Lesson 1

[Anne]

What I (Anne Denise / AnDe) learned during this assignment is: Lose perfection as the goal; strip the screenplay down to its essence.

SUBJECT: FINAL EMERGENCE PROJECT PITCH

A. Genre = Horror

B. Title = Final Emergence

C. High Concept = Desperate aging actress Lauren commits to do whatever it whatever it takes to reclaim the physique and success of her younger self and resurrect her career – including tapeworms and other experimental treatments at a Mexican clinic located in an isolated butterfly preserve.

D. Main Conflict = To survive the clinic’s potentially fatal program, Lauren must overcome dangerous risks imposed by the clinic’s director.

E. Transformational Journey = Lauren evolves, mentally and physically, to meet head-on each increased risk until finally achieving her goals requires a life or death struggle with the clinic’s director.

F. Opposition = The clinic’s promise of a medically supervised accelerated weight loss transformation program masks the director’s true purpose of radical experimentation in search of a cure for other diseases.

[shelley Darling]

What I {Shelley Darling} learned from this assignment in refining the key elements of the screenplay, the genre became, and oppositions to protagonist became clearer. Originally, I had the genre as a romantic mystery, but after researching, I realized the movie had more characteristics of a drama.

SUBJECT: Shelley Darling’s Project Pitch

1. Genre: Drama

2. Title: Burning Truth

3. High Concept: With her life in fiery collapse, an aspiring journalist defies a spinal tumor diagnosis as evocative dreams compel her to return to an infamous Gilded Age resort from her past.

4. Main Conflict: Act 2 Hopeless at intimacy, an overwhelmed single mom with an autistic child investigating the mystery of a healing spring revealed by her dreams finds herself in an unbridled attraction to the spokesperson for the water bottling company that owns the property. (1 thing–becomes her hero. Make it difficult. Raise the stakes in each act.)Dad? in conflict with her father,

5. Transformational Journey: Ungrounded and adrift, Mollie, guided by an 18th-century medicine woman, reconciles the painful truth of her past to forgive the unforgivable and free her full potential.

6. Opposition: The protagonist’s health-spinal tumor, Relationship with her dominating dad and demanding mom, Water Corporation opposing her investigation, Issue with romantic partners, eviction, quitting the job, exiled from her non-profit, unsettled life, external judgments from parents and friends, overwhelmed with her child’s autism, lack of trusting herself and giving her power away, conflict avoidance, Dad’s withholding of information