Pre-Production: Presentation of Pre-Production / Chosen Idea

Presentation of 'One Week Later'

Below is our presentation which we gave to other members of our course and our lecturers to give and insight into what our chosen idea is. The presentation is designed to go over the main points and areas that needed to be explained where done so verbally by us, answering any questions anyone may have had.

Title Slide - This slide is simply the basic information detailing our current working title, the genre of the film as a psychological drama and its duration as a 20 minute standalone film, created by Harry and I.

Pitch Slide - Our pitch slide provides a short description of the film, simply a brief overview of what it is about without revealing major plot points but summarizing the overall plot.

Plot Slide - A brief bullet pointed plot gives everyone a step by step plan of what happens within the film and its narrative time line. While the synopsis will be much longer outlining every detail of what happens then then what comes after following with more detail. This bullet point layout is simply done to make the plot as graspable as possible before going into further detail.

Character Slide - A brief outline of what characters feature within the film, listed in order of their prominence within the story.

Wife Character Profile - A short overview of the character with some backstory to understand the character a little more. An in depth character bio with full backstory and development is conducted through journal posts and within the book, but for the sake of the presentation we have chosen a short description which we can expand on if need be verbally.

Husband Character Profile - Like the Wife's Profile, this acts as a brief description which will be expanded  on verbally and through written form within another journal post. By stating the main points of his back story and life we briefly but better understand the characters.

Elements of the Book - After choosing to display our Pre-Production through a book, we drew up a learning agreement which splits the work load between Harry and I with areas of the book being each of our agreed responsibilities. Each of us will go into detail within these separate subheadings and verbally and also through our own research within the book to cover all areas possible. Also a separate journal post will look into the areas we will be doing and what I'll do for each of mine, and another into our learning agreement.

Areas for Development - Finally looking at areas for development in which we can open our ideas to others for feedback to help improve our idea or flag up any causes for concern, or areas that we have forgotten. By doing this we can have an outside perspective which is very important as creating an idea can inadvertently cause bias or attachment to certain aspects which in theory is eliminated when someone else gives their opinions.

Reasons for Decision

Budget

One of the key mitigating factors was our budget. Being a small group of students our budget for the film would be fairly tight. For this reason alone we have to be realistic in what we can achieve with a small budget. This means areas such as costume, location, props and other things all add up meaning that things where money could be better spent, such as equipment, actors and quality locations may miss out causing an issue when distributing budget.

We found that the cost for Deployment began to rack up when dealing with military uniforms, locations, convincing military props/regalia. On the other hand One Week Later had less requirements in the case of props, locations and costume allowing for not only a more distributed budget but a more focused one too.

This was a key Factor when choosing One Week Later.

Plot

Creatively we were almost tied on which we liked more plot wise. While Deployment was interesting and had great potential, we agreed that One Week Later was the better choice with more possibilities for creative aspects combining with an engaging story.

When discussing very early on we were adamant that we wanted to create a psychological drama, and even now we feel the same way. We felt that One Week Later fits that genre more and when discussing ideas we felt that creating characters, story and twists flowed more naturally which will greatly aid us when I begin writing the script.

Fitting the brief

When coming up with ideas we tried to always keep the brief in mind, a 20 minute standalone short film was what we chose so it had to fit that. Meaning the story must be engaging and concise enough to be effectively told within that time frame. By being 20 minutes it holds an audience and can be submitted into festivals, which is something we are looking to do.

In truth both films fit this very well. Deployment works as a ticking clock in which the film ends with him leaving and by setting the film on the course of one day we have a story that is time constrained which is something that can aid writing and film duration. One Week Later on the other hand does not have this but has a detailed in depth story which, if scripted and written correctly, can fit the brief well and engage the audience for the full 20 minutes.

With One Week Later, we felt there is more room for possibilities with the story, also we feel confident that the film can hold and engage an audience for the full 20 minutes.

Writing

As the writer for the film, I have to be confident and enjoy what I am going to be writing about. That means looking back at the original development stage, looking at the ideas creation and character development.

One Week Later was an ideas that branched off very naturally, creating characters and their backstory along with plot development very quickly which gave us a lot of hope when planning out what we need to do through research and Pre-Production work. Deployment on the other hand was fairly difficult to develop and ran into numerous problems while developing and researching this idea. Although we made the idea into something that could work we are beginning to see that it will potentially have further issues down the line of Pre-Production.

On this basis we went with One Week Later rather than Deployment as we felt the development of the idea was much smoother and I feel that we it will be a lot more flowing and natural to write. This is important because if I am writing this Harry and I must be comfortable to work with and comfortably develop the idea we choose.

Characters

Like Writing, character development and their personalities are deeply important. I chose One Week Later because the Wife character has potential to be very interesting and engaging. When developing her it seem that there is room for improvement and every time which is fantastic. Making the genre psychological drama there is room for so much creative input and by delving into the character's psyche, we are able to better understand her and make a film that will be something people will want to see.

The character within Deployment was indeed interesting but we found development to be troublesome and in some areas difficult, which was not a good indicator for us in the future. One Week Later on the other hand has less of these problems.

What's Next?

• Conduct in depth, detailed research into the areas discussed in the ideas lab.
• Finalize learning agreement
• Begin work on separate book areas
• Begin Writing Script