PLANNING: TOP LINES AND BIG QUESTIONS

Today in class we looked at FutureLearn week 1 on their digital storytelling course.
For Frank Ash, Creative Consultant, who has taught storytelling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and beyond, it is important to focus on the audience: what will interest the audience? How will the narrative develop?

"So, if you’re aiming for your film to reach a large audience online, making sure it has universal appeal will be key. We’ll be thinking about this in more practical terms later in the week, but let’s bring Frank Ash’s points together with the last step’s concerns:

• Think about your favourite book or film or any ‘good story’ you recently watched online, could you sum up its narrative into ‘one elegant sentence’ to provide its ‘topline’?
• What was its big story question, and how important was it to your appreciation of the text?" 

 Thanks for the presentation to The University of Birmingham and FutureLearn: 
Video © BBC, Text © University of Birmingham


We looked at top lines and big questions within films. The task was to look at "the one elegant sentence that sums up the film"

I looked at E.T (1982)
The top line of E.T would be:
A friendly alien trapped on Earth, befriends a young boy who tries to help the Alien return home.
The Big Question:
Will E.T return home?


This will help me when I come to make my own trailer, I will think of both the top line and big question for my trailer.


I then looked at the plot for our trailer and tried to make a top line and big question for ours.
The top line would be: Man tries to avenge his sisters death without getting convicted himself for the death of his sister.
The big question: Will he succeeded in avenging his sisters death?

To help me figure out what our top line and big question would be I looked at the following questions.

Top lines: what is the story? What is it about? What kind of story is it? What issues, the content that this story is going to be dealing with?

Big Questions: Whose story is it? What is going to happen? Will they win? Will they loose? Will they find the girl of their dreams? It's very music about giving them a question that gives them a sense of anticipation and suspense. It gives them a sense of waiting to hear how it's all going to be resolved at the end of your story.