D1 Second Submission

Evaluation of my pitch

For this project, the brief specified that I needed to pitch my ideas to the clients as part of a selection process to have the short film funded for the East London Urban Film Festival. The brief stated that the short film should contain the features of the Urban genre, and be 5 minutes long. To impress the clients, I spoke in my pitch about how the brief was met in terms of the features of the urban genre and how the short film is to be filmed in popular places in East London. I also spoke about the characters and plot, my inspiration for the short film, the budget that I would be requesting, and the target audience. I based my pitch mainly on why my script is the best how the brief wanted. I also made sure that it was included where my script specifically shows a positive perspective of east London, and the other ways where 'The Boggart!" fit the brief.

My pitch was for an urban genre film of an urban legend called ‘The Boggart!’. The idea of my film is similar to that of the 1999 film ‘The Blair Witch Project’ as it is about some teenagers who try to catch audio-visual evidence of a murderous being. I also planned to use the same 'mockumentary' style as in ‘The Blair Witch Project’ however this would have changed the genre of the film from urban to a 'mockumentary' which would then make the film not fit the brief. The plot has not changed but by filming the filmmakers rather than using their unedited footage, I achieve the urban genre. 

In making my pitch I used the online software called ‘Prezi’ because it looked more professional than PowerPoint and was easy to learn how to use and access. I also conducted a survey on teenagers between the ages of 16-18 to find out what type of films they like. My results showed that 1/3 of the teenagers I asked liked horror films, and 44% of the teenagers I asked like thriller films, which was why I decided to make the script an Urban Thriller rather than an Urban Horror. I was then able to use these statistics in my pitch to help the clients understand more some of the decisions I went with and the reach of my target audience research. 

In my pitch, the clients asked me if I had any thoughts on the marketing of the poster. I talked about the idea to make posters similar to the 1958 'The Blob" but saying "The Boggart!". This was helpful to me as it reminded me where some of the inspiration for 'The Boggart!' came from and therefore to remember to base lots of the cinematography and visual elements of the short film on the inspiration. The clients also asked me why I thought I should be chosen, which is an important question to answer as I needed to promote my script to be made into a film, but it is not feedback that will help in the further development process of the film. Other comments that the clients made, was that the story is based in Victoria Park which is quite a prestigious park in London, and they asked how I was going to avoid negative connotations of the park whist having teenagers disappearing in that location. This helped me improve and further develop my product as it reminded me to make sure that is was never the park that was looked on negatively, and to make sure that the fictitious nature of the film was evident to the target audience. 

Overall, I am moderately happy with the way my pitch turned out. I was able to clearly demonstrate to the client how my script met the brief, along with my detailed research into the story. To improve the pitch, I would talk more about the specific locations within Victoria Park, as that location is large and therefore I should have been more specific about the location as I do not think that I gave a clear enough view of where I want to film. However, I have happy with the way the clients responded to my pitch, and I am excited to make the product.