Honeytrap is an indépendant, Indie film, set and shot on a South London- Brixton estate. Based on true events, it is the story of 

"15-year-old Layla, who sets up the boy in love with her to be killed. The film explores the jigsaw of social elements which allow gang culture to flourish, but it's also a story on a mythic scale: set in a world with its own kings and queens, a world where obsession and jealousies loom larger than life and where status is survival itself."

This film is Rebecca Johnson's debut feature film, after enjoying success with previous short films such as Top Girl, and this short film is what got Sarah Sulick's attention, and after watching it, she knew she wanted to work as the producer on one of Rebecca's film's. Sulick was producer for Honeytrap.

Sarah Sulick

Rebecca Johnson

The production budget for this film was just under 1,000,000 pounds, and these funds were raised through crowd sourcing, that is where members of the public donate money, and the BFI gave Rebecca Johnson funding to write the script.

The casting director Amanda Tabak who had previously worked on Kidulthood was in charge of casting for this feature, they did street castings and went to agencies and theatre companies in South London, but they also worked with untrained young adults from the estates, and mentored them to create the story and the characters.

CREW:

• David Raedeker- Director of Photography (My Brother the Devil, Babylon)
• Tracy Granger- Editor (Locked in, Boys Dont Cry)
• Emily Nightingale- Playwright and workshop facilitator
• Amanda Tabak- Casting Director (Kidulthood)
• Julie Fawcett- Community liaison

The director decided to make this film based on the true story, as she felt as though she wanted to portray the violent nature of girls, and challenge the stereotypes of male gang life. The film was distributed by Anchor Bay, and they were the same distributors Rebecca's previous short film 'Top Girl'.

It was stated that the target audience for this film was for urban 25+ adults who were seeking critically acclaimed films, and this suggests that Rebecca Johnson had the aspirations to create a critically brilliant piece of film, with high quality editing, camera shots and detail etc. However it was also claimed that the film would be targeted to 15-25 year old urban male and females, which shows us how that the film was aimed to show a message and relate to the young people of London and Britain, in the hope that they could gain something from viewing it. This is supported by the company's work in the community with Julie Fawcett and Emily Nightingale who ran workshops with the young people in the community involved in the film to help them through workshops and mentoring.

Marketing:

Due to the fact that Honeytrap was a small independent  film there was no large marketing campaign, a large part of their marketing involved social media, with Facebook and twitter. This allowed them to raise awareness with their desired target audience of the younger generation who are the main users of such social networking sites.

The BFI also played a part in the distribution and marketing, as they premiered the film at the London Film Festival on October 17th 2014. 

 

This feature will be released nationwide in February 2015, however due to it being an independent film, it will only be released in more indie, and arthouse cinemas, and it will be a restricted release.