Eight creators, four judges, three hours of well-designed pitches and insightful discussion
On December 3rd, Chinese in Entertainment (CIE) Writer’s Workshop successfully held its first virtual Pitch Session. Eight projects out of thirty-four submissions were selected by our selection committee consisting of experts in CIE Development and Programming teams as well as the four guest executives. The finalist projects include feature films, animations, and TV series that cover diverse topics in comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, and so on.
The Pitch Session kicked off with the warm welcomes from this year’s CIE Co-Executive Director June Tan who also introduced CIE’s outstanding achievements in 2020. The four guest executives are leading industry experts, including director and editor Roger Nygard, COO of Yintai Investment Lifeng Wang, Head of Production at China Lion Entertainment Production Inc. Calvin Wu, and President of Production at The Middleton Media Group Alex Foster.
After each creator presented their projects, our guest executives offered insightful feedback to individual projects. During the session, the executives emphasized the importance of a story’s idea and concept, and heatedly discussed the story’s motive, structure, and dramatic tension with the presenters. If you missed the opportunity to pitch your idea, check out the valuable feedback on each project from our guest executives below!
American Psyche
Logline: A psychologist to Washington DC's political elite finds her worst nightmares come to life when her most prized patient, a US Senator, turns manic in the midst of drug abuse and sexual scandal. Caught in between her duties as wife, mother, and healer, she must decide what matters most to her or risk losing everything.
Creator: Richard Nguyen
Comment: A plot needs to have a purpose, and its core concept should be clarified. The protagonist’s motivation needs to be very convincing. It requires more careful consideration on how to effectively use the setting of this story, such as Washington DC, political elites, congressmen, and drug addiction.
Devil's Threesome
Logline: Kenny, a no-nonsense grad student juggling multiple jobs, and Karli, a perky goth chick with an apocalyptically potent bad luck curse, must form an unlikely friendship and team up to co-parent a literal man-eating demon named Mary.
Creator: Kelly Eisenbrand
Comment: Your work is extremely rich in creativity and imagination and contains a variety of elements. It will be more helpful if you could clarify the various elements contributing to the main storyline, such as the protagonist, the purpose, and the obstacles. The theme of this story is very unique and has a special audience group; as a result, it requires more consideration when choosing the production and distribution platforms.
The Invisible Man & The Blind Girl
Logline: A heart-warming drama/comedy about two newfound frenemies – a lonely, misanthropic invisible man named William and a smart, strong-minded blind girl named Emma.
Creator: Xiao (Max) Ma
Comment: This story has an excellent concept; however, the conflict could be strengthened by enhancing the complexity and driving force of the story setting. The superpower is key to the story, so its background needs to be explained more clearly.
Princess Der Ling
Logline: The story follows the journey of Princess Der Ling, a Manchu aristocrat, through the east and the west, the modern and the traditional, the rich and the poor, as well as war and peace, to explore the theme: where can one find his/her sense of belonging? Where is HOME?
Creator: Wenqi You
Comment: It would be better to have variations in the protagonist's action goals. In addition, a romantic storyline could be added to better engage the audience; particularly, “Gone with the Wind” shows how important a romantic story is in an epic movie.
Journey to the Sky
Logline: A story of a superpowered robot child soldier who falls from a technological utopia to the surface world below, where he meets a cunning barbarian girl who promises to take him back home.
Creator: Eric Gladstone
Comment: This is excellent work with a good story and nice visual effects. We hope to see more designs in the presentation and pitch materials to further understand the story and characters. At the same time, we look forward to seeing more conflicts and challenges in this animated series.
Gender Party
Logline: Xena, a long-term victim of sexism in our current world, happens to be in a flipped-gender 2020 world where sexism in men is outrageous. However, she finds out she is a public figure in this world and the lead marketing person of the most popular men’s rights movement in the US!
Creator: Brielle Li
Comment: Certain screenwriting techniques may be required for the portrayal of the flip of different worlds. To allow the audience to understand the background of the current story, some fixed scenes could be used to remind the audience in which world the current story takes place. This technique needs to be relatively uniform, and it can produce more humor and interesting points if used well.
Pulling Seedlings
Logline: In this intimate, character-driven drama set in the near future, a Chinese American woman is caught between her obligation for her "mediocre" natural-born daughter and her desire to pursue a "better" child through genetic engineering in order to succeed in the data-driven, socially competitive world. The journey pushes her to explore the true meaning of love, merit and acceptance.
Creator: Eris Qian
Comment: We look forward to seeing stronger and more specific negative forces and characters to create conflicts. Strengthening the protagonist's motivation may also take the script to a higher level. It is recommended to give the character a long-term goal to enrich the entire script, which may be likely to resonate with the audience.
The Golden Coast
Logline: So dumb, he’s a genius. So dumb, he can change the world.
Creator: Lewis Liu
Comment: Since the setting of the story is the Silicon Valley, the characters' living status, emotional state, and personal feelings should be key to this project besides introducing the stories that happened to them.