Researching Materials for your script

Background Material

Published Scripts:

Cass (2008, John S. Bird)

Cass is a 2008 British crime drama film. It stars Nonso Anozie as Cass Pennant and is directed by Jon S. Baird. Cass is based on the true story of the life of Cass Pennant, adapted from his book. The film tells of how he was adopted by an elderly white couple in 1958 and brought up in Slade Green, an all-white area of London. Cass is forced to endure racist bullying on a daily basis from local children. Cass doesn't find belonging until he starts going to the football with his adopted Dad watching his beloved West Ham United. Cass takes watching West Ham a step further when he starts taking part in the violent side of the game with the 'hammers' firm. Cass climbs the ranks of the ICF to become the leader in the early 1980s. He remains the leader for many years until he becomes the first football hooligan to be given a stiff sentence in prison. He is sentenced to 4 years in Wormwood Scrubs where he starts writing down his lifes events. After completing this sentence Cass becomes a leading man in the doorman industry. Unfortunatley for Cass his past catches up with him and this leads to him getting shot 3 times whilst on the door of a London club. Cass survives this attack and after overcoming his attack and the loss of his mum which left him with mental strain, this took time but after this period he continues to make something of himself for his family.

     - The patches i have highlighted yellow are the parts of Cass which either relate to mine or in fact inspired me when making The Fight.

I looked at the Hillsborough Script as it covered football crowds like I was planning to. I would also be covering the same social class as Hillsborough and the language used in the drama would be the same as what I'd want to use in The Fight. Although HillsBorough covered the tradegy that happened to Liverpool fans I could still take ideas from the way they started their drama as I would like to grab the viewers attention from the off also.

Factual Information:

Although there has been many incedents of football violence over the years the most noteable in recent years would have to be between West Ham and Millwall in 2009 when the teams met in the carling cup. With the bitter rivalery trouble was expected. This lived up to the hype and there was crowd trouble before, after and during the game. Heres an article on it: West Ham v Millwall 

 

Opinion:

For opinion I looked at what experts believes starts football violence. The article I looked at was investigating the issue because of a incident involving both Exeter and Plymouth. The expert went on to say:

Exeter University's Professor Anthony King has written two books looking at the transformation of football and fan culture in the UK and Europe.

He believes the violence at the Plymouth Argyle - Exeter City match on 9 November 2010 was "highly likely".

He explained that there are generally two kinds of people who create violence at football matches.

"There are the elite, the committed hooligans," said the professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter.

"This group are sometimes dismissed in the press as thugs but they are committed to a special kind of violence.

"More unusual are the completely 'normal' fans who have no pre-meditated desire to get involved who then do get involved - what police call Category B fans.

"They have no prior intention to cause violence but join in once it starts.

Speculation:

When it comes to football 'hooligans' there are many stereotypes, for example, on a forum i found this:

"Lower or working class, wife beating, beer swilling, smoking deviant. Not a stranger to jail time, Homophobic, sexist, racist with a narcissistic personality disorder. String vest wearing, skin head with violent tendencies.
'Enjoys a good ruck (fight)!!!'
Wants the fans of their team to be the most feared throughout the country or even better worldwide, will travel in order to beat the living **** out of them.
For more information watch the movie ID which deals with this ugly side to British culture." 
Although in very few cases this may well be true but in many cases this is far from the truth. It is well documented that some of the people choosing to fight at football were in fact in good middle class jobs but needed a buzz. This is the case in my drama as Dion has jobs throughout funding his weekend shenanigans and also his prescene at football games eliminates the 'every football fan is racist' myth. Cass also tackles this myth.

Existing material from other broadcast and written media for conversion or adaptation:

These are scripts of the opening scene of the football drama Hillsborough.

I took noticed of this script as I feel that the opening scene of Hillsborough grabs the attention of the audience whilst also being informative of whats going on. I want the same affect from my opening scene of The Fight.