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.
