attention?

I sent an e-mail to Paramount Pictures to inquire about funding:

Hello, I notice that you have distributed a lot of teen comedy films. I am working on a British teen comedy film and wonder how I would go about getting funding from you.

I will discuss these issues further with my group when we compose a summary of our institutional findings.

Edit: I recieved a reply from Paramount Pictures.

'Dear Grace
We do not take unsolicited material however if you are a first timefeature writer can I suggest your initial port of call should either bethe UK Film Council or the BBC's writers initiative - The Writer's Room.
Good luck with you project.
Kind regards
Alexei

Alexei Boltho

Director Co-production & Acquisitions
Paramount Pictures International'


This e-mail helped me reveal more about my competition; our film opening would be 'unsolicited', so other film producers who may be working with companies associated with Paramount and/or have been invited by Paramount to submit their film, i.e. 'solicited' material, would be more acceptable.
The e-mail reply also showed me how hard it is to get funding, and how new, independent film directors have to start from the very bottom before even thinking about asking for funding from companies like Paramount.

Here is the powerpoint of my institutional findings, which briefly summarises what I found out.