Monday 23 September 2013
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
