Story-Telling Unit: Creating a story and pitches.

Recently we have begun creating our own story lines and characters for our first university project. We have been given the choice of creating a comedy, a thriller or a drama. Because I have created comedy pieces in the past, and things that could be considered thrillers, I decided to create my own dramatic piece.
In order to do this, I have been developing my own characters and creating my own scenarios, which I believe would be very enjoyable to see play out on film.
I have had the opportunity to actually present my ideas and opinions to other members of my class, as well as take in some of their suggestions and thoughts in order to make my ideas better. I am extremely happy to have been able to develop my ideas further, and the addition of classmates that can improve my ideas has really helped me.
As a result of creating my own storyline idea, and sharing said idea with other members of my class, I have been able to generate even more ideas and fine-tune the ones I have already had. I have also been able to create my own 25 word pitch for my short film called "The Meeting."

"After convincing him to postpone a suicide attempt, a young woman struggles to show a broken man that life is worth fighting for. But will she be successful?"

I have worded my pitch in such a way that it describes what will happen in the film perfectly, but without giving away major details which I believe would spoil the film and give away the major plot turns.
The next step in the film-making process will be for me to take my completed storyline idea, and develop it into a draft script.
I look forward to beginning this process and creating the film. I will continue to update this blog.

Story-telling Unit: Exercise in story-telling.

Recently in my Broadcast Media class, we were given an exercise designed to introduce us to the art of story-telling. The exercise involved randomly choosing 2 types of character and a setting, and then create a story for the characters and that setting, with the key theme being a "meeting."
For this exercise, I worked with my new flat-mate, Ruby.
I did the random choosing, and picked a "Minor Celebrity" character, a "Private Investigator" character, and the setting of a prison. I found this exercise to be actually very interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to work with somebody else to create an intriguing story.
You would think that restricting ourselves to using certain characters and settings would be hindering, but instead I found it to be a great way to set ourselves boundaries in our story-creations, allowing us to generate a realistic, coherent story.

The first character I worked on creating was the private investigator character. I wanted to create the impression of a seasoned, tough old ex-police investigator, deeply passionate about his work- to the extent of leaving his family and friends behind to pursue his occupation. The theme of this entire story would have been the importance of family and being there for children, and the change we wanted to show in this story was the investigator's attitude towards his own family, after meeting with the celebrity character.

The second character we created was the minor celebrity character. We wanted to create a character that would be believably involved with the private investigator character in some way, and we also wanted this celebrity character to be the reason the investigator changed his attitude towards his work. The celebrity character herself was intentionally created to be as obnoxious and appalling as possible. We made her a person that craves attention, whether it be bad or good, and made her someone who has issues with her family (especially her father). We thought this would create an interesting dynamic between the two characters, one who is very established, organized and dynamic (the private investigator), and one who is very rebellious and unruly (the minor celebrity).

The story itself was created once the two characters were established. We decided that the two characters would meet at the prison due to an indiscretion at the minor celebrities home, where the private investigator would be caught trying to find incriminating evidence about the minor celebrity after being hired by an un-named character.
The two would then meet at the local police station after the minor celebrity reported the incident to the police and would then visit the station to make a statement. This is where the majority of the stories action would take place and also where the big change of the story would happen. The change would be mainly psychological, with the minor celebrity character disclosing information about her troubled life and unstable relationship with her father, which in turn would cause the private investigator character to re-assess his relationship with his own daughter (who he effectively abandoned to pursue his work).

HEY!
So I've recently begun a Broadcast Media course in Rochester! So far I've had the opportunity to meet some great people and I really think I'm going to enjoy my time here.
So far during induction week we've pretty much just chilled out, been given the basics of what our course will be about, been introduced to the places we'll be working in and just generally gotten to know each other.
I'm really looking forward to what will happen in the coming weeks, and so I'll end this blog by saying; It's going to be a hell of an experience!

-Mark