The first 2 days of this week have been all about How you can come up with an idea, a pitch and really thinking about characters and the world they will be in. Simon said put your character in an extreme situation such as a fire or bank robbery and think about how they would react. If you have really developed your character and know their personality it will help you to write about them. I hadn't thought about this before and it will really help me when I'm coming up with characters for the story telling unit.
Soft - Simon Ellis
On Monday we watched a short film by Simon Ellis called "Soft" and were asked to come up with a 25 word pitch. Here is my attempt:
A gritty, hard hitting drama where a father and son's relationship is put to the test when they are faced with the modern youth of today.
I enjoyed the short film and felt it was very clever with the way it plants seeds for use later in the story. I also liked the idea that the son took control of the situation. Most stories about bullying and violence take 2 routes with this sort of idea - either the father tells the son he must stand up for himself and show his masculinity and fight back or the father goes out himself and puts an end to the situation by showing his masculinity and strength over the younger generation. It is refreshing to see a different look on story that is explored fairly frequently in modern television programs aimed at teens and young adults.
Pitch Homework
Pitch Homework
The news story I chose was about a women who has lost 8 stone with the help of a new online diet craze that involves putting pictures of each meal you eat up on Facebook for your friends and family to comment and like giving support and a confidence boost. I imagine it would also motivate you to eat healthier so that the pictures you put up aren't of a Big Mac. She also began posting pictures of her weight loss leading to even more support.
Here is the link to the article from the Mail Online:
It got me thinking about what would happen if you had an eating disorder and saw this diet craze all over Facebook. And what if somebody began anonymously posting pictures of what you eat and your weight loss. This is where my idea for my story came about. I thought it would be quite an interesting topic for a story as bullying online is becoming increasingly more frequent in the news.
The title for the short film was Foodtography after I saw the word in the article. I knew it wouldn't initially give the plot away and I like that it's a merge of words.
My pitch:
A girl's battle with her eating disorder is pushed to breaking point when an anonymous source begins tormenting her online.
I think it gives you enough about the plot to keep you interested and want to know more but still keeps the mystery about how they are tormenting her as it doesn't mention anything about the diet craze. I felt adding that to the pitch would make it a bit wordy.
I don't think ill be taking this idea any further at the moment but it was good practice for coming up with a pitch as I had never done any before this course.
Workshop
The class was asked to pair up and randomly pick out of a hat a location and two characters and then develop a short story idea for with the title of 'The Meeting'.
I was working with Aquila and the characters we picked out were Computer Geek and Retired Naval Officer.
The picture of the location was of a warehouse.
The story idea we came up with was:
Jack Briggs, a naval officer, is forced to retire at 28 when he suffers serious war wounds. After being denied his compensation due to circumstantial evidence claiming he put himself at risk, he wants answers. He meets geeky, autistic hacker Sam who has his own grudge to bear with the navy, thanks to his controlling families navel background. Conflicting personalities mix drama with comedy as rigid Sam is uncomfortable with Jack's unpredictable nature. The unlikely duo's trail leads them to a warehouse to hack the governments system and uncover the truth. The classified information reveals the special ops mission was to kill jack.
Little does he know he still is the target.
We went into quite a detailed background of each character so we could really try and understand them. I think they are probably the best part of our story.
Jack Briggs - navel officer, 28, strong, married with child on the way, needs money to support family, war wounds explosion - left leg amputee, impaired hearing, PTSD, denied compensation as navy said wounds were self inflicted. Special ops mission told by commander to take patrol at a certain location, massive setup - explosion near him only
Sam - geeky, computer hacker, autistic, cannot deal with change, likes things to have an Order, doesn't like people touching his things, whole family very proud of naval background, forced into navy by father but it's the wrong environment for him so quits, believes in factual information, highly intelligent, doesn't appreciate hands on approach.
Why are they meeting? To find out why Jack's compensation was really denied.
Is it planned? Yes
Where did they meet? Navy cadets, he comes across a news paper article about an highly intelligent boy who was in the navy cadets troup he taught.
Originally meet? In Sam's well maintained,clean, organised apartment.
Aquila came up with a brilliant idea for a change in both characters. As they are both very different, we thought it would be good for Jack who is really a very all guns blazing kind of man to learn patience from Sam and that sometimes a more thoughout and tactical approach is better. While Sam who is very reserved, emotionally restricted and very rigid to be able to finally lose a bit of control.
Looking back on the idea I think we would both agree that in our heads we were thinking of an idea much bigger than a 10 minute short film. I think it very quickly spiralled into a massive blockbuster type concept. We didn't really use the warehouse properly and to the best of its abilities and we struggled to think of an idea that could incorporate everything. However i did enjoy creating a character i would not normally have chosen to create and really bring them to life. I feel like I know exactly how they would react in a situation and im pleased with how they turned out after our brainstorming. I enjoyed working with Aquila and think she would be someone I'd like to work with again as she is very creative and full of ideas.
So that's it for the last few days. I'm about to start work on my 2 ideas for the story telling unit. I'm going to brainstorm both and see which idea has the most legs. I'm really struggling with coming up with a change for a character in both stories and I'm thinking if I perhaps rework the original ideas I have and look at them from a different perspective it might work better.
Stay safe,
Helen
