Researching 25 word pitches

KATANA- “It’s KILL BILL meets BUFFY, about a teen girl who discovers she’s a reincarnated samurai, but would rather be breaking hearts than breaking bones.”

This pitch is concise, it simply tells the audience the names of the protagonists and the main theme of the story, it is short snappy and keeps an audience.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory- "Everyone wants the secrets of the reclusive Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but only one courageous boy will get them during a wild and hilarious adventure".

This pitch is more intriguing. It doesn't give to much away, and words such as 'secrets' make the audience feel important and as if they are part of the storyline.  Descriptive words such as 'wild' and hilarious' set the entertaining, comical genre without giving too much information away.


Shoeless Joe- A holiday of a lifetime across the desolate heart of the Australian outback turns into a living nightmare for five friends.

This pitch basically outlines the 'what and when', it also tells the audience about the relationship between characters, naming them as 'friends' It doesn't give too much away, but tells you of the the 'living nightmare' that they are to encounter, this somehow introduces some of the possible themes such as action, horror, drama or family.

Storage- Terror stalks a storage facility. Survival for those trapped inside depends on the secrets in those endless units. But some doors are better left locked. 


The lexical field 'horror' introduces the films genre. By saying "some doors are better left locked" it gives the audience space to think and wonder as to what could happen if those 'doors' were to be unlocked. It makes the audience for intrigued to continue reading.


After looking at these pitches, it has become apparent that it is improtant to use descriptive language in order to set a scene, you can begin to either introduce characters or introduce or hint about the key events that happen throughout the film, without giving away to much infromation.

Planning our 25 word pitch

A 25 word pitch has to be...

• intreguing,
• informative and
• descriptive

A  25 word pitch is simmilar to a blurb, it describes the storyline in brief, and aims to capture an audience and encourage them to either read or watch the book or film.

We need to use adjectives in order to describe our storyline effectively and captivate our audience. We will use various lexical fields in order to reach our audience effectively. We will also use words that will provoke emotion, such as 'neglected' and 'depreived', this is known as emotive language, and our target audience being young girls and families, often have mothering like instincts so will instantly be able to connect with the characters, and in turn be intregued to continue reading or encourage them to watch the film.

Written treatment

This treatment outlines the key story line, characters and main events. We used images to enable the audience to visualise the story line.


Click here to read our treatment

Final story line

All of my initial ideas meet all of the requirements that I set from my research. However, finding the resources required to create some of these films would prove to difficult. Such as finding malnourished horses or a gypsy caravan, and then having permission to use these resources.

It is for this reason my groups final idea is that of initial idea 2. Not only does this reach all of our requirements my production partner and I set, but we also have access to all the props, actors and equipment required and therefore be able to carry our the production in a professional manner.

The next step will be to write a treatment.

Initial Ideas

Production Context

We have taken every aspect of film making into consideration whilst deciding the context of our opening title sequence, we identified that blockbusters often have extravagant special effects that we would not be able to replicate as we do not currently have the high tech equipment available to us to do so. Therefore if trying to replicate the style of a blockbuster we would not be able to replicate it to a similar standard therefore it will not be effective. Blockbusters often have big names of actors, we will not have access to famous movie stars for our film therefore again, it will be unrealistic to try and replicate a blockbuster. On the other hand, I looked at various independent films and identified that they are less extravagant but have the same techniques such as 'match on action' shots, 'shot reverse shots' and comply to the rule of thirds. All of the technical elements are the same, but the special effects are not as 'amazing' and there are rarely famous actors in the film, therefore it is more realistic for us to create an independent film.

 - as you can see the special effects in this independent film are on a lower scale and look easier to achieve with the standard of equipment that we currently posses, therefore making an independent film would be more realistic. In this image, you can see that the lighting looks like it complies with the genre 'sci-fi' slightly, although the lighting would have been easy to apply to the film through editing, and we could do basic effects like this i the process of editing.

- As you can see in these special effects it looks incredible, this is a scene from the film 'the avengers', an award winning blockbuster, it was commended for its amazing special effects, it looks so realistic, and with the equipment we currently obtain we would not be able to replicate such effects to such a high standard, and therefore our attempt of creating a 'blockbuster' style film with realistic special effects would not be successful. 

I also identified that in many films surrounding the genre 'horses' there is not many action shots or any scenes that require high levels of special effects, therefore again, it is more realistic to make our film in the style of an independent film. 

Target market research

We created a survey using survey monkey where we created a series of a questions aimed at our target market, this research told us what they would prefer to see or have liked to see in previous films surrounding the genre 'horses'. We sent the survey out to what we believe to be our target market, so families and young girls and people who share a common interest in horses. Here is some screenshots of our results.

From our research we gathered that most people want to see a character they can relate to, therefore we will make the character a young or teenage girl, they would prefer the film to be realistic therefore this rules out the fantasy, western and magical representations surrounding horses, 96% of people also said they would prefer music in the opening title sequence, therefore we will use music, although we will have to find rights free music, so we are not infringing on any copyright laws. All of our results have helped us to shape our story-line, and therefore meet and please our target audience more effectively.

Click here to find out what an Opening Title Sequence is!

Our Target Market- Young girls and families

Existing products with the genre 'horses'

After anylysing various products on the market surrounding the genre horses it has become apparent that they are extremely popular with 8-15 year old girls. Therefore this is our primary target audience, although parents are people with the main income who will supply the money, therefore we need to aim our opening title sequence at families also.

This product is aimed at 8-15 year old girls, it has a girly colour scheme and has a picture of a teenage girl that young girls could almost idealise.

This product is aimed at 5-10 year olds, it uses more primary colours, primary colours have connotations with young children, therefore this is a way of the product directing its target market effectively.

This magazine is also aimed at 5-10 year olds, it has a more girly theme than the previous magazine, note that both use grey ponies as the centre image, they have connotations with 'princesses' and girly things.

Analysing existing genre specific opening title sequences

By analysing genre specific opening title sequences we aim to identify both the positives and negatives of them and therefore translate the successful elements straight into our work and also to learn from their mistakes. It will also give us a basic understanding of the common characters presented in films with the genre 'horse' and therefore help us to identify our target audience in the future.

Genre specific mood-board

Existing horse films

Spirit:  This film is an animated motion picture aimed at children aged 5-12, also described as an "ideal family film" The bright colors attract their target market, therefore we could translate this into our opening title sequence if we choose to aim ours at young children.

Young Black Stallion: A walt Disney film, aimed at the whole family, especially young girls.  The writing draws attention to the cover, and the beautiful photography diverts the eye to the cover, therefore if we use an attractive opening shot, this may keep the audience engrossed.

War Horse- A very successful more recent film, aimed at people ages 11 and over. This is a counter-type for the genre 'horses' as normally horse films are aimed at young girls. The darker colors attract an older audience and make the other theme of war more apparent.

Black beauty- A classic for the whole family, incredibly popular with young girls.  The figurine of the horse makes it seem magical and complies to the idealistic stereotype.

What i have learnt from my research

After looking at the various representations of horses throughout the media, we decided that we would need to select at least one of these representations and present them in character form in our opening title sequence. To do this we would need to identify our target audience and therefore conduct some research into what they would like best.

Mood Board- Animals

Mood Board- Fantasy

Mood Board- SciFi

Mood Board - Horror

Analysing Genre

Our next task was to begin to analyse genre. To do this I have created a series of mood boards which identify various themes and genres including, fantasy, romance, horror and animals. Whilst looking for images to place on my mood boards i was able to identify the various stereotypes and representations of the beings represented in my chosen fields. Such as in horror, everything is dark and scary. The people are presented to us as being intimidating and as if they have power and authority. They have an 'evil' eye and the angle that they have been photographed tends to be at a high angle, this effectively intimidates the audience and therefore makes them appear more threatening and comply with the theme of horror. Therefore i we were to choose the horror genre for our final opening sequence, it would be an effective method to use high angle shots and dark colours, as we have identified it as successful in previous horror advertisements and films. Scifi is a genre incredibly popular with teens and computer geeks. They use a lot of bright colours and unrealistic objects. Although after analysing this genre we identified it as ineffective for our opening sequence as we do not have the resources available to us to create an effective scifi opening sequence. As we would need a high level of special effects and we do not currently have the software available to us. The fantasy theme again is similar to scifi, meaning that they use various special effects as most of the characters throughout the films are animated as they are 'fantasy' creatures. The bright colours and use of special effects means that it again would be difficult for us to create an opening title sequence with a theme of fantasy. The last genre i analysed was 'animals'. Now animals is more of a theme then a genre, but after researching some stats, i identified that animals are a very common theme for films and that over 98% of films star at least one animal throughout, whether it be as small as a bird or as big as a horse. And a further 39% of films an animal is the centre point of the film, that's nearly half!! Therefore myself and my sister decided that animals would be an ideal theme for our opening title sequence, not only is this because it does not require any specialist software like the other genres, but we have various animals readily available to us, and would not need to undergo a lengthy casting process in order to find possible actors. Now we have decided to use horses, as we have many available to us, and they are safe to work with, therefore would not be putting ourselves at risk. We are now going to undergo some research to identify the medias common representations of horses and judge what we believe to be the most successful representation and therefore translate it into our own work.