Patrick's feedback was that this logline could have been seriously cut down and made more succinct, I found this as well, it was really weird writing it because I wanted to include all the information present but did feel it came across wonky and possibly confusing. When I read it out in class people didn't react much and I thought it had completely gone over their heads, so that's a bad sign.
Could have easily just been "A group of kids find a collection of supernatural objects in the basement of a cabin in the woods".
12 - 30 is too large of an age range, this is also not very specific in terms of gender, occupation or a number of other factors. When I was writing it I only thought of age for whatever reason.
I also think I should have been clearer about the sub-genre of horror that I'm going for, there's so many variations on this type of film and I realized during the questions segment that people didn't really get exactly what tone I was going for. Next time start with logline, genre and tone I think.
I remember when I was writing this I had trouble with the phrasing of these elements and it came across in my presentation, people were confused about what I meant when I said "too much on one platter". I think this was partly due to me not finding the words on the day I wrote them, but my rushed delivery certainly didn't help.
Don't know why I rushed this pitch, it's weird because I felt I actually did quite well with Ash's presentation the other week. There I talked calmly and, I think, confidently, while still keeping my schtick. Here I was stumbling over words and not able to get the stuff out quickly enough. The weirdest part is that for Ash's class I had no real confidence in my idea, it was essentially a bluff. This time around I actually really like the idea, and have thought a lot about it. Could be that I have too much about it in my head and can't get all of it out, maybe I am more nervous because I feel more personally invested.
Either way what I meant here was that the characters would have too much on their plate, the show will see them dealing with more problems than they have time to solve. These problems are all a result of the different supernatural occurrences, some of which will even intersect or directly affect each other. I wanted to subvert the monster-of-the-week thing by placing multiple "monsters" in the same room. I intend for it to have an avalanche effect and for the character to have to juggle many things at once, this will feel more organic kind of like what you see in shows like Breaking Bad.
The foundations of the characters are quite clear in my head, but I found them hard to summarize quickly. This goes for the arcs and stuff as well, it feels legit in my head but I find it hard to explain without laying out the entire story.
I think this entire slide was poorly communicated, but I didn't get questioned on it too much.
Don't use unconfident or unsure language like "I don't know", this is something I did in this slide in particular (but to be honest it pervaded the entire presentation).
I wrote these two words on this slide and decided I would figure it out when I got there, the truth is I am very unsure of the themes and arcs as it stands, I basically just mentioned the theme of success and maybe like teamwork. There are words for what I have in my head, they just aren't coming to me this week - I think it also doesn't help that I'm not really "in the zone" for this project anymore. The honeymoon phase seems to have already passed, as quickly as it does with most ideas that I have.
To be honest I found it quite hard to return to the feel I had in my head when originally planning this series for the proposal, hence why the whole comes off a bit unsure. I can still remember the basic make-up of what I planned originally, but the atmosphere and my ability to inhabit the narrative seems to have forsaken me.
Could be very problematic moving forward, I'll just have to find a way to get back in that headspace otherwise I'll never produce anything (movies and writing takes a long time, I need to be able to stay in love with one idea for longer than I currently can).
I mentioned these as inspirations, when I mentioned Goosebumps people finally seemed to grasp the idea, although I think ignoring the other two artist models gives people a skewed idea (one of those models was supposed to be Spielberg not King, but when I was writing this I forgot).
My original idea was Goosebumps, but good (almost as if Stephen King wrote them instead of Stine), and have all the monsters occupy the same universe. With the atmosphere being very reminiscent of Super Dark Times - a movie I should probably review.
These are the competition and I didn't do a very good describing why mine was unique. I had very good reasons originally, for the life of me I couldn't remember them during the presentation or even now (this is why I should write everything down).
I included Cabin in the Woods and Heart-Shaped Box to give a nod to where I stole the ideas from (Cabin has a cabin in the woods with a basement filled with supernatural objects - where I think my original idea originated because the characters in that film only pick out one and I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if multiple were unlocked or operating at the same time - Heart-Shaped Box because it has an avid collector of the supernatural as the novel's protagonist - which helped give me a reason why a cabin in the woods is filled with such objects).
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