Film School: Pitching a Short Film & Feedback
Recently at Raindance Film School, students were tasked with originating a short film idea and expanding this into a premise, synopsis, logline and eventually a full treatment, which would be our pitch.
The film I have chosen to create is called First Draft, and this is the short film I will be focusing my work around in the next year.
Firstly, the pitch:
Feedback Essay:
The majority of the feedback received on my pitch has been regarding genre. A few people have said genre is somewhat unclear, and I realise that when I was initially writing the piece, I was unclear myself about what genre I wanted First Draft to be.
I have since kept genre at the forefront of my mind for the rewrite. Most feedback I’ve received agreed that Fantasy and Drama combined are the most applicable genres to First Draft.
First Draft is a dark story, an allegory, where at a higher level is fanciful, filled with imagination and ‘magical’ elements. However, as you dig deeper into the story, First Draft is a social, political and personal message regarding primal human need for genuine connection. The story explores how choice, in this case infinite choice, can ironically like no choice, lead to a different kind of emptiness. My initial thought upon my feedback was how could something so dark apply to the Fantasy genre? So I did some research.
The image I had originally conjured in my head of the term ‘Fantasy’ surrounded dragons and castles, which made the genre non applicable to my film. Upon researching, I found some of the darkest films live within this genre, namely Coraline.
Coraline, is described as a Dark Fantasy and like First Draft, has a child friendly premise, interlaced with psychological depth. On the surface, Coraline is a narrative about “an adventurous girl finding an idealized parallel world behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that the alternative world contains a dark and sinister secret.”. However, more than this, the film depicts symbolically the programming of a mind control slave at the hands of a manipulative handler. Similarly, First Draft has a premise which states “Celebrated novelist, Nina, can bring her characters to life. This feels like a special gift until she is confronted with a moral predicament that tears down the world she’s created.”. More than this, First Draft explores how infinite choice can lead to never feeling chosen, neglecting a human need. First Draft takes choice, which has so many positive connotations, to a dark extreme that only Fantasy can offer.
Both movies are dark allegories blanketed with a story which is ornate and can be taken for its Fantasy qualities, or read into for a psychological exploration. For both stories, Dark Fantasy is the most applicable genre.