STORY-TELLING UNIT - 25 WORD PITCH

'The Vanishing Lady'

'A broken family, a cold night and a lost girl. James and Lily find themselves involved with the ghost of the girl they just met' 

Genre - Thriller

Characters

The Father - James. 43 years old. Average day man, works in a supermarket, bit over weight but loves listening to music, favourite era is 80's pop music like Michael Jackson, Wham!, Duran Duran, etc. After losing his wife because of a medical illness, he's over protective of his daughter. He aims to do it out of love and care but ends up pushing her away and gets angry when she doesn't listen to him. James will often shout first and let his temper get the better of him but regret it later on, but since the death of his wife he finds it hard to express his feelings and tell his daughter why he's like this.

The Daughter - Lily. 16 years old. Very 'mainstream' and rebellious teenager who wants more freedom and mistakes her Father's protective attitude for being unfair and thinks that he just doesn't want her to have any fun. Loves mainstream programmes and music such as Justin Bieber, Cheryl Cole, Drake, etc. and typically will be texting her friends or talking on social media. She has a very stubborn attitude and doesn't really enjoy talking to her Father as he's stopped her going to parties and things with her friends. She took the death of her Mother very badly but never opened up about it to her Father.

CAMERA WORKSHOP 1 - Focusing, Sound and White Balance

In a workshop we went over some basic work with cameras. We were using the Sony EX1R cameras with a standard tripod. We were showed some of the basics with the cameras like focusing, sound, white balance and framing. These are the main things we need to cover so that we could use the cameras.

I found these cameras fairly easy to use and I was pretty confident with using these with each part we went through as I'd had to use similar cameras on my previous college course, although those were Canon XF305 cameras. But the layout of the cameras are very similar. Fergus and Sam talked us through something called 'SWEFF' which can be used as a checklist for setting up your shot before a shoot. each letter stands for something different for the camera.

STORY-TELLING UNIT - PITCH PRACTICE AND SCREEN WRITING

In preparation for our idea pitch we watched 2 short films by Simon Ellis, the first called 'Soft' and the second called 'Stew and Punch'. After watching the first we were given the task of making a 25 word pitch to best sell the film. My pitch was:
"When the home is threatened, can a Father push back his fear and defend his family or let his Son see the coward he is"
Was to get across the story but not explain it completely, add mystery to the pitch which would interest the audience. Playing with words rather than lying. As the story is about a young boy who gets beaten up and his Father is then beaten up and can't defend his Son because he's too soft. Selling this but making it much more exciting was tricky but interesting and has given me ideas towards my own pitch as well.

Story-telling unit - Idea planning

For insperation for our script writing, we paid with another class mate to create three, 25-word pitches for 3 different briefs by using newspapaers we'd brought in as source material for stories. the breifs were:
1. High budget Hollywood blockbuster production
2. British comedy series for channel 4
3 Low budget short films

Our pitches were:




Stinger From Beyond the Stars
"Giant Killer hornets are invading Britain. Tom Hardy, armed with a shotgun, battles to the death to save humanity"




The insperation for this pitch came from an article I found in the paper about Giant Killer Asian hornets invading Britain. Although the article itself didn't give a huge amount of insperation, the headline made me think of a science fiction movie science fiction action movie and I worked from that.







The Egg Factor
"What talents can be done with eggs? MANY! Bill Bailey judges their 'raw' egg talent, the only rule... Use eggs or things could scramble"



My classmate and I found an article about how Simon Cowell plans to make a new baking show to replace 'The Great British Cake Off' which BBC lost to Channel 4 only a week ago. With this in mind we thought how Channel 4 could make a new version of the X Factor and decided to make it funnier with a British comedian.




Mental State
"An Estate where mental health paitents are sent while awaiting care or therapy. See how they grow as a community despite their flaws"






There was an article about how a 1 in 4 brits are mentally ill but only a quarter are actually helped. This made us think about how people who are different can come together to form communities such as help groups for stress, quitting smoking, etc. and we built on that.

After making and giving these pitches we were moved into groups of 3 and given 2 random character types and a random location and given almost 2 hours to make a story where we needed to think about the goal, conflict and change in the story as well as the details of the characters.

Characters:
- Private Investigator
- Beach Bum

Location:
- Country Lane



Private Investigator
- Sarah Turner
- 36 years old
- High morals
- Organized and tidy
- Recently left the police force for an unknown reason
- Single
- No children





Beach Bum

- Richard Tugger
- Young, 18 years old
- Regularly gets drunk at the beach
- Low self esteem
- Unmotivated



Location:


"Lonesome Road"

Sarah is hired by Richard's mother to find him as he hasn't been home for two days. She said she thinks he's somewhere around the beach. Sarah then drives down the country lane at a high speed when someone walks in front of her car. She hits the brakes too late and ends up hitting the person with her car. She gets out and realize the person on the ground is Richard, and he's dead. She is then faced with a decision, does she tell the mother that she killed her son or does she lie and tell her she found him like that? If she tells the truth she could lose everything, but if she lies she will lose her honor. 

She decides to leave him and gets away with it, but struggles to sleep because of the guilt.

Why are they meeting:
Sara is hired to find Richard because he has gone missing.

Goal:
Getting Richard home

Conflict:
Will Sarah tell the truth and risk loosing everything, or will she lie and go against what she stands for?

Change:
Sarah decides to lie and therefore loses her honor and struggles with guilt.

STORY-TELLING Unit Introduction

In today's session, we were given our introduction for the Story-telling unit. Through this we disucssed what a story is and what the point of one is. Television is the biggest media industry with story telling. Talking about the fact that a script needs to tell a story and it needs to have a beginning, middle or end. We were given examples such as Only Fools and Horses, Breaking Bad and Stranger Things. We spoke about the importance of the characters and how they make the story.

After looking over the brief for the unit and the discussing the work that is needed we were asked if we had already begun thinking of ideas for a script or a story which we'd like to tell. I was sent an article from a friend of mine back in Wales about an old friend of mine called Irfon who sadly was diagnosed with Cancer and recently has been told the regretable news that is has returned.

However, Irfon's story is very interesting and heart warming. When living in Wales I spoke with Irfon and he told me about how he was a loud, out going, cocky and typical 'rugby lad' until meeting his wife and being diagnosed with the illness. He ended up changing into a positive and public speaking figure who has been pushing to get better cancer treatment in Wales. As well as trying all new forms of therapy because of his wife suggesting and supporting him throughout.
This story is a possible which I would be interested in adapting into a screenplay as its got a good change with the character. With this being someone I know as well I'd be amazing to tell this story.

This is just an idea though and I'll be developing a few ideas first before working through and deciding on a final one to develop.