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Section 5: Overview

Culminating Task

What story do we want to tell our audience through film? Why? How will we use storytelling and filmmaking techniques to create a movie that brings our ideas and vision to life?

We will finalize our ideas for our original feature film and create a five-page “pitch packet” that describes the film’s concept and presents details of its storyline, style, visual effects, and use of sound. Our pitch packets will include the film’s title, a statement of its concept, a logline, descriptions of its characters, and a synopsis of each act.

  • Lesson 1:

    Having defined our central character and the character’s arc within our movie, we will consider how that character relates to and interacts with other characters, how obstacles and conflicts cause the character to change or evolve, and what the stakes are when the character has to make choices. In further studying and developing our central characters, we will also define other key characters using the Movie Character Tool, and develop additional details for the story spines of our movie.

  • Lesson 2:

    We will use the notes and tools we have developed to finalize the sequence of acts and beats that will make up our movie’s story spine, and that define its plot and storyline. We will focus on how we can make our audience care about the answer to the question, “What happens next?” In a workshop format, we will work with our peers to finalize the outlines or storyboards that represent our movie’s story spine and beats.

  • Lesson 3:

    We will sum up our movie idea in one to two compelling sentences.

  • Lesson 4:

    We will complete a copy of the Understanding a Movie Tool for our original movies, then begin to write the concept and synopsis sections of our pitch packets.

  • Lesson 5:

    We will bring together each of the elements of our original movie ideas—the title, logline, concept statement, character sketches, and synopsis—and revise our pitch packet into a final draft.

  • Lesson 6:

    We will present or share our final product with other students in the class, reflect on what we have learned, and think about possible research avenues for the Application Unit.

  • Lesson 7:

    In a culminating activity, we share the knowledge we have gained and the connections we have made by reading our independent reading texts.