Archive for September 2013
For
today’s lecture, we had a Development & pitch day session.
The whole
idea of this was, as a table or group, you discuss your ideas for the story you’ve
created called “The Meeting” in order to give and receive feedback about how
you could improve your story to then later adapt into a screenplay.
The idea
that I had chosen and pitched to both the groups I was in received really good
feedback. When I explained the summary of my story, I received good advice on
how I could improve my expanded pitch, which also helped me to improve the
reason as to how my characters where meeting. Where I was pretty sure that I
had a solid story before I had the group discussions, the groups helped me to
further improve the story that I had created by adding an established set up
into my story brief, because, the original story brief I wrote did not give
reason to my set-up (how my characters had gotten in
contact)
(this was my original idea i came to the lecture with, what pitched and gotten feedback on)
The set
up idea my group had given me, was, to have my main character Julius contact
Toru by email in the opening scene, doing this would help the audience to
establish a reason to why Julius is walking through Chatham town center to meet
Toru. Further expanding upon this set up, the audience would be able to
establish the time and date for the meet and also the set location, plus a
short explanation as to why Julius is messaging Toru, thus creating more build
up around the meeting of these two characters.
Here is a
fact sheet that we had to fill out, it’s also a summary of what I had created
at the end of today’s Pitch & development session
At the end
of today’s pitch and development lab session, we pitched our ideas for “The
Meeting” to our unit lecturer Simon. The feedback I received was, he
understood that it’s a story about someone trying to find them-self, however,
because I didn’t narrow it down in my original pitch (in speech marks below) as to what the newfound
abilities of Julius was, I could leave the audience open to think about
anything, i.e. even though its about super powers, It could be turned from a
super power movie to a normal everyday situation. So based off of this feedback I amended my pitch to focus on
what it is Julius specifically wants answer for so that the audience is able to
establish straight away what type of story this is.
Original pitch idea
“Demanding answers for his newfound ability,
Julius finds himself in over his head as the truth is slowly revealed about his
cursed inner secret.”
In this Blog post, I’m
going to try and break down and take you through my thought process in coming
up with my idea for “The Meeting”
It’s going to be a
loooooooong post so have make sure you have your cup of coffee next to you!
Unit introduction: the idea and pitch
23rd
September
During the lecture
when we was handed this brief, I started to brainstorm over ideas that I had
for this project by jotting them down on the project brief sheet, so that if I
liked any of them I could expand upon it.
Pre writing
24th
September
In this lecture, Simon
Welsford set us a task to create a story called the meeting whilst working in
pairs with another member of my class (Click link for post). This helped me towards coming up with better ideas because
it gave me a more structural thought process when trying to think of an idea
for a short story.
Later on that night I
had what you would call “Balcony time”, where I sat down on my chair on my
balcony with my Sheesha pipe, a case of beers, note pad, phone, and brain
stormed over ideas for “The Meeting”.
While brainstorming
these quick ideas, I kept in mind the (goal, problem, change,) structure/format
that we had discussed/explored on the 23rd and 24th and
also been shown an example of in a short film called “Soft” by Simon Ellis (click link to watch)
When I’d thought I had
a good idea to work on, I then further expanded upon this idea by developing it
into a story and a pitch
The idea I thought of
was inspired by a Character called MR.5 from an anime that I usually watch
called “One Piece” and also off of a tutorial I’d saw on Youtube based off of
the “Night Crawler” FX
This is the character
from One piece that inspired me to create my character with the abilities to use his snot as an explosive
This is the FX I
watched on Youtube that I wanted my Second character, the one with the answers
to be able to use
Where screenwriting is
totally new to me, so that I could help further my idea later on in my project,
I took pictures of my set location that I was going to use, so that when we’re
to write the script, I pretty much have an idea of my set locations make up
(design) so I can be as descriptive as I want.
Even though we’re to
do this later on in the production stage of our unit, I thought might as well
get a draft of it now, as the location is part of the route I use to commute
home. (keep in mind that the time of the location is set at night even tho i took the pics during the afternoon)
So yea, there is my
thought process as to how I came up with my idea for "The Meeting".
Task
Today Simon set us a
task to team up with another pupil from our lecture group and create a 25-word
pitch and a short story for a feature film called ‘The meet’.
Here is a picture of
the task conditions we had to work under
The member of my group
whom I teamed up with was CK.
The set location we
were given was a container yard. The characters we were given were, an office
clearer and an unemployed teenager.
Once we had gone
through that thought process and jotted down a few ideas, we narrowed down our
selections into a character table to insert our final decisions into each
characters section
When we had given our
characters an identity and a personality, it made it easier for us to create a
reason for why they would be at the container yard and include a plot into this
reason with minor adjustments.
Using our table to build off of, we then
put together a 26-word pitch, what would besides letting our audience know what our
feature film is about, would also remind us what we are writing about as we
then expanded that pitch into a short story.
Here is our final draft story.......
Here is our final draft story.......
Container Terminal 18
Theme: Action
thriller
Pitch
Unemployed during his 6thform Christmas break; Luke is
sent to work as an office cleaner with his granddad Harry at London’s notorious
Container Terminal18
Story
An
unemployed 18 year old teenager named Luke whom is on his school Christmas break is
currently helping his granddad out with his office cleaning job at the
container yard working night shifts.
One
night as he is waiting for his granddad to turn up to work. He lit a cigarette,
as he was 10 minutes early. Whilst smoking, he over hears multiple voices
coming from a part of the container yard he though was suppose to be empty.
As
he goes over to explore what is happening, he notices people loading bags into
a container where the noise was coming from. Suddenly a filthy child in
tattered clothing runs out of the container, this startles Luke making him jump
in disbelief that then notices the antagonist that someone is observing them.
Meanwhile
Grandpa
Harry (as referred to by Luke) has now turned up to the closed office, let himself
in and walked towards his cleaning cupboard. While preparing for the shift, he
becomes concerned for his grandson because he is now 20 minutes late. He tries
to contact him on his mobile but is getting bad reception inside the office, so
he makes the call outside. Once outside manages to get good with reception and
tries to contact his grandson, but his phone line is just ringing out. As he
continues to phone his grandson, Harry too hears a noise coming from the
distance, to which he then follows, as he gets closer, the sound becomes more
prominent and he recognizes the noise as his grandsons ring tone, until
eventually he was standing looking down at Lukes phone.
Feed back
At the end of the workshop
we pitched our short story to our whole class and tutor, our class and tutor
liked our story and we got some positive feedback on how we could improve it. Simon advised us that sometimes instead of giving a scenario a
professional from that background i.e. a builder building a house, make it
something that the audience would not expect to add more suspense and interest
to the plot i.e. a monkey building a house, the reason he told us that was because of the character profile we originally given Harry, a retired special ops mercenary
How
this helped me?
Well… it definitely has opened up my mind
to a more structural thought process when trying to think of an idea for a
short story, helping me to quickly establish logical explanations for my story
idea i.e. Who? What? When? Where? How? and also to keep the viewer guessing whilst establishing what they're seeing not making my screenplay too predictable
Task
At the end of today’s lecture, Simon set us
a homework task, what was to come up with a 25-word pitch for a story based on
a current news event.
The News story I chose to create a pitch
for, was, the Terrorist event that is currently happening in Westgate Mall in
Nairobi Africa.
Besides the Pitch examples that we were
shown in our lecture, to get a better understanding of a variety of Screenplay
pitches, I searched on the internet for Action films and was directed to a film
database website called www.imdb.com
This website had a humongous variety of
different film pitches which covered most main genres. I browsed through the
action section, because my pitch is an action themed screenplay, so that I
could get an idea of how these films sold their story in such a short
convincing way to try and see if I could get some inspiration.
While I was reading these pitches I jotted
down a few ideas so that I had a template to work off of
Examples
(1st person narrative idea)
We have attackers pinned down in the
shopping centre, but they still have hostages, tension is rising as their
demands are irrational.. How will this end?
Under siege, irrational demands, tempers
running wild, caught up in the cross fire, Lucas and his family find themselves
in the middle of a terrorist feud
The final idea that I came up with was
Attack on Westgate Mall
On September
22nd, 2013, Kenyan Special Forces heroically embark on a covert mission to try
rescue the remaining hostages held captive by the sinister AL-Shabab
I felt to go with this pitch because the
idea I had envisioned if this was turned into a film, would be very action
packed all guns blazing ect
Feedback
The reception I had gotten from Simon off
of this pitch was that the idea was good but the pitch was too predictable and
straightforward, that it pretty much tells the audience in a nutshell what the
story is about, without creating any tension or suspense in the pitch. Based
off of this feedback I decided to alter my pitch and make it a bit more interesting,
give it that edge what would make readers want to view it
Divine intervention
On September
22nd, 2013, Holidaymaker Timothy and his family survived what would be known as
Nairobi’s darkest day in history
Today we got set our
first project, which is the “Story-Telling Unit”.
Below are the details
of the project brief that we have to abide by to complete this task.
Project Brief
You are challenged to conceive, develop and
write an original 10-page screenplay and then to translate aspects of that
screenplay into a moving image form.
The
project is split into two creative pipelines, which you must follow to complete
the project successfully.
Part
1: The Screenplay
1)
The title is:
“The
Meeting”
2) It must be a fictional piece, but can be sourced from a factual story (newspaper story etc).
3) It can take the form of: a Comedy, or a Thriller, or a Drama.
4) It should focus on the meeting of two main characters.
5) It should be set in one main location.
6) The idea for the screenplay must be finalised and presented as a 25-word pitch at the end of the DEVELOP and PITCH LAB day on Sept 30th.
7) The completed draft screenplay, properly formatted, must be submitted on Monday Oct 21st.
8) YOU WILL NOT be allowed to proceed into the production phase unless a complete draft screenplay is submitted on the 21st.
2) It must be a fictional piece, but can be sourced from a factual story (newspaper story etc).
3) It can take the form of: a Comedy, or a Thriller, or a Drama.
4) It should focus on the meeting of two main characters.
5) It should be set in one main location.
6) The idea for the screenplay must be finalised and presented as a 25-word pitch at the end of the DEVELOP and PITCH LAB day on Sept 30th.
7) The completed draft screenplay, properly formatted, must be submitted on Monday Oct 21st.
8) YOU WILL NOT be allowed to proceed into the production phase unless a complete draft screenplay is submitted on the 21st.
Part 2: The visualization and re-write
1)
Using your script as the blueprint you have a choice
of two moving image forms: A 2-min
trailer that “sells” the entire story, or the opening two minutes of your
screenplay.
2)
Whichever you choose, you should:
Plan your
shoot including, cast, crew, locations, shortlist, storyboard, production
design, props and schedule.
3)
Alongside
your video production, your screenplay
will be returned to you with notes on re-writing.
4)
Your final version of the screenplay must be
submitted along with your completed video on November 25th,
1600-1700hr
Tag :// Project Update,
Tag :// Story telling unit
Hey all, here is my summer project called "who am i" which gives you a small insight into my life, hobbies and work that i've done.
