We're still collecting donations
On the 21st April 2023 we'd raised £8,205 with 118 supporters in 32 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
We are fundraising for an urgent and provocative short film entitled “In The Room”, the debut project of Bar Italia Films.
by Bar Italia Films in Glasgow, , United Kingdom
On the 21st April 2023 we'd raised £8,205 with 118 supporters in 32 days. But as every pound matters, we're continuing to collect donations from supporters.
Our stretch target will help us enhance the post-production process and extend the reach of our distribution campaign. Submitting to film festivals can be an expensive business, so our stretch target will help us to submit to as many of them as possible, and improve our distribution marketing campaign. It's all about making sure In The Room is seen by as many as people as possible, and hitting our stretch target will really push that reach. Thank you SO much. We cannot believe we are here.
Filming for IN THE ROOM is now complete.
Would you like to support the next phase and help us take #InTheRoomFilm to the rest of the world?
We're thrilled to announce that filming for our short film project, IN THE ROOM, has wrapped up successfully. The Post-Production process, being delivered with the brilliant Blazing Griffin will be complete by March 2024. With your incredible support and generosity, we brought to life a story that we hope will resonate with many and provoke important conversations around power dynamics in the entertainment industry that are still overdue.
But our journey doesn't end here. We're now gearing up for the crucial next phase: distribution, marketing, and festival submissions. This is where we need your help once again to ensure that our film reaches as wide an audience as possible and sparks meaningful conversations.
By supporting us in this next phase, you're not just helping our film flourish and be seen, you are also supporting the incredible hard work of a group of Scottish creatives and filmmaking talent.
And most importantly, you're championing advocacy for change.
We chose to keep the same campaign page we utilised for the initial fundraising phase live so that new and existing supporters can continue to follow our journey, stay connected with updates, and witness firsthand the progress we're making.
However, to make this next phase even more exciting, we've introduced a new donation incentive! Access to a VIP Cast and Crew Screening Event.
Stay tuned for details on how your contributions can unlock other exclusive rewards, allowing you to be an even more integral part of our filmmaking journey. Your continued support means everything to us, and we can't wait to embark on this next chapter together.
LOGLINE:
An actor's call-back audition becomes a fierce roar of catharsis when her scene partner arrives; a man who assaulted her in the past.
OUTLINE:
CAIT travels to a call-back audition for a film. It’s been a while since an opportunity like this one. In the audition room, she gets on brilliantly with SUZANNE (the casting director) and REBECCA (the writer/director), receiving good vibes and positive feedback on her previous reading. It’s a genuinely exciting project. Cait really wants this one. Suzanne announces that they’ve already cast the male lead, and he’s going to be reading with her today. Before they can reveal who it is, he enters - DANNY - hotshot pretty-boy actor, loved by everyone. Everyone except Cait. She hasn’t forgotten her last encounter with Danny, and what she’s been living with ever since.
Unlike everyone else in the room, she sees the predator behind the mask.
When they read the scene together, Caits’ fight or flight instinct is triggered. Her trauma tells her to run, but her strength and the opportunity to go off script allows her to fight. With a rage-filled roar of catharsis, the real Danny is exposed, and Cait begins her journey towards healing.
THEMES:
The film explores themes of trauma, sexual assault and the deep rooted patriarchal systems which allow such predators to not only survive but to thrive - the other two women in the room are charmed by this carefully curated version of Danny - they can’t see him for what he really is. It also will explore the sometimes cruel and painful life of an actor, particularly for female actors as they get older.
Paul Barrie (Director / Co-Writer) and I spend a lot of time exchanging ideas and scripts, looking for the next idea to collaborate on. I shared something I wrote; a darkly honest internal monologue of an actor in her thirties during the audition process. Shortly after that he pitched the concept of what would become “In The Room” and I knew instantly it was the one. It hit me right where I lived. The process of creating the outline and initial draft of the script came quickly and easily to us after that. We knew we had landed on a story we both really wanted to tell.
My ambitions for my film career are to create and produce stories that subvert expectations about the kind of roles that women can play on screen and in society. It is important to me, to amplify the diversity and complexity of women, especially older women, queer women and women of other marginalised identities. The concept behind In The Room comes from a deeply personal place. I do a lot of advocacy work in the Scottish stage and screen sector around better practices for safety and well-being on sets and in rehearsal rooms, and campaigning for better reporting systems for abusive behaviour.
Despite the progress that the Me Too movement has made in terms of bringing these conversations out from the whisper networks that women use to keep themselves safe and into the public discourse, there is still a lot of hesitancy, taboo and discomfort in terms of directly dealing with abusive power dynamics and the trauma they bring about. Very rarely are on-screen depictions of trauma and abuse, especially gender based abuse, handled with the right kind of sensitivity and nuanced understanding of what the cost of these depictions are for the audience. I believe that we go to our fiction for catharsis, and in many ways, that is what In The Room is; a fierce, rage-filled roar of catharsis.
Director / Co-Writer Paul Barrie is a key collaborator for this work, and is a filmmaker whose work I feel passionate about producing, because his vision and approach has the nuance, visual language and creative principles that will allow a story like this to translate to the screen with the required sensitivity. Additionally, having worked with him many times, as a performer and producer, I know first hand how well he works with actors; Paul is open and collaborative and able to get the best out his cast, which with a script like this, will be an essential skill. His ability to make gentle moments of human connection and internal struggles feel cinematic has made him one of my preferred and trusted collaborators for a while.
I believe exploration of the darkest aspects of the human experience is key to our understanding of the world. Only by gaining insight and understanding of the suffering of others can we begin to become better. This is what draws me to make films, as it is an artform that offers a uniquely visceral way to do this. To quote Ingmar Bergman, “Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”
When Louise (Producer / Co-Writer) and I first conceived of this story together, I became immediately excited at the possibilities it offered, both in the importance and relevance of the subject matter and the rich cinematic possibilities inherent in the story.
The central theme of In The Room is the trauma experienced by survivors of abuse. Despite all the light shone on this subject since 2017 (both in and out of our industry), I believe there is still value for audiences to experience art that creates a sense of what these experiences feel like - both as a way to engender understanding from parts of the audience, and offer some catharsis for the rest.
And ultimately, that is my goal for In The Room - to make audiences experience rather than simply watch. Inspired by the naturalistic style of John Cassavetes, the frenetic, off-kilter camera work found in the Dardenne Brothers’ Le Fils (2002) and the incredible tension found in much of the work of the Safdie Brothers, we will utilise a mixture of uncomfortably tight close ups, a disorientating handheld camera and a subjective sound design to achieve this. From the moment it begins, we will feel what Cait feels - the nervous anxiety and excitement ahead of the audition, and then the dizzying horror she feels when Danny enters - the trauma she relives when forced to play the scene with him, and finally her cathartic release when she boils over and exposes him.
It is my intention to make In The Room a compelling, brilliantly acted and formally adventurous film that has universal thematic appeal and will stay in the mind and heart long after the credits have rolled.
We understand that Crowdfunding is not a quick fix, but rather a part of a robust and well thought out fundraising campaign, with each step and reward carefully considered, and that the approach is also a useful tool for engaging with our existing and potential audience.
However, it can also be a risk; even with a good campaign and an even better idea, sometimes projects don’t reach their targets, which is why we are delighted to that In The Room is part of the 2023 Creative Scotland Crowdmatch competition.
Creative Scotland will match individual pledges from the crowd up to £10,000. So if you donate £20 to our cause, your donation will be matched with a £20 pledge from Creative Scotland, effectively doubling your donation!
Which is a total buzz! You'll get to see the instant impact of your support.
Many small creative projects never get off the ground because of insufficient start-up capital – a little help can go a long way towards helping something worthwhile flourish. This will mean that we don’t have to over reach on our target amount, therefore making our funding goal far more practical and attainable.
The average budget for making a short film is somewhere between £15,000 and £50,000, with £15K being on the conservative end of the scale. The majority of a film budget will go on labour, time and talent, so these figures will often include in-kind donations, such as services, equipment, and other valuable production assets.
It's expensive to hire cast and crew, it's expensive to rent equipment, and it's expensive to design the world of the film. Add in casting and rehearsals, insurance, food, transportation, promotion, administrative costs, and so on, and it adds up quickly.
This is what your donation will pay for.
“In The Room '' is a single location short film with minimal cast and set, so we estimate that it will take £7000 to realise at a baseline level.
Therefore our crowdfunding target is set at £3,500, which will be matched by Creative Scotland to hit the required £7,000.
We have a stretch target of £5,000 (match funded at £10,000), which would help us create the production to a higher standard; for example, pay higher wages, ensure the quality of the equipment and design, and build in healthier contingency.
If you’ve made it this far (thank you, first of all) then you’re probably about to support the project, which means you are also interested in what we plan to do with “In The Room'' once it’s finished, and how we intend to find our audience. Below outlines a brief release strategy to give you a sense of our intended journey for the film.
We will begin by targeting first-tier festivals, eg. Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Venice. We will devise a strategic plan to target a mixture of these festivals, prioritising those which are qualifying for BAFTA or BIFA awards during this phase. This is our skyline, best-case-scenario strategy.
After what will hopefully be a successful campaign in phase 1, we will then implement a similar strategy for distribution towards second-tier festivals. Though these festivals typically are not qualifying for the awards mentioned above, they do still offer awards and prizes and any festival prize (or even official selection laurel) helps raise the prestige of the film and draw audience attention to it.
Online distribution. At the end of what will hopefully be a successful festival run, we will aim to have the film shown by a national broadcaster or otherwise distributed through other online platforms.
Bar Italia Films is a new indie film company based in Glasgow, with a focus on short films and small independent features. Founded and run by filmmaking duo and best pals of 20 years, Louise Oliver (Producer / Writer / Actor) and Paul Barrie (Director / Writer), Bar Italia Films is about storytelling, a love for cinema and a passion for amplifying voices outside of the mainstream.
Paul Barrie is a screenwriter and director from Glasgow.
Starting out at a local college in 2009, he spent most of the next 6 years honing his craft on a variety of short films, music videos and documentary projects. In 2016, his film Black Dog (starring In The Room co-writer/producer Louise Oliver) earned him a place on the BA Filmmaking programme at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Paul’s film Threnody (2018) was nominated for Best Drama at the RTS Scotland Student Awards in 2019, and won the award for Production Design at the same event. His final year film Spare Parts (2019), starring Hamish Clark (Monarch of The Glen) and BAFTA award winner Shauna Macdonald (The Descent), has screened at several festivals (including the BAFTA/BIFA qualifying Bolton Film Festival) and won several prizes, including Best Drama and Best Screenplay at the RTS Scotland Student Awards in 2020 and Best Director at the IndieClips Festival in 2021.
Alongside his work as a writer and director, Paul has worked in a variety of roles within the film and television industry, most recently serving as Head of Development with La Belle Allée Productions. He also delivers filmmaking training with Edinburgh Youth Cinema School and is a visiting mentor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Louise is a multi-hyphenate creative producer, writer and actor with over 15 years professional experience in the arts, during which time she has built up a varied portfolio of theatre, screen work and cultural events. Her resume is as varied as her passions; from appearing in TVs Outlander as busybody Prudence Forbes, starring in gender flipped Shakespeare adaptations, to making immersive, activist, queer theatre that tours around Scotland. She trained as an actor at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and has had her own theatre writing developed with the Tron Theatre, National Theatre of Scotland, The Arches, Glasgay! Festival, Lyth Arts Centre, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and presented at the Edinburgh Fringe. She is currently working with Stories Untold Productions on developing her new show W.I.T.C.H - a riotous theatre piece about the relationship between women, witches and the politics of protest.
In 2020, her short film Glitch, got a flurry of recognition at some independent film festivals, including winning Best SciFi at the Phoenix International Short Film Festival in Ontario. That same year, she made it to the semi-finals of the Screencraft Virtual Pitch Competition with one of her feature screenplays. At the beginning of 2021, Louise was thrilled to be selected as one of 12 Short Circuit Convergence Screenwriters - a BFI and Screen Scotland development programme for new screenwriters. In 2022 she was selected by the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s talent development arm to be one of their Script Starter screenwriters, and in 2023 became a member of BAFTA Connect. Louise is also the co-founder and co-producer for the Persistent and Nasty initiative, a podcast series and advocacy initiative for women and LGBTQ+ people working in film and theatre.
You can find out more at www.mslouiseoliver.com
Thank you for taking time out of your day to read all about our “In The Room” fundraising campaign. We are so grateful for your time and for your potential donation. We realise it's a tough time out there right now so don’t worry if you can’t spare the extra cash for a donation right now, there are many other ways you can support the film. You can share the link to this Crowdfunder page with your networks and on your social media, and help us amplify the film when it comes out. That is all equally valuable and something we’d be so happy about.
We hope that you join us as we immerse ourselves into making this film. It’s a subject that’s very important to us, and we hope it is to you too.
Louise and Paul will be talking about the film and sharing fundraising campaign updates frequently on their own social media, so you can follow them on the following platforms:
Twitter - @MsLouiseOliver + @PaulBarrieFilms
Instagram - @MsLouiseOliver + @PaulBarrieFilms
If you would like to continue supporting Bar Italia Films and be updated regularly, please follow, like and share our social media page @BarItaliaFilms on Instagram and Twitter.
This project offered rewards