Spaced out!

Yesterday we had our first real lecture of the year, kick starting off our Story Telling Unit. We have been asked to hand in a 10 page correctly formatted script, 1 page treatment, 25 word pitch, a story board and a 2 minute trailer for our own short film called "The Meeting", due 6th April.

It sounds like a really daunting task, but I'm really excited, as its the first time I'll have a complete piece of work with all the prep documents to go with it :) 

We started off yesterday talking about pitches. They are 25 words or shorter, and are used to pitch an idea to everyone you want to sell your story too; to get funding, talent and to get the thing made! It has to include some kind of unique selling point, to make it stand out from the rest, and intrigue the intended audience, so they want to read your treatment/synopsis and then hopefully your script!

A pitch doesn't give everything away, and of course in 25 words, it can't go into much detail. It just has to give an overview about the most interesting points to your idea. This can include things like major plot points, themes, characters, setting and genre/style.

To start off a miserable and cold Monday morning, we watched two episodes of "Spaced", picking apart the things that make it original, it's unique selling points and then each writing a 25 word Pitch, as if we were trying to sell the idea for the first time ourselves.

Spaced is a Sitcom written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and 

directed by Edgar Wright, before they became really famous. It was recognised for its extremely fast editing, frequent pop culture references and jokes, eclectic music, and surrealism. Two series of seven episodes each were broadcast in 1999 and 2001 on Channel 4.

I had never seen it before, but I really enjoyed it and intended to watch the re-runs on More 4 on Sunday nights from now on!

After a few drafts, (It's a bit tricky, but something I need to get used too!) here's my own pitch for SPACED;

Sitcom, centered around the abstract lives of two, twenty-something dreamers, sharing a flat, who collide together in a series of fast paced and surreal mis-adventures.  (I know, 26 words, but hey! )

Just to make sure we really grasped the idea, before we needed to write our own for "The Meeting", we wrote a pitch for one of our favorite shows, can you guess mine?

Comedy based around the embarrassing lives of a group of misfit, sixth form boys, who's dreams of sex, wild parties and fast cars, never quite get off the ground.

 ????

Our next task is to write a 300-500 word synopsis for Spaced, which I'll post shortly... in the mean time go watch it!