My Film Pitch

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Positive

• Great idea
• Strong Refernces
• Great binary opposites
• Excellent use of theories
• Strong emotions

Negative

• Use character names throughout (research suitable names)
• Marketing- needs a creative idea
• Title!

Title: The Sons of Jian (working title)
Genre: Action Adventure- martial arts

TA: People who enjoy ninja/samurai/martial arts films or are interested in family relationships. It targets women well as their are strong female characters.

Certificate: 12A

USP: It has very famous actors in it and the theme of brothers being enemies.

Film References: Similar style and cast to ‘Hero’, with some of the fight scenes similar to ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ or ‘House of Flying Daggers’.

                

Characters

Hero: Shan (Tony Leung). He is a young man who was overshadowed in his childhood by his brother. He is passionate and a good fighter (he uses a long sword with a green handle).

Helper: Lian (Zhang Ziyi). She is kind, selfless and caring towards the hero, who she loves. This leads to constant heartbreak and pain, as she knows he will never love her in that way, which helps turn he into an exciting and temperamental fighter (she uses 2 knives with tassels on the handle)   

Zhang Ziyi

Princess: Xiang (Maggie Cheung). She was forced into marrying the villain, but the audience is more likely to empathise with the helper, as nothing really bad happens to her. The hero is in love with her.

Princesses Father: Qiao the king of the kingdom the villain wants to invade. He is peace loving, and when the hero is crowned, he abdicates and gives them his land.

Donor: the swords master. He is a wise old man who lives in a hut in a obscure, desolate, mountainous and unforgiving place

Villain: Deshi (Jet Li). He has no emotions and is deadly with sword. He always dresses neatly and everything about him is precise and useful.

The old king, Jian, could also be the villain, as his favouritism created the problem.

Narrative

Back story- shown through dreams or conversations throughout the film (this could be shown with montage editing):

Shan and his older brother Deshi are the only sons of a king. Shan admired his older brother greatly, but Deshi barely noticed him. Their childhood is lonely as the king makes them study and train hard in preparation for one of them becoming king. Deshi was always the King’s favourite son as he was exceptionally talented and better at everything than Shan.This led to Deshi always getting what he wanted, including Xiang, Shan’s girlfriend.

Due to this, Shan leaves the castle to live in the forest and his servant and close friend Lian follows him.

The king then dies, naming Deshi as his successor.

Equilibrium- Shan is living in a small, basic hut in the forest with Lian. He is humble but bitter and angry at his dad for not loving him as much as his older brother. Lian is caring and loving towards him as they are close friends, but you can see that she wants something more. The audience see’s there super-human martial arts skills when they are carrying out menial, day-to-day tasks like peeling potatoes or chopping wood.

This is a binary opposite to Deshi, who lives in a castle.

Disruption- Xiang, who is now Deshi’s wife, sends a message to Shan,asking him for help as Deshi is planning to invade her father’s kingdom, which would result in unnecessary pain, destruction of land and the death of many. Shan decides to help with Lian,who, as you can imagine, is pretty jealous that the man she loves is still interested in his ex, but at the same time, she feels morally obliged to help, as well as the fact that she would do anything for Shan.

Resolution- So they seek out Shan’s old sword master, who lives up a mountain. They arrive after the trek and the master gives Shan a sword and tells them that the prevention of war is far greater than any family duties they feel they may have.

They then invade the castle. There are many disposable guards, who they defeat but do not kill (as they are the good guys) with their amazing skills. They get to Deshi’s throne room, where the brothers argue, Deshi remaining calm whilst Shan gets worked up. This distraction causes Shan not to notice a guard throwing a knife at him, so Lian throws herself in front of it to save him; she then dies in his arms.

The brothers then have an epic sword fight. They have very different techniques as Deshi is incredibly calm and shows no emotion whilst Shan is angry about his friends death. Fortunately, Shan had admired his brother when they were young so he knew his style so he is able to defeat him, leaving him defenceless and easy to kill. Shan is unable to kill him and turns away then Deshi pulls out a dagger so Xiang comes in and stabs him dead with his discarded sword. This is a closed narrative.

 There is an elipsis here.

Restoration- Shan and Xiang marry and unite the kingdoms. Shan is a good and just king who treats his children equally.

Iconograpy

The weapons are iconic: the hero's sword will have a similar signifigance as 'the Green Destiny' has in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', as it represents him taking responsibility for the kingdom and deciding to stand up for himself. Similarly, Lian's daggers could represent how she is tempermental, as fighting with the smaller blade means she has to move alot faster and get closer to her enemy.

Also the costumes will be typical of the 5th century China/ martial arts setting. Deshi will wear dark grey/black expensive looking clothes with silver decoration to show his royal status. Shan and Lian will wear lighter colours, probably blue, with Shan in a darker shade to show his power and dominance. Their clothes will be simpler as they live in a far more humble place.

Setting

The setting will have lots of binary opposites; the kings castle and the house in the woods is contrasted in many ways such as large compared to small, stone compared to wood and spacious compared to the clustered trees of the forest.

Marketing campaingn

There would be a viral of the fight scenes as they are aesthticly nice.

Homework: AA Clip Genre Analysis

This is a clip from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’, which is one of my favourite films. It is a long clip, but it is basically Will and Jack having a fight with swords, as Jack is a pirate and Will has been taught that Pirates are bad. Once they get over this misunderstanding, they become friends as Will needs Jack.



Narrative:
The Storyline fits in well with Toldorov’s structure. The plot summarized would be that the equilibrium is when Elizabeth is living in Port Royal and set to be engaged to James the Commodore whilst Will is making swords and Jack is a failing Pirate. The disruption occurs when Elizabeth is captured by Barbossa, who believes that her blood will free him and his crew of a curse which damns them to eternal life. However, it is Will’s blood that will make them mortal and Will and Jack steal a ship and find a crew to rescue her, which they do. The curse is also eventually lifted and Barbossa defeated. The restoration happens after Jack escapes execution and goes off to lead his crew, Elizabeth escapes marrying James and is set to marry Will, who is pardoned of his crimes.
Naturally, it being an AA film, there are many sword fights, cannon fights and destructive explosions.
There is also the typical scenario of the girl needing to be rescued and, to an extent, good vs. evil, as Barbossa and his crew’s skeleton forms could have demonic conatations.

Characters:

Examples of Propp’s archetypal characters, with conventional AA traits, are common in the film.

Princess- Elizabeth. She is beautiful and well mannered, due to her privileged upbringing. However she is brave, strong and not a bad fighter. She needs to be rescued and id the love interest of Will.
Hero- Will. He is good looking, brave, determined, intelligent and strong/good at sword fighting. His has to save the girl.
Helper- Jack. He is good looking (but in a less conventional way), funny, talented at pirate skills and eccentric. Although he helps Will, he has his own ambition of getting a boat and crew, which he achieves.
False Hero– James the Commodore. With his high status and power, the audience may expect him to be the hero, but he is mean to pirates and Elizabeth isn’t interested in him, so he is not the hero.
Villain- Barbossa. He is arrogant and will hurt others for personal gain but he also has a back story to do with Jack and the curse. His role is to be beaten by Will and Jack (but is actually killed by Jack, as they have a history).
Princesses Father- Elizabeth’s dad. He is a governor who loves his daughter, but favors James over Will in terms of being a future husband. He is not very brave.

Iconography:
The film contains a lot of swords, pistols, heaps of gold treasure, chains, bottles of rum and other things you’d find on a boat (like ropes and stuff). There is also the necklace and Jack’s iconic broken compass.
The pirate and British army costumes are also iconography, especially Jacks hat and Elizabeth’s corset.
The colours and lighting are pretty extreme in this film, it is usually very bright, white, natural light in the day, with dazzling white beaches and the sun’s reflection almost blindingly bright off silver swords or turquoise waves (it is the Caribbean). However, at night the colours are often dark grays and blacks, with low key lighting usually flickering from fires, which often connotes violence.

Setting:
The setting of this film is very exotic and exciting (it’s the Caribbean). It ranges from large ports, with rowdy bars, lonely jails or the posh house of the governor, to the high seas, on either a pirates ship, full of excitement and pirate behavior, or a ship from the British navy fleet, which is a lot more boring and orderly. There are beautiful desert islands, which have perfect white sand, sun and palm trees yet are desolate and isolated and the treasure cave, with sharp, grey rocks, piles of gold and pools of water which are black at night, it by moonlight and fire.