Film Proposal

Film Proposal and Film Pitch Feedback

01/12/12
AB

Coming up with the final idea for our film has been a whole process of trial and error. We struggled to come up with a film that represents our company accurately. Our first idea was called the “Dead Men’s Socks” which belonged to the crime and detective genre.

Dead Men's Socks Proposal

 Summary of "Dead Men’s Socks"

George Goffney is an old school detective. He has worked as a detective all of his working life and a few years earlier, cheated on his wife in order to get evidence for a case. When his wife left him, and took their daughter with her, George was at breaking point and attempted suicide.

Jump forward two years: George is in the morgue talking to his friend Ellie who has worked with him for a number of years. (Opening scene to the film). In conversation, Ellie tells George about the two bodies that were brought into the morgue that morning. One is Simon Stallone, a rich man, recently married to Eva Stallone. The other is Dan Mitchell, a poor boy who lives on the streets and in Oxford’s homeless shelter.

Ellie tells George she believes it is suicide but George becomes suspicious when he notices that they are each wearing one dark blue sock and one grey sock.

George talks to Kelly about the bodies as it is his case. Kelly is a young detective and is new to Oxford. Kelly disagrees with officers interfering with the job of pathologist’s in the forensic department and refuses to look at the bodies or listen; she believes it is best to wait for the paperwork to come through. She is blissfully ignorant, relying on computers and mobile phones.

George takes it upon himself to solve the mystery and visits Stallone’s house. When he arrives, his wife isn’t in but the maid is. She explains that the Stallone’s had recently married. She also points out that Simon Stallone never drove his car around Oxford for fear of it being damaged, so she calls a driver for him.

George goes to the gym to talk to Eva. She tells him her husband had been melancholy lately and she believes it was suicide. She is surrounded by ten large men who attend the gym for boxing. Other than herself, the only woman who works in the gym is a young receptionist.

George goes to the homeless shelter to talk to Dan’s father. The people in the shelter live in poverty, young children playing in tattered clothes with broken toys etc. Dan’s father explains that Dan and he run a small taxi service and his son went out onto a job and didn’t come back (Driving Simon Stallone).

George goes back to the gym but this time Eva is on lunch. He calls all the men into Eva’s office and holds up a grey piece of paper to the men with the word Prison written in blue. He asks if any have been there and they all answer but one, Stephen.

George confronts Sven. He explains that when his daughter was younger, they believed she was colour blind. The nurse told him all about colour blindness including the different types. He explains how he realised that Stephen must have Triranopia, a colour blindness focusing mainly on the colours blue and black. He and Eva planned to kill Simon in the sauna and realised that Dan is in there too. (Dan and Simon had become close from Dan driving Simon around). He killed them both and had to redress them, not noticing the different colour socks, dressing them in each other’s socks.

George has Eva and Stephen arrested and explains to Kelly how he did it. He explains that sometimes it is not enough to just look at paperwork or at a laptop.

The actors and actress we will be choosing to play the roles in the film will be teenagers. The fictional world will be set in a society in which no adults exist. This is to encourage teenagers to take interest in drama and arts and to improve the image of adolescents to balance out the negative portrayals of the media about them. We have based this idea of casting on “Bugsy Malone” by Alan Parker, which was child cast suggested by his eldest son. It was purposely casted with children so his offspring can enjoy the film. Our target audience will be teenagers and over and those who are interested in crime shows. It will be rated "12A" as some scence particularly the ones in the mourge is not suitable for those of young age. The film duration will be 120 mins max.

Below is a podcast of us giving our pitch, however I had to change the format of the file as MPEG is not supported by blogger. The youtube link will take you to our podcast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rCUmCjtLFY&feature=youtu.be


The main criticism which we received was that why did we decided to only open the roles to teenagers?

Part of the reason why we chose to only work with teenagers is that, finding adults to play the roles will be difficult as we don't know anyone who'll willingly help us. If we choose to only work with teenagers, it will be easy to find people to cast as many of our friends do drama and will be willing to help us. However, there's the problem of realism. As at the end of the day, a teenager trying to play a middle aged man will still look like a teenager, making the film lack sophistication and realism. "Bugsy Malone" worked because of the genre: comedy and musical worked with children cast as it emphasised the comedic element within the film. "Dead Mens Sock" however, is strictly a crime based film. Seeing teenagers play roles which are older than them will only make the whole production farfetched and tacky, causeing the film to lose its credibility.



Now due to the previous criticism, we decided to abandon our first idea and move forward. One of the greatest challenges we faced was deciding what type of film our production specializes in; are we plainly action films oriented? Are we comedic? Or are we only interested in doing drama? This confusion with the company identity was solved by our second and final film idea: "Me, Myself and I".

 

"Me, Myself and I" Proposal

Summary of "Me Myself and I"

May Stanwell is a 17 years old student who’s full of potential. She was just a typical girl who belonged in what seemed like a normal family until she was diagnosed with DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) at the age of 11. May grew up in care of her mother-Holly as her father-Nick was a member of the British Royal Navy, the distance between the couple already proved to be a challenge and when May’s condition came into the scene it caused further strain on her parents which resulted to them getting a divorced. From the divorce Statement of Arrangements and 1989 Children’s Act, both parents agreed that May will live with her father as her mother was required to leave the country due to her job and because she already had an existing life in Oxford. Despite the past where Nick was often away, he had a strong bond with his daughter that’s why when asked who she wished to be with, she requested for her dad. This of course was honoured by the court. As a result it had her farther quitting the force and had him looking for a new occupation that will provide for him and May and still allowed him to look after her.

May’s condition flared up when she turned 14, right after her mum had gotten re-married. Consequently, the developments of her multiple personalities affected her social life losing one friend at a time. Though she was not completely alone as her childhood friend Darren Harring stayed loyal to her. May became an outcast and Darren took the fall with her.

In present time, May is at her final year of sixth form and is doing well. She has a stable life and managed to form new friendships. She had also developed 4 personalities who are completely different from one another. May had also found herself a therapist who she meets often with to help her overcome her disorder. Situation took for the worse when her mother came back to Oxford with her new family, her episodes became more frequent and was getting out of control. This affected her studies, her grades started to drop just when she received an invitation for an interview to one of her chosen Universities. The interview was a disaster. All 4 of her persona have made an appearance in the interview jeopardising her future. Along this main dilemma, May goes through many challenges such as:

1.      Having multiple dates for prom (one for each personality)

2.      Her condition threatening to ruin her social life yet again

3.      Difficulty of adjusting to her mother’s return and forming relationship with her step-siblings

And many more!

As May’s situation continues to deteriorate, Jackie Willet (May’s therapist) started to invest more and more time analysing May’s case. One therapy session Jackie ended up talking to one of May’s persona instead of May herself. Jackie ended up talking to Sammie (May’s alter ego who’s a young girl). Jackie learns that May as child was abused Holly’s lover. Careful not to make any assumptions, Jackie looked through Holly’s lovers past- Benjamin Cooper who was reportedly been abusive and had a restraining order from a woman called Fiona Carter, previously named as Fiona Cooper; Benjamin’s previous wife.

One evening May engages into a heated argument with her mother where she confronts her about abandonment (May was actually poorly taken care of by Holly) when her dad was in the Navy and demanded why her mother was back. May in limbo runs away and ends up in a park where Darren finds her. He counsels May as she reveals her anxieties and Darren professes his love for her. Darren expected May to return his feelings but quite the opposite happens. May was angered by this as it made her further confused about her true identity and storms off.

After the following events, May refused to talk to anyone even her therapist. Holly went to meet with Jackie to check on her progress. As May’s still underage, Holly and Nick had the right to know about her conversation with Jackie. Jackie talks about her findings about Benjamin Cooper and how it might be related to May’s condition. Jackie confronts Holly if Benjamin had ever been violent around her to which Holly admitted that she had been enduring domestic violence. May, Nick and Holly then attend a therapy where May finally admits of being abused and some resolution is met. Holly ends up taking her case of being abused by Benjamin to court where he was found guilty as his own children testified against him. May gradually recovers and at first was reluctant to saying goodbye to her personas but eventually does. She receives another invite for an interview from another university where she‘s accepted.

May goes to university and the relationship between her parents becomes friendly. Darren remains friends with her and she continues to live her life.

Before writing "Me, Myself and I", we've done research regarding DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) - commonly known as multiple personalities disorder, to make the portrayal of the main character as accurate as possible. The last thing we want is to be accused of being insensitive towards those who suffers from DID. "Me, Myself and I" will allow us to work with different genres such as: comedy, drama, adventure, coming of age and chick flicks. Our film will hopefully raise awareness for the cause. The rating like "Dead Mens Socks" will be "12A" and our target audience will be teenagers and young adults. The film has the element of "underdogs" in it, and at one point in peoples lives they've felt this way and so the main character is relatable which hopefully will appeal to many. The films duration will be 120 mins long.