Storytelling Unit - Week 1 Day 2

Reciting yesterday:

"What we had to do was create a pitch based on a story in recent media. I chose the recent mall siege in Kenya. So I promptly came out with:
'Gritty Thriller based around a know terrorist group holding up a popular mall, with hostages including the Kenyan President's family."

We recapped the pitch, with Simon going round the room asking what everyone's pitches were, then it came to mine. The feedback is positive, but needed more of a punch to it, more eye-catching, more of a sell than before. Also, it would have been more beneficial for the pitch to have a more so I came up with another pitch which I think is vastly improved over the last one:


" Tensions run high as a Kenyan mall is taken over by a powerful street gang, with hostages including the President's family."


This detaches itself from any sort of real life event, giving it a more unique feel, plus it included the Presidents family. It was short, punchy and detailed enough to be presented as a pitch.

The rest of the first part of the day comprised of coming up with a story that related to two characters and a location that we picked out of a hat. The three I chose were:

-Beach
-Beach Bum
-Professor

I think I got it a lot easier than most people, but I think I went a bit too overkill in the story. It was meant to be a short story but I carelessly overlooked this key fact. Anyway, here's the story:

It is all based around the Professor having a weird fascination with marine life on the beach and creating the 'breathing man in water'. He can't get the funding for testing like big corporations so goes out of his way to therefore do the research himself. 

He finds a beach bum and offers him the world; hotels, food, water, clothes, as long as he can take part in his small experiment. As he is an irrelevant beach bum he agrees and for the next few days enjoys this new found freedom to do what he likes all expenses paid. After the beach bum 'stops drinking the kool aid' and realises, the professor then carries on his mad experiment to therefore create this 'breathing man in water' and ultimately kills the bum. This causes the professor to change his schematics to therefore do it on himself, successfully  He then jumps in the water to live out the rest of his life in the water.

Aside from being a 'stoner story', it was the most creative i've been in a while. Although it was pretty much laughed out of the class, it still got an applause, which I was thankful for. I can make the most pointless, completely random story, but as long as people appreciate the work at the end, it doesn't really matter how funny it came across, that's the beauty of this course.

I did think of a better story in the evening, in synopsis, the professor basically ridicules a beach bum for making nothing of his life, and being an irrelevant part of society. This caused the bum to be horrified and moves on, shrugging off these insults, a short time lapse later, a bunch of youths attack the professor, with the beach bum coming to the aid of the professor, with the aftermath of the beach bum letting the professor know that everybody is relevant regardless of social ladder, followed by the beach bum walking away with a smile on his face.

This fit the brief a lot better and therefore would be more acceptable to be pitched.