Peer Pitch & Concept Refinement Chart

CATEGORY	DETAILS
Film OR Magazine	Film
Genre	Comedic Documentary
Target Audience (Be specific)	People in the mood for a light-hearted joke
What is your concept? (Be thorough & specific. Review the links on Blackboard)	This film will be a documentary based on a podcast created by my friends and I. The documentary will describe the thought process of making each podcast, and the way we use it to cope with being isolated during quarantined.
How did you conceive the idea for this concept?	Once I figured that I would do a film for my portfolio project, I brainstormed ideas about what the concept should be. First, I was thinking in the field of drama, but then I noticed I was trying to incorporate jokes into each idea. Then I realized that a comedy film would best fit my style of creativity. Later that day I called my friends, just to goof off, and discovered that we would be a great plot for the film. The problem was that nobody would want to see a movie about three friends who call each other and talk. After more thinking, I realized that the podcast would be perfect. The podcast was something we created a couple months ago, and we had the best time recording it.
What do you believe is unique about your concept?	My concept is unique because it is a documentary about recording a podcast, that itself is a joke. Most documentaries are about serious topics, but this one will be more light-hearted.
Why do you believe this product will be of interest to your audience?	I am hoping that anyone who wants to have a laugh will be interested. Now there are several types of jokes, and some people have different senses of humor. This film would have more improvisational humor because the whole podcast itself is three friends doing improve.
FEEDBACK RECEIVED FROM PEERS	To choose between the genre comedy or documentary     What the name of the podcast was…The Awful Waffles Podcast     Describing the film as more of a mockumentary (making fun of our own podcast)     This film will have my friends in it (live action not animation)     This film could be an inspiration for others

     This week and last week everyone presented their pitch for the portfolio project. Let me just say this was probably the most stressful week of this class so far. I was terrified of the feedback that my pitch would receive. Nonetheless, I am glad how my pitch went. The feedback was much less critical than I thought and very useful ideas were given out. After reviewing the feedback, I have concluded that my film will be a comedy. The links from last week give statistical data that comedy is very popular. The article that was given this week also gives data based on an experiment that supports why comedy is a good choice.

    During the past two weeks, the hardest assignment given was to present my pitch. I was worried about everything going wrong, including what the feedback would be like. I was scared that the feedback would be more critical, but instead the feedback was very useful. After I presented, the feedback I was received were more positive than negative. A peer mentioned how my film sounded more like a mockumentary instead of a comedic documentary. After searching what a mockumentary was, I completely agree. I was also told that my film would be very inspirational to younger students. That kids in middle school and even elementary school could be included in my audience. That peer also strongly suggested that I stick to one of the genres that I put in my chart. I took this suggestion and changed the genre from a comedic documentary to just a comedy. I intend for my film to be more comedic than educational, so comedy seemed to be the better choice of the two. The feedback didn’t change the vision I have for my film but changed the title of the genre instead.

    At the end of last week, we were given links with data to help influence our decisions for our portfolio project. The first link brought me to a webpage with a table and statistical data about the popularity of film genres. The title of the webpage is Most Popular movie genres among adults in the United States as of December 2018, by age group and is created by statistica.com. According to the table, comedy had the highest percentage for age groups 18-29 (91%) and 30-44 (93%). For the age group 45-54 it was 90%, for age group 55-64 it was 89%, and for age group 65+ it was 87%. This data demonstrates that comedies are very popular among all ages. The other link I opened an article titled Is Netflix Reshaping The Film Industry on medium.com. In this article I found that “In their article, Gomez-Uribe and Hunt suggested that Netflix’s referral system works very effectively thanks to data from millions of users, and this has become a significant factor in popularizing romantic-comedies and thrillers.” Although romantic comedies are a combination of the genres comedy and romance, it still means an increase in comedy popularity.

    This week, the class was given an article to read based on the type of portfolio project we are doing. Since I am doing film, I was required to read Exploring the role of meaningful experiences in users’ appreciation of “good movies”. This article explains the factors that play an important role when classifying a movie under “good”. The article claims, “the notion of what makes for a ‘good movie’ has typically been understood from the perspective of an audience that is assumed to be driven by hedonistic motivations.” The article also claims that a “meaningful cinematic experience” also plays a role. With hedonistic meaning pleasure, the two factors discussed in this article are pleasure and meaning. A good movie gives the audience a pleasureful experience and it should also be meaningful. To determine which genre is the most pleasurable and meaningful, an experiment was conducted. The experiment took an audience of 271 undergraduate students, split them in two groups, and asked one group to name a movie that was the most meaningful to them and the other group the most pleasurable. As a result of the experiment, the article states “The analysis of the genres that described the film titles showed that dramas (44.3%) and comedies (40.6%) were the most frequent descriptors”. This helps prove that many comedies would be considered "good movies" in terms of the article's definition of one.

    In conclusion, the past two weeks have been a critical stage in the process of creating my portfolio project. The pitch allowed me to become more certain in my genre and concept. The links from last week and the article from this week both gave me statistical data that proves comedy is a very popular genre and is a good choice.