Pitching an idea for a film

Today, we pitched a made up film idea to the rest of the class. We worked in groups of 4 or 5 to create our ideas.  For inspiration, we were given four cards. One had the genre, two were characters, and the last was a prop. Our cards were as follows:

• Action
• Chrissy
• Roger, 46
• A bottle of wine

From this we created the following idea: Roger and another man called Jason were partners in crime, they stole things, beat people, and robbed banks. At the start of the film, they are seen robbing the bank. However, Roger is arrested and Jason gets away. The rest of the film is then about Chrissy (Rogers Daughter) meeting Jason and working with him to get her father free again.
The name through the keyhole can from the fact that Roger is going to be locked away in prison and the fact that the only way that they can get him out is with perfect precision. Much like a key and a keyhole. The way that we are using the bottle of wine is through the timing of the film. We find out that Roger is on death row and only has limited time left to be rescued so to show the progression of time running out, we are using the nursery rhyme about bottle on a wall. At the start of the film, there is very little sound, only a child singing about 30 bottles on a wall while a montage of slow motion bank robbing is happening. Then as a woman is running out of the bank, she knocks a table and a bottle of wine falls off the table and onto the floor. As soon as it hits the floor, the singing stops and all of the sound and normal speeds kick in. To finish the film, and making a circular narrative, as Roger is freed from the bank at the end, the last thing that we will see is him walking out of the prison after all of the guards have been killed by Jason and Chrissy and the camera just shows his cell and the sound fades out and the child singing fades in as the last bottle of wine falls off the wall (the shelf). This makes the film start and finish at the same point which makes the story seem complete.


I found the pitching part interesting because I do not really enjoy giving presentations but I found it really fun and easy to do. I spoke mainly about the target audience for the film which we agreed would be late teens to mid 20s, but I did go on to say that it is suitable and would be enjoyable for an older audience too because unlike the average action film, there was a good story behind it. An example of an existing action film that I enjoyed is Kill Bill. This film is action from start to finish. There is plenty of fighting, so much blood, and an awesome protagonist played by Uma Thurman. This action film is unlike our idea because ours would not have so much blood, I think it would be a less gory film so that the audience will focus on the story rather than the action.

Overall, I think the pitching went fairly well and not only did we get good responses, we also learnt things and it was good to be able to practice what the real film makers do.