Factors affecting production of PRIDE

Pride was based on a true story during the 80's in Britain, this of course comes with its own pros and cons as although the idea of a true story attracts a huge audience it can also cause many problems during production. A true story attracts a large audience as it has much more of an emotional impact, it engages the audience and we not only identify with the character but we also identify with the situation and the characters emotions, the intensity is at a higher lever as it is real and the person behind the character actually experienced it making the audience feel more touched by the story as well as more shocked by it. However this also poses problems as it means the right tone must be captured and how authentic will the story actually be as it is unknown how much it may stray from the truth. Due to there being a small amount of creative licence it is questionable if it is clear what is fake and what is real, in the film Pride the characters of Joe and Maureen are completely fabricated however their stories are extremely believable and could have potentially happened in another location at the time. In addition to this basing a story on truth means there is a greater responsibility for the director and all of the cast and crew as it true and so therefore the topic needs to be handled with respect, it is also hard as the story must be respected but the director still has a duty of entertainment and must provide that for the audience which is were creative licence must be allowed. To increase authenticity it was agreed that they would shoot on location as the crew saw real images from the LGSM group and saw it was essential to shoot on location to emphasise the reality of it and absorb the emotion and experiences. It was also necessary that they recreated that time and fashion so the design team created all of the shop fronts to make it more realistic of that period in time, they also made sure to have London a bight and vibrant place where as Wales was much more drab and downbeat to reinforce the differences between the two.  

Pride was David Livingstone's first feature film as his previous job required him to market worldwide, advertise, publicise and promote films, however his change in career meant he was the producer of Pride and funded by Calamity Films, in addition to this Emily Bray was the development executive and worked with David through production and development. As well as Calamity Films the BFI also funded the film as their aim was to champion diverse, bold and distinctive films and increase the audiences for them across the UK which is exactly what Pride does. In order for the BFI to fund the film Pride has to fill two od the criteria boxes (on screen diversity, off screen diversity or creating opportunities and promoting social mobility). One problem with this is many believe this criteria removes important aspects of film and singles out others in order to fill the diversity aspect such as working class males as they are not diverse enough.  

It was also key for the film to have the perfect actors, due to the amount of people needed for the film it was expected to take forever to find a diverse cast but to their surprise it came together extremely quickly, they found it was important that the audience understood who the characters were as soon as they appeared on screen which was achieved. In addition to this the fact huge stars do not appear in the film makes it much more realistic and relatable.   

To conclude the main difficulties of the production was making sure they stayed true to the story and didn’t stray too far from the truth, they fabricated some characters as they needed to entertain as well as convey meaning and make the audience laugh but also cry which was fully achieved.