Film Pitch: The Showdown

In class, we where given a target audience. Our group's target audience was middle aged, working class males. We where then told to create a film for our target audience and we chose to make an action film. Our reason behind this was that after researching, we found this was the most popular genre for our audience. The plot line for our film was, a man's daughter was kidnapped by a gang, he and his brother try to hunt down the gang that kidnapped his daughter before it was too late.

The key selling point for our film was our A-list cast, the lead role was to be played by Samuel L. Jackson who is famous for many films including Star Wars and Snakes on a Plane. Our reason for the inclusion of this actor was his association with other films of a similar genre, giving the overall effect of credibility. His brother was too be played by another A-Lister, Denzel Washington who also has been in many famous films such as the 2010 film "The Book of Eli". The leader of the Gang that kidnapped Samuel L's daughter was Bruce Willis, we decided to cast his due to his experience in the world of action films (Die Hard etc.)

Here are our original notes on the film making 

 The Showdown : Samuel L Jackson's daughter gets Kidnapped, he enlists the help of his brother Denzel Washington and local Gypsy man (Jackie Chan) too go on a vast search for his daughter, the search takes them across country and the showdown begins...

Our tag line to go with the film was "If testosterone could mate with explosion, this movie would be it's offspring" We thought that this Tag line would appeal to the audience.

Financing

We where given a pre sales (which means we are selling the distributing rights to the film before we have made it) budget of $70m from 20th Century Fox, The majority of out above the line budget went on our cast, we calculated that the total cost of our a-list cast would be in the region of $35-40M which is a huge chunk of our budget, we then had to finance a director, who we chose should be John Woo, who has directed many successful films such as "Mission Impossible", next we chose our cinematographer Jeffrey L Kimball who was behind the filming of Star Trek so has vital experience when it comes to film making and special effects, and finally our editor was Ken Blackwell, who edited "The Expendables" which is also a high-action film. Finally, we decided on our script-writer: Robert Towne, who was also involved in the proudction of Mission Impossible - again, another film of similar target audience.

We calculated our Above the line costs as totaling 65M which is almost all of our budget, the rest of the budget would go on Below the line costs, and marketing our film.


Above The Line Costs:

• Cast
• Production team - director, editors, Cinematographer & Script Writer
• Accomodation
• Set/Location
• All the large costs to the budget

Below The Line Costs:

• This covers all the lower costs to the budget
• Props
• Amateur Actors
• Make up etc.