1. AS Media Studies
Study Notes
Unit G322 Section B
Audiences and Institutions
The Film Industry
Part 8
From Script to Screen
My Summer of Love
125

2. Pre-Production
Pawel Pawlikowski's acclaimed My Summer of Love won the Alexander Korda Award for
the outstanding British film of the year at the 2005 British Academy Film Awards.
Released in October 2004 as a follow-up to Pawlikowski's previous feature, Last Resort, it
also won the prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh
International Film Festival and went on to premiere internationally at the Toronto Film
Festival where Focus Features picked it up for US distribution.
Set in contemporary Yorkshire, it charts the
relationship that blooms one hot summer
between two very different 16-year-old
girls, Mona (Natalie Press) and Tamsin
(Emily Blunt).
Mona is working class, rebellious, bored
with life and with the newfound religious
convictions of her ex-con brother Phil
(Paddy Considine). Tamsin is well
educated, spoiled and cynical. Each girl is
wary of each other's differences when they
first meet, but this coolness soon melts into
mutual fascination and attraction. Adding
further volatility to the summer heat is Phil,
who tries to impose his new found religious
fervour upon his sister Mona.
Film magazine Screen International called
My Summer Of Love a 'freewheeling
evocation of the emotional neediness and
spiritual emptiness that briefly bind the girls
to each other.'
In July 2002, Pawlikowski was looking to
make his next project. He'd read and been impressed by Helen Cross' novel My Summer Of
Love and suggested to his producing partner Tanya Seghatchian (Harry Potter) that they
develop it as his next film.
Seghatchian says: "It was clear that he wanted to make a film the following summer and that
he had a strong instinct for the sort of film that he wanted to make. The film was going to be
loosely inspired by the book and would include two characters from the novel, some of the
plot and a newly invented character, sourced from Pawel's imagination and a documentary
that he had made ten years previously."
Optioning and Development
Seghatchian and Pawlikowski were keen to make the film in a way that would enable them
to keep creative control. They optioned the novel from literary agent Julia Kreitman at 'The
Agency' through their production company Apocalypso Pictures. They then set about looking
for the cast.
126

3. "That's a very untypical way of developing a film," points out Seghatchian. "Conventionally
you would approach financiers to option the novel and commission the development of a
screenplay. The producer, screenwriter/director and possibly a script editor would then
develop the screenplay from the source material. That would go through various drafts. And
then, when the financiers and the development group decided it was ready to go into pre-
production, a casting director would come on board and the film would move onto a different
level."
From the very beginning, however, Pawlikowski and Seghatchian knew they were going to
develop the project differently. "For Pawel, making the film was contingent on his finding
the right actors to embody the central roles. He was interested in finding actors - preferably
unknowns - who he could then hang the film on. He had worked previously with Paddy
Considine, and wanted him to play the character of a newly converted born again Christian
in the film, but he was also adamant that he would like to uncover two originals to play the
young female leads," explains Seghatchian.
Casting
A casting director was hired and given a set of character breakdowns for the two girls. The
casting director then approached agents and began to arrange a series of open calls around
the country in drama schools, youth groups and local theatres.
"It was a long process and took far longer
than normal," says Seghatchian. "But
Pawel wanted to get it right. Finding a pair
that would work well together was key."
In the end, it took about eight months to
cast Press and Blunt in the lead roles.
The initial casting process was further
staggered because limited funding was
available early on. "We didn't have very
much money - at that point we were
paying for the development ourselves,"
says Seghatchian. "We paid for the option and for the initial casting director and searching
fees. We were discussing the possibility of a development deal with the BBC, but had to
keep the momentum going if we were to shoot the following year, so we were prepared to
take the risk of financing the initial development ourselves whilst still in the early stages of
negotiation."
Scripting and Scheduling
While the casting process was taking place, Pawlikowski reduced the book to a detailed
outline of the scenes from the novel he liked and started scripting in new ideas, original
elements and other themes that he wanted to incorporate into the story. Pawlikowski and
Seghatchian worked on the outlining in collaboration with playwright Michael Wynne. They
generated a more detailed treatment, which contained some dialogue and fully-fledged
scenes and Pawel's reworking of the story, which by now also incorporated a sense of the
landscape.
Once it was clear that there were enough elements in place to proceed to pre-production,
producer Chris Collins, who had worked with Pawlikowski as the Associate Producer on
127

4. Last Resort, came on board and broke down the shooting document in order to budget it and
outline a potential production schedule.
Again, this is a very unusual way of developing a film. Film financiers normally insist on a
fully developed screenplay to give them a complete understanding of the picture they are
investing in. However, because Pawlikowski had made The Last Resort in a similar way, the
BBC, who were now on board as the development financier, felt confident of moving
forward with the flexible detailed outline.
Financing
Armed with the two girls, Paddy Considine, a detailed shooting document, a budget and a
schedule, the team went out to raise the rest of the finance.
Says Seghatchian: "We went to all the usual suspects of UK financing sources and came out
with interest from the Film Consortium, which had a deal with the UK Film Council and the
tax partnership Baker Street. The Film Consortium also owned the sales agent, The Works,
so we were able to get them to generate the sales estimates that would dictate the overall
financing risk for the parties involved."
It took three months to sort out the legal documents to allow the financing to fall into place.
"Deals take that long," points out Seghatchian. "Because so many parties were involved it
required everyone to sign off on everything and to work out what their investment and
recoupment schedules were. The legal documentation for these three party deals can be
complicated and we enlisted the support of our solicitor Jeremy Gawade at legal firm Lee &
Thompson to help us put the financing together."
Production
Whilst the financing was being sorted out, a crew was also being assembled. Pawlikowski
was keen to crew up with people he had worked with before and so they brought on many of
his previous collaborators Ryszard Lenczewski (director of photography), David Charap
(editor) and Julian Day (Costume Designer). The production designer who Pawel had
worked with previously wasn't available so John Stevenson - who'd worked with Collins on
Tomorrow La Scala - was hired. Hair and make up artist, Tara McDonald, completed the
individual departments.
128

5. A first assistant director was also brought on board. Pawlikowski hadn't used one on Last
Resort and Chris Collins had doubled as a first, but "we decided we did need a first assistant
director on this film as it was a more complicated shoot," says Seghatchian. "But we kept to
a relatively small crew for as long possible and brought people on a daily basis when we
needed more manpower."
Location Scouting and Production Design
Pawlikowski also did much of the location scouting himself. "His films are informed by a
very strong sense of landscape. He didn't have a location manager scouting for locations for
him - he found them himself, early on in the development process, as they were to inform the
nature of the film as much as the cast or script," explains Seghatchian. However, a location
manger was employed once the film was in production to manage the locations, set them up
and tidy them up. Pawlikowski and his Art Department then worked on the look of the key
locations. For example, the big country house that Tamsin's family lives in was completely
overhauled: floors were sanded, wallpaper put up and furniture hired in.
The Shoot
And then production began. Originally the plan
was to shoot the film chronologically. But as the
film started shooting, Britain was gripped by a
mini-heatwave. Wanting to take advantage of the
wonderful weather and fearful that it might not
hold, a decision was taken to move all the
exterior shoots to the first week.
Unconventionally, the Producers had also built
into the production plans at the outset the
opportunity for a split shoot - which would give
Pawlikowski more freedom to experiment and reflected the looseness of his desired
development and filming processes. Two thirds of the film was shot, then edited together,
before the final third was filmed.
PR firm McDonald & Rutter were hired to take care of production publicity during the shoot
and a unit photographer, Suzy Allnut, was brought on board to take Unit stills. "We'd
decided we didn't want much production publicity, so we agreed to limit location reports to
one feature. Andrew Pulver of The Guardian wrote a piece which came out whilst we were
filming in August 2003," says Seghatchian.
During editing, attention turned towards music for the film. An Edith Piaf track 'La Foule'
was already scripted in, but the idea of using Goldfrapp emerged during the editing process
when Pawel decided to use their track 'Lovely Head'. Whilst clearing that track for usage, the
team approached the band about writing some original music for the film as well.
Post-Production
As soon as My Summer Of Love was completed, the search began for a UK distributor. The
BBC, which had UK rights to the film, held a special screening and invited UK distributors
to come along. ContentFilm soon acquired the rights. "They wanted to release the film this
year which was something we wanted to do to," says Seghatchian. "We didn't want it to wait
129

6. on the shelf for a long time. We felt it was a summer film and that it would be good to
release the film while summer was in still in people's memory."
"We knew we wanted the UK Premiere of the
film to be at Edinburgh and the Edinburgh
International Film Festival had invited My
Summer Of Love to world premiere in its
competition section." Edinburgh, says
Seghatchian, "was hugely significant for the fate
of the film". It won the festival's top prize and,
more importantly, garnered a string of very good
reviews. "The film came out at Edinburgh when
there was a genuine sense that there was some
good British films out there. It meant that there
was a real goodwill feeling amongst the press
who wanted to help to support films they liked."
Keen to build on the momentum of the Edinburgh screening, ContentFilm hired McDonald
& Rutter to handle press and publicity for the UK release. The financiers, distributors and
producers agreed to try and position the film to appeal to both the traditional art house
market and more regular, mainstream moviegoers.
"Even though we weren't star-driven, we thought we might be able to sell the film on the two
new discoveries, introducing home grown stars of the future. The press did pick up on that.
And found the girls very easy to photograph and place." says Seghatchian.
After Edinburgh, the film's international sales
agent The Works took the film to the Toronto
International Film Festival, an annual autumn
meeting point for buyers and sellers of films. "A
lot of US buyers saw it and loved it and there was
a bidding war for it," says Seghatchian. "And we
managed to sell it to the company we wanted to
sell it to for a good price, Focus Features."
US distributor Focus have worked on a string of
high profile films - including Lost In Translation
and The Motorcycle Diaries. Their acquisition of My Summer Of Love only served to boost
the profile and the positive press surrounding the film post-Edinburgh. Back in the UK, the
release date was drawing near. Posters were designed and a poster and print campaign
launched for the film. Eventually the film was launched on October 22 on 25 sites, taking a
very impressive £80,000 in its first three days. It played particularly strongly in the art-house
friendly West End of London where it grossed £56,408 from 15 locations.
Q1. What was the final box office gross for My Summer of Love? Considering its
success with critics and at award ceremonies, do you consider it to be a successful film?
How does the story of its development illustrate what you’ve learnt about the process of
film making in previous sections of this booklet?
130