Pitching a film idea (practice)

Over the last couple of lessons we were given the task of creating a film idea that we would have to pitch to the rest of the class. The base of our idea came from four pieces of card with different aspects of film on them, e.g. a genre card, character cards and a prop card.

 

The four cards that my group got were:

• A car
• A man called Henry who is 72
• A woman called Lola
• Romantic Comedy

 

We started to create our idea by thinking of the typical aspects of a romantic comedy film and applying them to the cards that we got, seeing what ideas would work well together.

 

The Idea!

 Our idea is that Henry is an old man that has a car crash, resulting in him being admitted to hospital, where he is put under the care of the nurse, Lola. During his time in hospital it is becoming clear that Henry cannot remember much about his family or his past and it is told at this point that he has dementia. When Henry feels like he is well enough to leave the hospital the doctors tell him that he must stay longer and so he decides to leave the hospital with Lola so they can run away together. During their time together it is clear that Lola and Henry are getting closer as they fall in love with each other. However, in a sub-plot, both Henry and Lola's families are seen searching for them to try and find out where they are. Towards the end of the film Henry's health worsens until he is too sick to carry on and he dies. When it comes to his funeral, everyone comes to his funeral to pay their respect and at the end of the film we see Lola talking to another women. At this point the audience finds out that this woman is in fact Henry's actual wife, but because of his dementia he had forgotten about her when he met Lola.

 

For our characters we decided to cast Michael Caine as Henry, Jessica Lange as Lola and Julie Walters as his actual wife (we haven't given her a name yet). We decided to choose these actors because they are very well-known and so people will want to watch this film because they know how good these actors are.

 

The target audience for our film is mainly going to be females, because they are the main audience of rom coms, and it will specifically be aimed at those who are late 30s/middle-aged. This is because our choice of actors and their characters will be recognised mainly by the older demographic. However, to also make this film appeal to younger people, we could use the sub-plot of the two families and cast younger actors that will appeal to the younger audience.

And finally, in the opening two minutes of the film we will see Henry driving along in his car, with the radio playing, looking as if everything is good and normal. Then suddenly we will see Henry's car get hit by another vehicle and then the screen will go black before showing the title sequence.