Matador Pictures

For a week July 2013, I was gaining work experience Matador Pictures, who are an independant feature film development and production company based at Gloucester Place, London. I was really hoping to get as much time on a production set as possible but unfortunately there wasn't any shoots going on at the time.

I was kept busy, though. There were plenty of scripts for me to read through and get an idea of what a script looks like. How it is written, how such detail can paint a large picture in your mind, and how the different each person reading it will come up with their own vision of how it should look.

My first task was to read through a web series called Residue. An online drama about a recession depraved Detroit that is now a ghost town. My first major task was to read the synopsis and figure out potential locations that could be used. It is being filmed up North, potentially Yorkshire, so it was my job to research where i could picture the drama taking place. I wrote down words, phrases and sentences from the synopsis and highlighted the key elements that best described the location. I then went onto Google Maps and print screened images of locations that i felt best matched the description around Leeds as I know it fairly well and put it into a presentation.

Residue

Paramentals Rising

Was The Catastrophe a freak bio-industrial accident as advertised, or something more sinister?

Residue will deliver a truly cinematic and edgy supernatural web series with a thrilling pulse that twists tighter and tighter with each new episode

A terrifying version of what a city could become. A ghost town – recession-depraved Detroit, post Katrina New Orleans, London 28-Days Later, Gotham gone awry.

High-rises, wastelands and derelict buildings, but still moments of inner-city beauty break through – birds flying overhead, a sunset over the skyline.

Dread and terror as the city struggles to come to terms with it’s recent past.

Several square mile district of homes and businesses that has been quarantined.

‘The Catastrophe’ was a freak biological accident that rendered a wide swath of the urban landscape uninhabitable.

The QZ remains an open, raw wound on the city’s psyche. An incurable injury to it’s fragile soul. Off limits to everyone except the HazMat teams roaming the abandoned streets like alien ghosts, or the highly armed security forces patrolling the perimeter to keep everyone out.

Noisy mega-metropolis neighborhoods surrounding the QZ. Some areas are vibrant, others mundane.

Sleek sports cars share streets with weary pedestrians.

The well dressed live only a few blocks from the threadbare. It’s a perpetual motion machine fueled by a stew of ambition and indifference extreme success and dismal failure, constantly simmering, on the verge of boiling over.

City evacuated

Brutal violence

Spreading anxiety & fear on the streets

Like an open festering wound

Aftermath of freak bio industrial accident

Rendered a wide swath of the urban landscape uninhabitable

Left psychic scar on the city’s soul

Lingering effects

Growing paranormal phenomenon that is praying on its citizens

Frightening and toxic area

Quarantine zone

Secrets

Predatory humanoid creatures

Defy the laws of physics and biology

Death, destruction and chaos

City in crisis – crowded, noisy, mega-metropolis with widely varying neighborhoods characterized by extreme wealth, desperate poverty and everything in between, including the off limits quarantine zone – a section of the city now evacuated and abandoned.

Paramentals are infecting the city

Darkest corners of the city

Shadiest corridors of power

High level corruption

Horrible acts of violence and destruction going on all over the city

Haunting the city

Juxtaposing the haves and have-nots

Exposing the paranoia, the fear and the anger that catagorises the city.

Constant feeling of immediacy

Recognizable concrete-but-unreal world that never-the-less feels grounded in reality

Intense colours

Shadows are deep and inescapable

I made a presentation with around 20 different locations and short descriptions.

I also read scripts and synopsis during the days, which kept me busy. I attempted my own logline, character description, premise, synopsis and own comments. (below)

The Dolphins of Lagos

By DANixon and Eoin Glaister

Report by Yoni Cohen

Logline

Tension levels grow intensively high for Ben and Morley as 12 weeks have passed and their broken part of their washing machine hasn’t arrived from China yet.

Characters

BEN: 20 years old, lives in Peckham, South London. Worries a lot.

MORLEY: 30 years old, he was an engineer in Lagos. Now lives with Ben and is a taxi driver. Plays Xbox, both love pizza and Chinese.

TAMARIN: Jihadist, Islam extremist. Ben’s Internet friend.

DAVID EJA: Morley’s old pal, A Suleiman Soglo from Lagos. Says he’s the son of the richest cocoa farmer in Nigeria and is a professional Internet scammer, he is a pirate.

MR NAZ: House & shop tenant.

SHOPKEEPER SNR: Shopkeeper, father.

SHOPKEEPER JNR: Shopkeeper, son. Ben’s acquaintance.

Premise

A young, innocent man faces an encounter with a Nigerian pirate over the internet and a missing part of his washing machine, aided with help from his taxi driving housemate.

Synopsis

The Dolphins of Lagos is a spin cycle thriller based in South West London in Peckham. Ben and Morley, two massive Xbox devotees spend much of their days playing shooting games. Not much to worry about in the world apart from fixing their washing machine, nothing will get in the way of Morley lounging in his pants all day.

Ben takes a trip down to his local newsagent where he jumps into a conversation with the shopkeeper’s son regarding killing insurgents as well as civilians in Lagos before freaking out. After a quick search around the shop, He runs out with his Haribo and gaming magazine before trying to avoid Mr Naz on his front doorstep. Before he gets a chance to avoide him, Ben is stopped and reminded of the money Morley ows him, however Ben takes advantage of telling Naz he still needs to fix their washing machine, which Naz clearly can’t be bothered for but explains the missing part takes 12 weeks to arrive from China.

Morley, who is sitting in his pants and headset playing Xbox decides to wind Ben up. Explaining how killing the people in Lagos on the Xbox game is too realistic and wrong. Reminded of his conversation earlier with the shopkeepers son, Ben tries to apologize for not realizing the wrong doing by the game but Morley interrupts him by taking the micky out of him and offering him stew which he doesn’t appreciate.

A Skype call flashes up on Bens laptop. He accepts and is presented with what appears to be a Jihadi, extremist Islam threat video. Before the Jihadist gets a chance, Ben reads out the caller i.d’s name and it’s his friend ‘Tamarin’, who is left confused as to how Ben knew who it was. Tamarin introduces Ben to Convo Bingo, a randomized webcam social networking website, and through this Ben meets Suleiman aka David.

Ben recognizes David as looking similar to Morley and as it turns out, it’s Morley’s cousin whose a pirate and is looking to scam the internet into making money to build a submarine. With Morleys experience of engineering, David hopes he can persuade Morley by threatening him with a Nigerian butcher who lives in Peckham that if he doesn’t help design and build the submarine. Ben, being the worrier he is, tells Morley of his dislike for David but Morley now has no choice but to help.

After firing questions at Morley, Ben finally gets some answers as to who David is, a nautical pirate operating in the Gulf of Guinea. David’s plan is to build a submarine to rival the Columbian drug lords with their cocaine shipping schemes. He has raised enough money to build it but no one with the knowhow, until he found Morley.

Coming up with a more economic idea, Ben describes something he saw on a Chinese news channel the other day that showed a pod of dolphins stop a gang of Somalian pirates hijacking a merchant ship.  David gets excited when hearing Morley’s idea of creating a dolphin mind device and cancels the plans for making a submarine.

A couple weeks later, David claims that Ben and Morley have made him look like a fool, and believes the boys aren’t taking him seriously. David threatens them again, affirming them that the Nigerian butcher is on his way. Whilst on Skype to David Mr Naz bangs on the door, at the same time the bang scares Ben and Morley, he shows them the package for the missing part of the washing machine. This part happens to be the piece of technology David needs so desperately to kick start his plan of creating a dolphin mind control. After confirming with eachother that Morley will give the package to the butcher to send off to David, Ben questions Morley what happens when David works out there is no such thing as dolphin mind control.

Potential

Young, South London based naïve characters embark on a witty journey that is funny and sarcastic can reach out to a large English based audience.

Comments

A subtle sarcastic, witty comedy is coming out of Peckham with this script. The relationships between Ben and everybody else can be related with everyday life relationships such as Ben and the shopkeepers, house mates and tenants, and house mates and their broken technology. In todays world nothing is at all surprising, so when a Nigerian pirate pops up asking for money it’s just brushed off your shoulder, but when your house mate is cousins with this pirate, it’s an entirely different scenario.

The cut and change of film between Ben getting home from the newsagent and Morley playing the Xbox seems to intertwine and flow smoothly. It’s easy to picture what they are both doing at the same time, with the film running parallel.

Each character has a strong archetype about them and they are all so different which brings a great diversity to the script. It’s a unique storyline that allows the characters to bounce off one another, and however ridiculous the dolphin mind control pirates sound, its easy to imagine with the right execution.

Recommend, Pass

I was allowed to go and visit the Lipsync Studios in the hub of London, Soho, and get my first piece of action behind the scenes at a post production house. To say the least, i was overwhelmed. Sion, at Matador Pictures, had arranged that Paul Dray, one of the producers at Lipsync, to give me a tour. The studios are incredible, very modern and air conditioned. The facilities were nothing i've ever seen before and i was absolutely mind blown. The environment was cool and everyone was friendly, it gave me the belief that film production is where i want to be.