STORYTELLING: 25 Word Pitch - Feedback

Today was the deadline for our 25 word pitch and we received feedback from Simon and the rest of the group. I was really nervous to present mine because I wasn't sure if the others would like my idea and or if it made sense. 

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES: Mise en Scène (Lecture)

Yesterday was our first contextual studies lesson with Louis. We learnt about Mise en Scène and how to point it out in films and television shows. Mise en Scène means what is in the scene which was new information to me. Something else I learnt was the 4 key elements of Mise en Scène. These are setting, costume/make-up, lighting, staging. With these, we split up scenes in different films and television programmes into the key elements.

STORYTELLING: Camera Workshop 1

Focus, Sound and White Balance

We had our first camera workshop today which I found really useful. Some bits Fergus taught us I knew about and some I didn't, so I learnt some new bits about the camera I didn't know about. The first  part we learnt about was the focus. We had two people standing in front of the camera and we had to switch the focus between the two; this is called Rack Focus.

STORYTELLING: Introduction to Screenwriting (Lecture)

The afternoon session consisted of meeting and listening to Steve Coombes who has been a screenwriter for 27 years. He was funny and interesting which made us want to listen rather than having to listen to him. He told us what a longline, treatment and bible is in television terms. 

STORYTELLING: Short Film - SOFT

In todays lesson we watched a short film written by Simon Ellis, called SOFT. It was about a man who got attacked by a group of thugs and then at home realises his son was attacked by them too. The thugs then followed him home and started graffitiing his car and harassing them. We found that the man was afraid of the group and couldn't bring himself to confront them, leading his son to go out and scare the group away. 

STORYTELLING: Research and Ideas For My Script

I have not had any experience in scriptwriting, however, I feel as if I need to set the scene first before I can start any writing so I have an idea of what's going on before I put words with it. 
The first scene will be at the crime scene in the bedroom of the victim with the police and forensics. Maybe they can be talking about the cause of death and the evidence. 

STORYTELLING: Speed Pitching Workshop

Another story-telling workshop we were introduced to was speed pitching. The aim of this was to help us create a good pitch to sell our story in 25 or less words. This was good practice to help pitch our own ideas for the story-telling unit. We had to base our pitch on three things each time and we had to look through our newspapers and magazines to find an article which we could turn into a good story.

STORYTELLING: 25 Word Pitch

Befriending The Enemy 

Pitch: 'Man enters police station to help detective with a murder to be eliminated from their enquires, however, unbeknown to her the man is the killer.' 

Genre - Drama

STORYTELLING: Rehabilitated Love

As part of a story-telling workshop we had to pick out names of a hat, one name was a location and the other two names were our characters. With this we had to plan and briefly write a 10 minute story. I found this workshop actually quite useful, we had an hour and a half to plan a decent story and my group and I were rather pleased with what we came up with.

STORYTELLING: Briefing (Lecture)

The first day of the course was very insightful about the brief of the first unit. I already had an idea of what to base my story on, however I learnt more about what the criteria meant and luckily was able to develop my original idea to fit this. I had the idea of how the meeting was going to happen but I did not think about a beginning, middle and end until this first session.
I also learnt about the components a story must have to make it a good story. These are character, goal, conflict and change. From my initial idea, I now know the goal of my story is for the detective to find the killer. The conflict is that the man who she thinks is helping her is actually the man she needs to catch, and the change is realising the man is the killer and finally putting him behind bars. 

STORYTELLING: Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

'The Meeting'

When I read about the idea of 'The Meeting' I initially thought of 

- Office meeting

- Job interview

- Meeting long lost family member

- Confrontation between two people

- Policeman to criminal

THE BEGINNING: A Bit About Me

This was the summer project we were set to complete before we started in September.