Week 1 Blog Post
My name is Eric Tallent, and I am pursuing an M.Ed. with the intention of using what I learn to make movies that educate as well as entertain. My undergrad studies are in film and screenwriting. I am part of a film production company startup that is seeking to create a slate of films and raise money to produce them. One of the projects we are planning to pitch is a TV series based on the life of sports agent, Leigh Steinberg, whose business accomplishments in the sports industry were the basis of the movie Jerry Maguire. I would like to find a way to shape my project for this present course to align with the goal of creating a pitch/proposal, a tentative storyline synopsis, and a sample scene or sequence in the standard screenplay format that would open the pilot of the series.
Ohler shares some specific revelations about storytelling that he experienced in his journey of learning how to utilize technology in the pursuit of this goal (2013). One example is that storytelling is something that binds communities together, and this makes storytelling an essential component of the educational arsenal used by communities of learning. Indeed, storytelling is something very fundamental and rudimentary to the human experience. It is universal and ubiquitous. To be human is to tell stories. Connecting to other human beings in a community is a fundamental necessity for people to thrive and find happiness. And stories are a big part of how these connections between people are forged.
The suggestion is also made by Ohler to start with the genre when planning a story (2013). We must “select a genre and stay within it” (p. 25). Otherwise, we will not meet the expectations of our audience and will lose them. Genre is the type of story being told: comedy, action, thriller, drama, etc. It is interwoven with things like tone, theme, plot, and character. I believe the story I am seeking to pitch will be a drama with a lot of comedic elements. Perhaps it will be a dramedy. It also helps to relate the genre to the target audience. Will the humor incorporated in the story make the target audience laugh? Will the action in a thriller keep members of the target audience on the edge of their seats? These are some areas that I will need to explore and drill down to the answers as I move forward.
Middleton discusses the advantages of digital voice products, such as those used in blogs, that can economically be tailored for a niche audience (2013). While the end product I’m pursuing is expensive mass media, the pitch is the ultimate “niche audience” production because it can ultimately be tailored for an audience as small as one. And, during development, costs are always an issue because the money is not yet raised. While the podcast model may not be the right fit for my pitch, the ideas explored in this book are quite relevant. It is too soon to tell whether recorded audio will be appropriate for my pitch concept, it only makes sense to leave this option open. If nothing else, recording audio and embedding it into a multimedia presentation might be useful in prepping for a live pitch session. It might serve as a kind of rehearsal. Ease of use and economics certainly position digital voice products as tools to keep in the production toolbox.
References:
Middleton, A. (2013). Digital voices: A collaborative exploration of the recorded voice in post-compulsory education. MELSIG & Sheffield Hallam University. CC BY NC-ND 4.0
Ohler, J. (2013). Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications
