Description
The a-s-s-e-s-s-m-e-n-t willbe 400 words long.Please see the questions shown in the screenshot. I will send you all the info after being hired, eg PPTs, student access etc. Please send a draft in 12hrs -1 day time, day 2, and day 3 as well. + Will need to draft some questions to ask the teacher and revise base on feedback (Send bk ard in 1 day max)
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WRIT2120
Semester 1, 2024
Dear Students,
Here are your guidelines for Assignment 1: Short Pitch Document.
Make sure you follow the simple steps and layout below.
Use the 5 headings.
Refer to the exemplars to understand how past high-scoring students have
approached this task.
Make sure you include the Personal Creative Statement.
Don’t go over the word count and don’t be too far under either.
Best of luck!
Veny
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Short Pitch Document
Type: Assignment 1
Learning Objectives Assessed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Due Date: 15 Mar 24 16:00 Submit via Blackboard
Weight: 10%
400 words
Task Description:
Prepare a Short Pitch Document
The short pitch document should be approximately 400 words (+ or – 10%) and include
information using the following headings:
1. PROJECT TITLE
2. LOGLINE (1 to 2 sentences only),
3. COMPARATIVE SHORT PITCH (1 sentence only)
One paragraph description of the STORYLINE.
1. PERSONAL CREATIVE STATEMENT (this should be about 150 words)
This assessment task evaluates students’ abilities, skills and knowledge without
the aid of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Students are advised that the use of AI
technologies to develop responses is strictly prohibited and may constitute student
misconduct under the Student Code of Conduct.
Criteria & Marking:
Assignment 1: Short Pitch Document
The screenplay pitch will be graded on:
its compliance with the task instructions,
its compliance with industry practices as introduced in the course,
the clarity of its idea and the way it is expressed,
its originality and potential,. and
the originality, thoughtfulness and insight of the creative statement.
(Note: all criteria do not have equal weight. You can check this assessment item’s rubric in
BlackBoard)
Submission:
Submit via the “Assignment 1: Short Pitch Document” tab in BlackBoard.
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SHORT PITCH EXEMPLARS
(anonymised without creative statement)
PROJECT TITLE
Standstill
LOGLINE
A man’s perfectly calculated suicide goes awry when he finds his jumping bridge already
occupied by an emotionally distraught teenage girl.
COMPARATIVE SHORT PITCH
MY SISTER’S KEEPER meets IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY and A LONG WAY DOWN.
STORYLINE
After weeks of planning, the night has arrived for one 40-something man’s suicide. However,
upon his precise 3:15am arrival at his jump-spot, he finds a distressed, depressed teenage girl
sitting on the wall of the bridge, staring down into the darkness below. He gets caught out
trying to persuade her not to jump while still convincing himself he’s made the right decision,
all the while battling his own fears, internal hatred and regrets.
CREATIVE STATEMENT
(deleted from example)
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PROJECT TITLE
In-Between
LOGLINE
When Jemima bumps into her ex-boyfriend while on assignment overseas, her new
relationship with Katie is called into question. His return to Melbourne forces Jemima to
choose, and she finds herself caught between nostalgic love and a hopeful spark.
COMPARATIVE SHORT PITCH
A Melbourne-set Kissing Jessica Stein with a hint of They Came Together.
ONE PARA STORYLINE
When Jemima, a flighty freelance photographer, meets Katie at a wedding, there is an
effortless connection Jemima hasn’t felt in years. Their intentionally cliché dates are cheesy
and fun, and Jemima feels like she could finally settle into something meaningful. But a few
weeks later she takes a photography job that sends her to London, where she runs into her exboyfriend, Rick, who she hasn’t seen in six years. He tells her he’s moving back home to
Melbourne; that he’d like to be friends. Confused by the hurricane of emotions tied to her ex,
Jemima keeps the meeting from Katie — with whom she has not had ‘the ex talk’ — and the
internal tension closes Jemima down emotionally. When Rick returns from London, Jemima
has to decide if she really can be friends with him, or if her relationship with Katie is over.
CREATIVE STATEMENT
(deleted from example)
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PROJECT TITLE: The Vanishing Mr Fink
LOGLINE: An elderly man vows to make the most of his time left on earth after he is
forcefully relocated to a nursing home.
COMPARATIVE SHORT PITCH: It’s The Intouchables meets Birdman set in Detroit,
Michigan.
STORYLINE: In Detroit, a former magician Stanley Fink is thinking about suicide. The
beige walls he now calls home at Oakpointe Villa are nothing like his old stomping grounds
in Northern Michigan. What’s more – all his friends are either dead or senile. Out of the blue,
the amateur children’s party magician-turned-nurse Wes starts up as Stanley’s main carer.
The two soon develop an unlikely friendship filled with dark humour, sneaky bourbon shots,
and an endless infatuation with the great escape artist, Harry Houdini. But their friendship is
soon put in jeopardy when Stanley is diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. With only
months to live, and with the help of Wes, they soon conjure an escape plan which may or
may not get them both killed prematurely in the process. But with a little bit of magic, what
could go wrong?
CREATIVE STATEMENT
(deleted from example)
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Project TitleYOU & ME & HIV
LoglineTotally opposite twenty-somethings in small town New Zealand, after a one-night stand,
receive life changing news, and must find a way to live with each other and their new shared
affliction.
Comparative Short PitchEagle vs Shark in a ménage et trois alongside What Happens in Vegas and Knocked Up. With
HIV.
StorylineIn small town New Zealand, rambunctious dropkick Jimmy’s aimless life is fuelled by drugs,
casual sex, and odd jobs to pay the rent for his deadbeat dad. Upon meeting over-achieving
science student Tania, bright but suppressed by her overpowering mother, the pair share an
erroneous alcohol-fuelled night of passion, which leads to Jimmy’s shocking revelation: he is
HIV positive. As the chalk-n-cheese pair try to bond over their new shared affliction, their
feelings for each other begin to surpass a lack of alternative partners, and move towards
something like love. Their feelings continue to grow, and as they cope with their disease and
their changing personalities, the two are forced to confront the other afflictions in their lives
in order to be together.
CREATIVE STATEMENT
(deleted from example)
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PROJECT TITLE: Sky High
LOGLINE:
A retiring airline pilot on his last trip home must defeat the demons of his past to save 300
passengers and crew from a mass murder revenge plot – not by bomb or hijack, but by midair collision.
COMPARATIVE PITCH:
DUEL meets TOP GUN, with an homage to UNITED 93
ONE PARAGRAPH SYNOPSIS
The Middle-East is finally on the brink of peace after talks in London. All that stands in the
way is a ceremonial signing at The White House, and the peace delegation is booked on a
tightly screened commercial flight across the Atlantic. In the pilot’s seat is a veteran of the
Gulf air war who has hidden a guilty secret for 25 years: he froze in a savage dog-fight over
Iraq leading to the deaths of his wingmen. Heading home to the calm of retirement, he is
about the face the ultimate test – how to hurl 250 tonnes of unarmed metal and flesh around
the sky to evade and defeat zealots in a nimble business jet, intent on a kamikaze collision to
wreak revenge and wreck the peace.
CREATIVE STATEMENT
(deleted from example)
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What About the Personal Creative Statement?
Three questions could distil the nature of your personal statement:
Why this story?
Why tell it now?
Why are you the person to tell it?
You could look at inspirations, personal touchstones (filmic, literary etc) and influences as
well as your own life experiences.
Our tutor Shayne Armstrong speaks from experience:
For example, I wrote a slasher script a few years ago and because I was a lifelong
fan and viewer of the slasher film I was well aware of its tropes and conventions
and clichés, particularly that of the “final girl” (the tendency for the booksmart,
resourceful, pretty-side of plain, and not-quite-as-promiscuous female character
to end up the last one facing off against if not defeating the masked killer) so set
out to explore and expand upon the convention by asking a couple of key
questions
– what happens to these final girls once the credits roll
– what happens to them in their story worlds? Presumably media
scrutiny, PTSD and survivor guilt would all come into play.
And the second question was: What if several of these “final girls” all attended a
retreat to work through their trauma? – tapping into a timely metaphor for
“slashers” as “stalkers” and “domestic abusers”.
It could also be for practical reasons.
My first feature ACOLYTES was written because we were thinking of the
cheapest way to tell a story: three high school kids wandering around in a pine
forest and a lonely suburb seemed very doable when we were thinking of
shooting it ourselves.
We then took that key parameter and fleshed it out with some experiences we
had as kids growing up in a small town, wagging school and wandering around
quiet, deserted streets in full view and broad daylight, and also some true crime
stories of horrible events that happened to some Queensland schoolboys who
were wagging school and hitchhiking and were picked up by some truly horrible
psychopaths who were stationed at a nearby military base.
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So in the film industry a personal statement answers these things.
1. Why do you want to tell this story?
2. The bigger issue/theme your story connects to.
3. Your personal connection to it.
4. Why you are a good person to tell this story.
5. What you want the audience to take away from the film.
EXAMPLE (from past tutor Jane Hampson)
Title: The Poinciana Woman (working title)
Genre: Supernatural thriller
Format: Feature film
Personal Creative Statement
THE POINCIANA WOMAN is a ghost story about a woman trapped by the sins of her past.
It is the story about perfection and control. As Leonard Cohen famously said ’There’s a crack
in everything. That’s how the light gets in’.
When the Poinciana Woman cracks, it’s those closest to her who suffer.
The story is based on a local myth from my hometown of Darwin. The Poinciana Woman is a
ghost who haunts a headland and steals children. One night after a barbecue I got lost on this
headland and I swear I saw this ghost. I was only lost for an hour, it was the most terrifying
hour of my life.
The Poinciana Woman reminds us all of the need to reconcile our good and evil sides. None
of us is perfect. And if we don’t accept our dark side it will come back to haunt us.
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More examples from past students (But be careful of word count overage):
PERSONAL CREATIVE STATEMENT
GRANDMA’S BROWNIES is a dark comedy with a 67-year-old protagonist who defies
societal expectations. I have many older female role models in my life who are funny, wise
and flawed, yet women of this age are rarely depicted as protagonists in cinema – especially
in comedy. The protagonist in this film is loosely based on my own grandmother, who is as
interesting as this character suggests, and helped shape my taste in art and my voice as a
writer. I believe that the strong and complex women we know in our real lives should be
reflected in the media we consume. Grandma’s Brownies explores the taboo social issue of
medicinal and recreational cannabis use and more nuanced themes of mortality and
existentialism through absurd humour and exaggerated plot and characters – but ultimately, it
is a story about a woman’s agency and resilience amidst undesirable circumstances. While it
may not seem so at first glance, this 67-year-old weed dealer is a character who will resonate
with everyone.
PERSONAL CREATIVE STATEMENT
Tosca’s Kiss is a thriller which draws on my own experience as a professional singer. Though
my career has not led to real murder and mayhem, I know all too well how intense the
relationships between castmates can get – I met my own partner when he was cast as my
father in a show.
Opera is a field which I believe is under-represented in the film world. Apart from The
Phantom of the Opera (if you can call that a movie about opera), and Bel Canto, there aren’t
nearly as many films utilising this style of performance as a plot point as there are about
ballet, dance, or theatre. Opera is just as passionate and expressive as these other art forms,
and I feel that the general public has an association between operas and the thriller genre,
since many films and television shows in this style use operatic repertoire in their score. As
Tosca centres around three characters, I don’t think the distilled plot will be too difficult to
communicate to an audience without an understanding of the operatic canon.
The opera industry is not without its problems and is in many ways old fashioned. The MeToo movement has unearthed a lot of harrowing accounts of problematic men in positions of
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power. However, having seen many films like Black Swan which use the trope of the
powerful older director seducing the ingenue, I thought it might be interesting to slightly
subvert this by using a female director.
PERSONAL CREATIVE STATEMENT
APPRENTICE DEATH is a dark comedy about the relationship between youth and the
elderly, the elderly and death and death to the point of it all.
In many ways, it is also a love letter to the Wellington of my early twenties – the freezing
winds and creaky houses with no insulation, the oddballs and castaways that flock to the
‘culture capital’ at the start of every university semester, the underground theatre’s and coffee
shops on every corner, the harbour and the hillside that weathered it all. This is the setting of
Apprentice Death.
The comedic voice of the story develops out of Wellington’s landscape as well as the
influence of Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical stylings. There is a kind of existential humour that
grows out of living on a major fault line. You can never entirely escape the fact that
everything you love could be flattened into nothingness come morning. So it goes.
Apprentice Death cuts straight to the heart of what makes living worth the effort – it isn’t the
play; it’s the process.
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