RESEARCH: BIFA

I have been interested in the nominations within the BIFA. In particular, the film American Honey that I was introduced to from a study day trip I went on to the BFI on 2nd November.

BIFA 

I am predominantly interested in American Honey because it had a budget of £2.7M which is relatively cheap to make. It featured a lot of unknown actors except for Shea Labeouf. The actors were young which defined our generation so I was able to relate to it more.
I first viewed this film at BFI and I found out that American Honey counted as a British film because of its British director and the cast and the key organizations involved. Andrea Arnold (director) is also well known for producing Fishtank (2009) which had a budget of only £1.3M. Compared to the Star Wars budgets of £230M. American Honeys films key themes involve the youth and hedonism and love and betrayal. These are themes and issues not usually covered by mainstream cinema. Moreover, there were no expensive sets as it was all shot on location. Part of the social realism of urban youth is that the camera work was all handheld so it gave us a sense of cinema verité which exposes the truth and reality of cinema.

In both production values and budget our film has very similar qualities to American Honey, we will also be shooting on location and have unknowns in our film. The themes we share are youth, love and realism.