From Script to Screen #1 - Concept

I have always held a great interest for film and TV, from the watching of it to the writing of it to the intricate details of producing it, but having never had an opportunity to contribute to such a creation, I doubted I ever would. This was why, as part of my study at Edge Hill University, I jumped at the chance to join a team tasked with doing exactly that - creating a short film. This would involve everything from coming up with a feasible concept that was both interesting and practical, to planning the story out, putting pen to paper, recruiting actors and scouting locations, shooting the footage, and finally editing everything together in the hopes of producing a somewhat coherent and entertaining end result!

We started out brainstorming ideas. I thought it would take forever to come up with a concept that worked, but surprisingly (and fortunately) enough, an idea came quickly – Bear Grylls, but shit... that is, a wannabe wilderness expert trying his very best to create an informative survival show, but the whole thing gets driven off the rails in spectacular fashion. We soon decided that this would be in the form of a mockumentary – something reminiscent of The Office or Modern Family – and would intercut between skits of our lead, known henceforth as the legendary ‘Wolf de Danger’, continually failing in his pursuit of survival mastery, and interviews with his friends and family, in which they softly undermine his hopes and dreams.

With our ideas collected, we assigned roles to each of the team members – one producer, one director, one prop master, and three writers/cameramen, and headed off in high spirits, blind to any and all foreseeable problems. Oh how very, very naive we were...