While I was in Berlin I received news of the next aspect of our production – the Pitch. I've done pitches before but this format called 'Steal-o-matic' was something I'd yet to encounter. Calum did a valiant job of explaining what we needed to do over the group chat but I must admit I didn't really get it and I got quite worried about it.
My fears were misplaced, however, and the first lecture back Ed went through everything again. I don't know what it is about hearing things in person but everything just fell into place. The 'Steal-o-matic' component basically involves us stealing bits we like from other shows and putting them into ours. To relieve my fears further Ed decided to let us have a little practice, and then he'd give us some feedback to work on ahead of Thursday. This really got our creativity going and we actually came up with lots to say. Thankfully the other group went first so we were able to improve on what we were going to say – which mainly involved expanding our points! The main piece of feedback we got was with regards to our format – we had chosen to steal from Springwatch and The One Show, but as Ed rightly pointed out they are a bit too similar. We would have to think of something else.
Over the next few days, Calum and I worked to pull the presentation together. As the Director, Calum pulled together the information about the camera plan and the staging & lighting work – collaborating with the camera operators and set designers to come up with the best result. We already had a good stage plan (see my last blog) from Kelsie and Mia so it was agreed that including it would be a good addition to our presentation.
That left me the responsibility of sorting out all the other aspects of the presentation; synopsis, format, contributors, inserts and audience. I asked Phoebe to create a synopsis seeing as she wrote the script, which I received really promptly and only needed a slight bit of tweaking.
I based the format on what we did in the practice on Monday, but hunted for an alternative programme to steal from than the One Show. I started off with traditional television media but found myself struggling for something that was the right tone and style for what we were looking for. And then inspiration struck! Why was I looking for something short, relaxed and suitable for an online audience in traditional media? There are hundreds of short clip shows on YouTube ready-made for us to steal from! Seeing as the Oscars had just taken place I looked for some short entertainment clips about the ceremony, and I found a great 3-minute video by E! News. It was a segment called 'Daily Pop' and it went into the news about the theft of Frances McDormand's Oscar. Unfortunately the video has since been removed from YouTube.
As you can see it was extremely fast-paced and really relaxed, and I think it hits the tone we want – perhaps verging on a little too informal. The costume and set design is also really nice and I felt it was something we should include. I sent the clip to Calum to see what he thought about it. He said that it probably wasn't suitable in terms of camera movement but for style and tone it was pretty good.
Then came the list of contributors, which was nice and easy to organise, with some help from Emily who has been our fantastic liaison for the project. The inserts are pretty much sorted. Insert 1 is in the style of a One Show insert, with an interview that will be accompanied by B-Roll. Insert 2 is going to follow the format of a Springwatch insert where we have footage of red kites with a voiceover explaining about the birds.
The final section of the pitch is to address how we will attract our audience. While we are going to work in stuff about audience all the way through our presentation this will be a good time to round things up.
On Wednesday Calum, Phoebe and I went into the TV Studio to have a look at how we might want to set up the space, have a look at what camera movements we could undertake in the space and got some help from Nigel with regards to lighting suggestions and specifications.
Armed with all this information and the stuff that Calum sent to me I created a coherent presentation ready to present on Thursday. It looked really great and I was dead proud of it.
Calum and I met up for a practice before the final session, and we actually ended up having a little audience as Emily and Joe turned up to give us some comments. We made a couple of quick changes and we got it pretty well polished.
And then it was time to pitch.
Group B went first, at their insistence, and I thought that their production about mental health sounded really interesting. It was clear that they have a much clearer idea of their set than we do! Our pitch also went really well (assisted by Calum's amazing mouse-clicking skills), even though I found it quite nerve-wracking. The presentation was extremely sleek and I was very happy with what we said. You can check out the pitch and the pitch notes here - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ATBfSI6-TNy37JgHk2wk9CjUWFYW1E1O
We got some good feedback from both Ed and the Group B participants. During the questions the main things that people queried us on were the choice of locations and what we would do to make our programme really appeal to our audience. The locations were chosen because none of the places in Cumbria would accommodate us, and Emily had a great existing contact in Newcastle who was willing to get involved. We will attract our audience by aiming the tone at what we would want to hear in a piece of content that we would consume, and consider how it might be distributed if we were to go further with the series.
Ed commented that both teams had picked challenging topics, that our ideas were pretty well formed and that we were working hard to make them a reality. His main points were that we needed to really get confident with the equipment and that we could look in the theatre stores for props and costumes. He also said that he would have liked more clips in our presentations – especially ours as he had never heard of Daily Pop and was intrigued by the format and the fact that the episode I mentioned was less than 3 minutes.
His closing thoughts were that everyone had done well and clearly we care a lot about our respective projects. A really big success for all of us in that case – yay!
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