Tuesday's Pitch and Next Group Meeting

Hey everyone

Just wanted to say well done for the pitch on Tuesday. We had a few problems with the PowerPoint etc, but I feel that we put the idea across fairly well. Annie did highlight a couple of potential problems with the idea, which I really think need discussing as I completely agree with what she said and think that they need working on, but I'll discuss that later in the post. I'm not sure when we find out whether the idea was selected, hopefully they can see that we are very strong as a group, have most obstacles (e.g. the child actor, the location, etc) covered already, and that we will make this film happen...successfully!

Anyway, the story that we pitches was as follows:

There's a burglary at a house
The family (victims) see their insurance company
Jake takes on the case
When investigating the house, he becomes strangely attached to the couple's child
After a series of events Jake is arrested
Revealed at the end that the child was adopted - she is Jake's

We all love this idea, we love the twist and we have developed it well. However, Annie's point that we might not empathise with Jake is too important to just skip over. She's right, we won't. If we are introduced to him as an insurance broker, then see him becoming attached to a child, then find out that he committed the burglary and the child is his...Yes we'd feel a bit bad for him at the end, but what about all the way through? Our sympathy and care would lie with the family, not Jake, our protagonist.

I really feel that we need to take the idea back to Jake. We can still keep this whole story going, but we need to get to know him more before we are made to suspect him. Perhaps we could stick to our original idea, and open the film with Jake making his way to the office. We get to know him, we see his place in the office (the joker, the cool guy), then we learn that there is more to Jake than meets the eye. Maybe his boss asks him to attend a meeting on the 17th, he checks his calendar and we see his reaction to this date. We begin to wonder what more there is to know about our main guy. We can still see the family come in, Jake can take the case, and everything can happen as planned before. The reveal can still be the same, and we can still find out that the whole burglary was down to Jake. Just imagine how much more effective it would be, both the doubt and anxiety we begin to feel about Jake as the film develops, and the shock when the truth is revealed at the end, if we get to know Jake, believe him to be a different person at the start, and care about this person.

I'm going to take it that the idea has gone forward for now, I don't want to stop meeting up and developing it until we find out. The next meeting will be on Tuesday 12th October at 1.15pm in the cafe on Level 5. We can move to somewhere quieter if possible. It should only last a couple of hours, Billy has a lesson at 4pm so it will definitely be over in time for him to have a break before then!

See you then, bring any ideas/notes with you. Thank youuu.