The Pitch - Our Drama Idea

After meeting up during the course of the week to collaborate ideas for our pitch on the Thursday, we brainstormed a number of different scenarios and characters which we merged with one another until we came up with a satisfactory narrative and structure to begin to work with. Everyone in the group had an input into the script and plot which will be improved on and edited up until we begin filming. As the brief instructs the film has to ‘convey a notion of Journey’ with only 3 characters and 3 locations being used, we planned the pitch and our film carefully around it, making sure the film would not lose effect and quality due to these limitations when considering the narrative. We also thought about how to show a journey within a short drama piece and how we could interpret a journey in a physical or symbolic sense and if this could put an original spin to our film.

Our final pitch and idea that we came up with, is a story which follows the lives of two siblings (a brother and a sister) with a specific focus on the girl called Abby who is a unconfident/lonely/depressed 19 year old and her emotional journey into getting over the loss of her parents. The antagonist in this film is her brother Alex, who is a confident 21 year old who attempts to fill the role of a father figure for Abby and in doing so upsets her and makes her confront her issues around the loss to get her to move on in life. This narrative shows our take on a journey and how we interoperated it as an emotional journey with a positive outcome rather than a physical journey of characters moving from one place or another. There are a few reasons we chose to do this; the first being that we believe it allows the actors to really express themselves emotionally and physically, rather than be so heavily reliant on the strength of the script which, as a group with little experience in that field, isn’t our strong point; secondly we thought it would stand out slightly more and be more exciting than if it was just filmed on a bus or someone walking, which would add strength to the narrative.

The first scene will introduce the character Abby in a park reading a book on a bench with her headphones in to show that she is in her own world and isn’t very sociable. This is when we will first introduce her parents with a note being left in the cover of the book reading ‘Love you From Mum and Dad’. We will then cut to the house where Alex is firstly introduced as wearing a funny/outrageous apron whilst doing the washing up or some cooking (to show is parental figure side in conjunction with his confident/outgoing side). There will be a conflict over something in the dialogue where Alex will try and be a parental figure and Abby will storm out to her room. We will introduce more pictures of her parents in this time in potentially the corridor and/or her room. Using non-diagetic ambient sound design here is crucial alongside a good performance from our actors to portray the emotions and themes we wish to in order to explain the narrative without the heavy use of dialogue. We will then cut to the next day in the kitchen where there will be another conflict between the two characters where a picture of them introduced earlier will be ruined. Alex will then attempt to rescue it and to make up for annoying Abbey, makes her a collage of pictures of them together and with their parents which he shows to Abbey on return and they embrace in the kitchen as the film ends.

We have already scouted out locations that we will hopefully be using which are Encliffe Park and the internal of a student house on Ecclesall Road for two main reasons. Firstly because the locations fit well with the narrative and convey imagery that we all agree is important and powerful for the theme of the film and secondly because of the ease of access for crew and actors to get to and from on our budget.

When we give our first reading of the fine-tuned script in a couple of days, we will take on board the comments made by our peers and Dom and incorporate them into the script, shot list, sound list etc. that we will be making after today.