Longfield Drive: A short drama which explores the sensitive issue of Police brutality & shootings in the US

By now we’re all very much aware of one America’s biggest news subject matter:POLICE SHOOTINGS.

LONGFIELD DRIVE is a dark political Crime Drama short film set in 2004 Oakland, US and looks to explore the SENSITIVE & CURRENT issue of police racial profiling and shootings that plague the continent. 

The film draws inspiration from both the US (with cases such as Michael Brown &Trayvon Martin) and the UK (the shooting of Mark Duggan in London causing one of the biggest riots in the city’s history) and many more countless lives.

    

LONGFIELD DRIVE will be a very stylistic film shot similar to the 2014 Academy Award winning film “Birdman” as it focuses on two sets of individuals who gather at a local Diner (a group of African American teenagers & two police officers) who’s paths ultimately collide in a fatal shooting of a teenager all within real time.

We need help bringing our project to life so we can tackle this subject matter in an art form we’ve been practicing for several years, this is where you come in!

 

 

LONGFIELD DRIVE will explore themes such as ABUSE OF POWER as we believe it’s public consciousness, current and RELEVANT this is the perfect time to make such a film. 

 

Countless lives have been lost to Police racial profiling and this subject matter is not often portrayed in films. LONGFIELD DRIVE does not attempt to reenact any real life scenarios but instead hopes to give our audiences a non-biased perspective on the issue with an original narrative.

We have high hopes for our film creating shockwaves upon it’s release, which is why we are more than delighted to share with you such a great opportunity to get on board the project at such an early stage!

COSTUMES – £200 (7%)

  

Our Costume Designers AMY THOMSON and LUCAS TRATTOU are the deadliest combination in their department. Having studied Costume and Performance Design for the past few years, they have VERY good visual reference materials for our cast’s costumes, some of which include the teenagers featured in The Wire and the police officers on End of Watch!

 

As well as sourcing the costumes for the teenagers they will be CREATING the police uniform for the officers!

 

CAST & CREW – £800 (27%)

The casting for LONGFIELD DRIVE is well underway, we have amazing actors who have shown interest and are waiting to sign on, some who have already been featured in our IndieGoGo promo video and we CANNOT wait for our secret BIG announcements of the rest of the cast soon on our social media pages! 

   

       Carl Jamieson           Kyle Tucker                   Luciana Cerolini            Baba Oyejide

A part of your contribution will go towards making sure our actors and our crew members are well fed and looked after all throughout the duration of our 5 day shoot.

Take a look at the crew who you’ll be looking after further down this page.

CAMERA DEPARTMENT – £1,000 (33%)

There is however, one major piece of film tool missing; a STEADICAM OPERATORto come along with it. To achieve the long, fluid, developing shots we’ve designed for LONGFIELD DRIVE, it is necessary for the camera to be free to move around wherever it needs to which is why Birdman (2014) is a perfect example of this. 

Professional steadicam operators with their own equipment come with a price tag, which can easily become one of the main considerations in our budget. Even though the price of the steadicam operator takes quite a large sum of the budget, it is a key element in LONGFIELD DRIVE and absolutely essential for us to have.

The majority of our budget will be going into Locations & Production Design. As our film is set in a diner in Oakland,CA we will be doing our best to make it look as realistic as possible.

 

Our team will be designing a run down retro diner on location which requires A LOT of props and time making them look the part for our film. Having been inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s Big Kahuna Burger, our team will be designing our very own Diner chain! (If the budget allows of course).

One of our BIGGEST challenges is shooting ON LOCATION with MINIMAL cuts in the UNITED KINGDOM with BRITISH actors! Yes you heard right. As you’re probably thinking, that is nearly impossible BUT our dedicated team have been working hard the past few months to best establish ways in which we can pull this off! 

 

Locations are a big expense, our Location Manager has been searching far and wide to find our very rare Diner location required to bring LONGFIELD DRIVE to the screen and we’ve almost found it! But we’ll need to pay for our intrusion and lock down locations well in advance our shoot dates of mid February.

 

Two possible Diner Locations for our film.

We have been researching & studying areas in the US which we’d like to replicate and working with very talented actors who have even featured in our IndieGoGo Campaign video showing off their talent! With your help raising our budget we believe there is no doubt that we WILL achieve this.

 

LORENZO BRAMATI: Sound Designer

We understand that some people just can’t contribute, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t help! If you DO want to see this film made, then a simple share of our campaign could be all it takes for us to reach our goal!

Summary:
LONGFIELD DRIVE is a dark political Crime Drama short film set in 2004 Oakland, US and looks to explore the SENSITIVE & CURRENT issue of police racial profiling and shootings that plague the continent.
See Campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/longfield-drive#/
Contact Information:
Kiosa Sukami

Tags:
Indiegogo, Reward, United Kingdom, English, Movies/Music Videos, Media & Entertainment, Industry verticals, Regions, Types of Crowdfunding deal, Language