A DIRECTOR is hoping people across Oxfordshire will help support his film with entirely improvised dialogue.

James Card, who is originally from Kennington, is planning to shoot his film, Dan and Alice, in September.

Rule of Film, a trio of creatives including Mr Card and two others, has launched a kickstarter campaign to help fund the innovative work.

Mr Card, who now lives in London, talked about why he wanted to create an improvised film.

He said: “The greatest of actors, working with the best of directors, can make any scripted moment on film seem genuine, real, and as if happening or spoken for the first time.

“The most skilled writers, too, can create dialogue on the page that is so wonderfully honest, it’s impossible to believe we aren’t just hearing the thoughts of its characters in the moment.

“Even so, for me, rarely do those films contain the stutters, false-starts, and verbal hiccups of a genuine conversation, or the overlapping dialogue of people arguing as everyone tries to get their point across.

“Over the years, however, more and more of the films I have loved seem to have one thing in common – natural, spontaneous, and completely immersive performances, with dialogue, reactions, and moments of comedy and drama that I believe could never have been dreamed up in advance.”

The story of Dan and Alice follows the two eponymous characters, both in their late 30s and in their own stagnating relationships, as they find themselves travelling to London together as plus ones on their respective partners’ wedding invitations.

A few of the key scenes of the film have been shot already so that audiences could get a taste of the movie before contributing.

Despite his love for the concept, Mr Card said filming an improvised feature film did present some difficulties.

He said: “In a more traditionally-shot scripted film, scenes can be filmed out of chronological order, based instead on the location or availability of cast.

“For us, though, it will be necessary to shoot the film in sequence, beginning at scene one and working through to the end. Without doing so, it would be almost impossible for our characters to reference relative events in the film that had happened previously, unless the cast have literally already experienced and shaped those moments.”

Mr Card performed with Kennington Amateur Dramatic Society when he was younger, and recently worked on a film with Oxford’s Stanley Road Productions in Eynsham.

The crowdfunding campaign has so far raised more than £1,000 of an £11,000 target.

To find out more about the film, view some of the scenes, and to make a donation, visit dan-and-alice.com