Ideas for coursework lesson

On Monday's lesson, the class were firstly told to think about our 'influences' of film and television that could possibly give us ideas for our main task where we will be making an opening to a film.These influences could be from things we had seen as a child or maybe more recently that had stuck in our heads. They could also be things that had made us think 'Wow, I wish I made that.' My film influences included the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. I am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings and the first time I watched them I was mesmerised by the whole set up of the film, and then I recently went to watch The Hobbit which I thought was incredible. Alice in Wonderland and Edward Scissorhands are my other influences which were both made by my favourite director Tim Burton. Then we did something similar and had to think about books/magazines that had influenced influenced us and I thought of Woman in Black by Susan Hill and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Lastly, we had to think about our real life experiences with people to help us develop our ideas for our characters. The only thing I could really think of was my Uncle who is very prone to accidents and seems to have a new accident every time I see him. After thinking about all of these influences, I had a slight idea of what approach I could take for my own film.

Our next task was to each get 12 small pieces of paper. On these pieces of paper we had to write down 4 possible characters, 4 possible locations and 4 possible situations. Once we had done this, we all placed our bits of paper in a tray, shuffled the paper around in the tray and we all had to pick 4 random pieces of paper (apart from the ones we had written). I then opened up the pieces I had chosen. The four characters I had received were: Suit Guy looking for a story, Detective with a Cocaine addiction, smart uneducated Woman and a Ghost who wants redemption. The four situations I had received were: searching for something, running from a stranger, itching their toe and fighting a Sea Witch for freedom. And the four locations I had received were Asda store room, royal manor, abandoned factory and a Zoo.

Then, we had to develop two story lines from what we had received. For my first story line I had chosen the character of the Detective with a Cocaine addiction, the location of a royal manor and the situation of searching for something. I then developed this further and the story line I picked was:
'A mystery film in which a detective with a Cocaine addiction is set the task to search for the thief that has stolen from a royal manor and retrieve what has been taken. During this time he has the mission to get over his Cocaine addiction.'
For my second story line I had chosen the character of Suit Guy looking for a story, the location of an abandoned factory and finally the situation of running from a stranger. The story line I chose was
 'A male Journalist in his twenties is looking for a story and heads to an abandoned factory but is very sceptical. Eventually, he realises the factory is more dangerous that he thought, hidden with secrets that he tries to run away from.'

I am happy with the two story lines I have developed. I feel that I will definitely be using one or the other as already to me, they feel thrilling and exciting. Overall, I found this lesson extremely helpful as before I was absolutely clueless of what type of film I could produce.