The pitch to the judges

In this Wednesday’s lesson we were given the task to provide a presentation regarding our opening to a thriller. In this presentation we had to include:
· The plot and a story board of the events.
· Shot types/angles.
· Lighting.
· Music.
· Target audience.
· Icons/ props.
· Location.

We spent the 1st half of the lesson preparing our presentation. This activity was beneficial to us as it allowed our groups to delve deeper into our initial plot to construct the basis of our actual plot. Furthermore it allowed us to take into consideration other aspects of the thriller such as shot types and audience so that when we go out to shoot we have enough research to make it effective/ realistic and also to make it appealing to the target audience we had selected.

When we had finished our plan for the presentation, we discussed who will be presenting what aspect of the presentation (which we had written up). I was given the task of presenting the technical aspects of the presentation such as shot types/angles, lighting and music. Daniel was handed the location, and target audience. Suzie presented the introduction to out thriller film (dead-u- cation) and the icons/props and Claudio presented the story board. Then in the second half of the lesson we went on to present our pitch. We were the first group to present our pitch to some of the staff of the media department which included two of the technicians plus out two media teachers.

As a groups we had concluded that the main features to our shot types/ angle would be close ups and over the shoulder shot. We came up with this as we want our main charters identity to be secret so with close ups the audience are never given a full picture of the character identity, but instead flashes of specific facial features of the character. Also with the over the shoulder shots you only ever see the characters back of the head so no identity would be exposed. With these specific shot types we hope to build curiosity amongst the audience and also an element of uncertainty to the purpose of the character. This level of hidden identity will further be emphasised with a slightly dimmer lighting in the shots, this is also to highlight the uncertainty of the characters activities and to somewhat create an instant impression of the character being “bad”. We intend to use a calm soft music in the back ground which will progress to become more and more up beat and sinister until it reaches a high pitch climax when the audience find out the characters incentives.

Our thriller is located in college and in a class room as it correlates to the theme of a psycho teacher. Furthermore the location also correlates with our target audience who we classified as 15-25 year olds. This correlates with them as they would either be in education or at a stage where they have just left education and by having it based about a college would make it more appealing.

Are main icons/props where items that relate to a college atmosphere such as ID – card, science lab coat, etc this are to inform the audience of normality as the props show that he is in the right environment and not in a secret location. The element of the crocodile clips and the reports on the computer highlights the character of being an electronics teacher.

When we had completed our presentation we received positive feed back form 3 of the 4 judges as one (mike) believed that we are telling too much about the story. This comment by mike sparked an argument between the other 3 judges as they believed that the plot was good. In the end it concluded that our plot was well thought of and presented however, that we should focus more to what occurs inside the class room in our thriller.

We took this advice into account and are now thinking of slight justification to our planned thriller. We all thought that we can go on with what we already have but just make the clips shorter to leave more time in the class room.

We then went onto listening to the pitches of the remainder of the groups in our class.