Unit 24: Task 3

Over the past 2 weeks, after receiving my brief for script writing, I have been working towards my pitch that I performed today. My pitch needed to include a written proposal that included lots of information regarding the script and story.

My written proposal:

Title: Luggage in Limbo

Premise: A group of exchange students are faced with a problem when their home country suffers a political coup and ceases to exist, leaving them stranded in a foreign airport with invalid passports, no money and nowhere to go. The only way to they spend their time is to find out more about the people they thought they knew everything about.

Genre: A teen drama following the story type of Rites of Passage, the script shows 6 teenagers who take after teen stereotypes.

Overview: 6 Northern Irish students are traveling back from America after an exchange programme; during their flight to Amsterdam Northern Ireland suffers a political coup meaning they have abolished the borders and the country is now known as Ireland and is no longer part of the United Kingdom. The students face a problem when their passports say they belong to a country that no longer exists, the teacher they were traveling with made their connecting flight to Belfast with the remaining students who all had valid passports as they were from England and Wales and had relocated to Northern Ireland. Now, the 6 students are left by themselves in a foreign airport with no one to help them.

Unique selling point: It is very rare to see Irish people in movies and on TV, with notably exceptions being Father Ted and Mrs Browns’ Boys, therefore it will draw a bigger range of audience as not only will the Irish be appealed to it but others will watch just to hear the accent. It will help give more representation to Northern Ireland and help broadcast more diversity surrounding the United Kingdom.

Target audience: 16 to 18 year olds – to appeal to this audience age range I am using characters of this age and using teen stereotypes (nerd, jock etc.) so that the audience will be able to relate to the characters by either being alike one or knowing someone like one. If it were to be rated by the BBFC I would say it would be more of a 12 rather than a 15 as there is little and infrequent strong language being used this is mostly because there is no need for it in the situation.

The 3 acts of story structure: The first act (set up) is finding out about the situation the students are in, this happens in scene 1. Act 2 (confrontation) is them learning that they cannot leave the airport and have nothing to do and nowhere to go, because of this the students are bored and end up spending the entire time talking – we learn lots about the individual characters and this is where the ‘coming of age’ genre is shown. Act 3 (resolution) is the ending where the students come to terms with each other and their secrets as well as finding out a possible way to go home.

Characters: There are 6 main characters – 3 girls, 3 boys – all of whom are 16 years old, 5 of them are from Belfast and have Irish accents except for Diarmuid who has spent time all over the United Kingdom giving him a varied accent.

I then created a PowerPoint presentation which included all of this information but was used as a visual aid and to assist me when speaking - I didn't stick to it word for word but explained what was written. I still have lots of research I need to do but my script is coming along nicely.

I went into the pitch being quite nervous as I don't like public speaking and doing presentations but I calmed down and became comfortable throughout, explaining my script idea well.