Hack to Wag Pitch

My Real Life

Fish Tank

I watched Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" on sunday morning as Simon had advised me to do, it was a great film, really natural and believable. Me and my boyfriend also got excited because we recognized quite a few of the locations from Dartford! The ending was a little weird, especially when she sat and peed on the living room carpet? But all in all it was enjoyable and I can see why Simon told me to watch it.

The Door

Well working on the itv set of The Door completely confirmed that I want to work in this industry. I loved every minute, and being in the atmosphere was a real buzz. After about half an hour I got used to the celebrities and just saw them as people there doing there job like I was. I also loved having to get suited up and crawl into tunnels and cover them in gunge and slime ready for the celebrities to the play the game in. I was really really nervous about going and thought people may be rude and mean but it wasnt scary at all, i loved it.

Mission Interveiw

The Short Script

Title: Mission Interview

The Idea: 28 year old Clarrissa wants a change of career to be closer to her fiancé. She applies to a major bank in New York City, and gets an interview. Swapping her army uniform for a professional looking pencil skirt and blouse, she should feel daunted by entering a stereotypical ‘mans world’ but with her ex military, ballsy attitude she just feels daunted by the skirt. On the day of her interview, Clarrissa unwillingly pulls on the professional and uncomfortable outfit, and makes her way to New York’s financial district; Wall Street. But unbeknown to her she faces a challenge that is a little more familiar to her than she would expect. Whilst in her interview Clarrissa hears gun shots and commotion outside the office that she and the employer are in. They soon discover that the bank is being help up and a robbery is taking place.

Character: Female, American, career driven, professional, ballsy, no nonsense, ex military, but wants a fresh career change in banking. Name- Clarrissa.

Structure:

First scene will be Clarrissa in her bedroom, there is a shot of a photograph of her in her army uniform on location, and then we see her putting on her new office type outfit and applying lipstick. (Max scene length 30 seconds)

The next scene would be her walking through New York, she could trip on her heels or be hitching up her skirt to show she is uncomfortable, and then she walks up the stairs to the bank in which she has an interview (Max 30 seconds)

Next scene would be 2 men in a van in an ally wearing balaclavas, holding empty sacks and guns, there should be some dialogue between them about what they are about to do. This would be the hook and the problem (TP1). (30 seconds)

Then cut to Clarrissa shaking hands with a suited man and following him into his office. (Max 10 seconds)

Sitting at the desk with her interviewer he asks her typical interview questions and she explains why she wants this job in a New York bank, coming from something so different. (20 seconds)

Then Clarrissa and bank manager hear gunshot and screaming. They hear a man saying “this is a holdup”. Clarrissa in her nature, says something like “oh god damn it, why today, stupid dumbass f***s” and she goes into the main part of the bank. (20 seconds)

Next scene the men have hold of an innocent woman and they are holding a gun to her head, they tell cashier to hand over the money or they will kill her. The woman is hysterical and is begging for them to let her go, one says “b**** will you shut up”

Next, Clarrissa confronts the men and tells them to let the woman go. The men are amused by Clarrissa’s confrontation and laugh her off. (30 seconds)

TP2– The woman that the men have held captive exclaims that she is going into labour. (10 seconds)

Point of no return: Clarrissa pulls off her high heels and earrings. (5-10seconds)

The next scene shows Clarrissa holding up the heel of her shoe to one of the men and repeats “let her go”. She then fights the one not holding the woman of them off and knocks him out. She again tells man 2 to let the woman go, he then turns the gun on her and the other woman drops to the floor. (30-40 seconds)

The man holding the gun gets Clarissa backed up against a wall and pushes the gun to her head, there is a lot of struggling, a close up of his finger on the trigger going further down, it looks as though she is about to die, but in the last second she kicks him in his private area and the gun shot goes off into the air. She wrestles the gun from him and then holds him captive on the floor. (Final Climax, 1 minute)

Breathing space

She then gives the gun to a very timid, skinny geeky little man and tells him to make sure he doesn’t move. This would be a comedic element to it, as this little geeky man has been given some power and he would say something like “yeah that’s right man, you stay there” but would be shaking still. (20 seconds)

The next scene would be of Clarrissa going to the aid of the woman in labour; she would also call the police and an ambulance for the woman.

The woman tells Clarrissa that it is too late for hospital and that the baby is coming now, so Clarrissa has to help her give birth.

The next scene would cut to Clarrissa holding the baby (actually showing the birth is unnecessary) she would be emotional and smiling. (20 seconds)

The experience of childbirth creates a huge effect on Clarrissa and is completing contrasting to the earlier scenes. Clarrissa seems softened and lightened by the experience. She has come on a journey from scary military woman, to prospective professional career woman, back to manly type behaviour and then by the end she has embraced the joys of womanhood.

Theme: Being a woman in a mans world.

Fictional pitch for my Hack to Wag idea.

Mousy, bookworm girl next door starts new school and faces challenge from the elite girls; be one of them or be an outcast. Think St.Trinians meets Footballer's Wives.

A Spaced treatment

This off-beat comedy drama is like no other. Following the lives of eccentric characters, you get a first hand look at their crazy goings-on in their seemingly normal lives.

hese 5 twenty somethings would appear to be like most people their age, but when government spies turn up at their local pub looking for Daisy and you see Mike roaming around at night in his army get up and guns you can immediately tell that their lifestyles are perhaps not so normal or dull after all.

Fun humour and slapstick sketches make relatable, amirable characters It's beer, drugs and a hilarious mock n roll shooting game.

The real shooting locations and attention to detail really gives this story about 5 20 somethings just living in London, a real edge and a quality of humour which is quite rare.

Generation Celebrity: The rise of the talentless star.

On tuesday with Helen, she gave us a huge range of newspapers and magazines to inspire us into coming up with our own idea of a story. The first paper that I picked up was tabloid The Sun. Obviously this paper was very celebrity led, with mainly stories of footballers, footballers indiscretions, or their wives and girlfriends. This got me to thinking that, although society has always obsessed over celebrities, they used to be famous for a reason- i.e actor/actress/singer etc. Well there now seems to be a new generation of talentless celebs who have slept with a footballer or been on reality tv, and got their boobs out, and this got me a little riled! So I came up with the idea to do a documentary about that. After a little brainstorming, I remembered the journalist/presenter Dawn Porter, who I really like, and all the shows she had done before had been very hands on documentaries so that she could experience what she was talking about. Therefore my idea was this...

"Dawn Porter: Hack to Wag in 10 days"

Channel 4, 8.00pm, 1 hr long.

Pitch - Journalist Dawn Porter gets to grips with the new generation of celebrity by becoming a wag! Follow her ten day journey from tanning with Danielle Lloyd, lunching with Bianca Gascoigne, stumbling out of London's Chinawhite with the best of them and advice from Katie Price on how to make the front pages of "Hello".

Treatment- Famous writer and journalist Dawn Porter, known for her cutting edge, hands on documentaries, is this time taking on the world of the wags. The nation seems to loathe the celebrity world but yet is still fascinated by it. Dawn wants to find out why this is. Is it as simple as getting a boob job and a fake tan to get on the cover of "Nuts"? Or marrying a footballer so that "OK" and "Hello" will cover your wedding? Dawn wants to discover whether this new breed of celebrity women are just blonde airheads or savvy business women. We send her off to a consultation with a plastic surgeon, and encourage her to stumble out of London's top clubs where the eager paparazzi await, and get her to quiz the WAG's about being role models.

We all ended up doing documentary, sorry simon!

Spaced

We had the extremely hard task of watching "Spaced" first thing monday morning.. which you can imagine was very enjoyable, I had never seen it before and I had been missing out, it was very funny, and the humor was of my taste, very quirky. We were asked to write a pitch for it, and this was mine:

"5 eccentric twenty something's (and Colin the dog) living, loving and laughing in London town. Authentic British culture in a surreal format. It's "Green Wing" VS "Family Guy".

Later that afternoon with Helen, we watched a Panorama documentary "I helped my daughter die" in which I wished I wasnt in a room with other people because I didnt want anyone to see the fact that I was welling up a little! But thankfully no one did! We were then asked to write a billing for it for the "Radio Times" this was mine:

"Jeremy Vine describes a harrowing story in a documentary following the journey of mother Kay Guilderdale who takes on trying to clear her name of attempted murder in what was really a compassionate aid to end her daughters suffering."0

The Beginning

I have started my new course, Broadcast Media, at uca this week, and so far loving it, today we were given a challenge to make a 3 minute video with the new cameras that we had never used before, with the word "life" in the title. The tricky thing was we were not allowed to do any post production editing, so we had to shoot the whole thing in sequence. It was actually a lot of fun, although looking back on my film, I would love to actually be able to add some music sampling to it etc. For example my story was called "My real life" and was about a young girl who hadn't had a very the best of childhoods, it was a very truthful story with a documentary type format to it, with pretty much all testimonial shots. I really vision the line of a song running through the credits "Do you want the truth or something beautiful" .

Being at Maidstone Studios to study is such an exciting prospect and I am looking forward to the rest of the course! :)