Film | Page 2 | Blueprint: Film Foundation

Into Film

Into Film is a new charity born from the legacy of two leading film education charities, FILMCLUB and First Light. Both organisations had considerable experience in delivering film-based programmes of significant scale and reach to children and young people across the UK. In October 2012, the respective Boards of FILMCLUB and First Light endorsed working jointly on the bid to deliver the BFI's 5-19 film education scheme, knowing if successful, they would merge, which they did in September 2013.

Into Film embraces a model that uses insight from the experience of the two founding organisations and their networks and partnerships developed over the last decade. It recognises and understands the challenges involved in working across the different levels of education, film infrastructure and provision across the nations and regions. Its operating structure harnesses the legacy of skills, expertise and capacity to successfully operate in a new funding universe and a changed economic climate, to generate innovation, and to evolve and respond to changes in technology, infrastructure, curricula and practice.

Into Film embarks on its programme with one overriding mission: to put film at the heart of children and young people's learning and cultural experience in the UK.

Running from November 2014 - February 2015, See It, Make It involved professional filmmakers working with film clubs in clusters across the UK.

Each club received a number of theoretical and practical filmmaking lessons, learning about the details of the film production process, before making their own short film across six sessions led by the filmmaker.

In addition to the planned filmmaking sessions, the filmmaker was also required to support the development of skills for the club leader in an initial CPD session along with the other clubs in their local cluster to ensure they could continue with the filmmaking activity in between sessions. This may have included working on a script, sourcing costumes, creating props and shooting additional scenes when the filmmaker is not present.

We worked with a cluster of clubs in the East Midlands: Boston College, Haven High Spalding High and West Walton Primary.

Darren spent 6 weeks working with the groups, encouraging their imagination and pushing them to create the best short films they could. We believe that young people should have full agency over their own work and Darren wanted his groups to be as daring as possible. It was important that the groups took complete ownership over their projects and felt like they had the creative license to achieve whatever they wanted.

Each group was required to make a 2 minute film with at least 12 frames and 3 techniques used, using one of the titles given by Into Film. Our groups had incredible diverse ideas about what they wanted to create and how ambitious they wanted to be.

Edith’s War

November 5, 2014 marked Blueprint’s 4th collaboration with Shooting Fish Theatre Company for Goole’s Bonfire Night. The theme of the year’s performance marked the First World War Centenary.

For the first time, Goole Town Council implemented a ticketing system for the event with no-on-the-door sales; worried this may deter some, we were ecstatic that 7,000 bonfire-enthusiasts were present.

For the event, we produced Edith’s War, an 11 minute film which chronicles a young couple’s hardship throughout the conflict, we fused filmed shadow performances with beautiful black and white illustrations from Laura Barrett, which were then partly animated.

In addition, we created an audio drama that incorporated vocal performances from children from local schools telling the story of two present day youngsters transported back in time to the destruction of Goole by zeppelins during the war.

Not Sure, Don’t Open the Door

Pilgrim Fathers

This was a Heritage Lottery Funded Project which resulted in a documentary learning resource on the history of the Pilgrim Fathers. The documentary tells the early story of the titular group and how they came to be. Rather than focussing on their well-documented life in the New World, it looks into what led them to flee the country they loved as well as chart their perilous efforts and determination in making such a journey. The production utilises historical re-enactment, CGI imagery and interviews with experts on the subject to tell the story of the people that would become ‘The Pilgrim Fathers’.

It was produced with the help of volunteers and local historians, who worked with community groups on the creation of the historical re-enactments. The documentary has been picked up for educational distribution by TMW Media Group. You can find out more and buy it here.

ESF Project

Blueprint: Film Foundation were granted funding by the European Social Fund to run a course aimed at unemployed people aged over 50. We felt this was an underrepresented group and we wanted to run a course that would help participants learn new skills and gain renewed confidence in their abilities to help them get back into the world of work.

To do this we helped a group develop and produce their own short film, which they also starred in. A black comedy called 'Slimeball', the film was as fun to watch as it was to make. The group were clearly enthused by the project with one member even being inspired to start producing his own short films in his spare time.

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