Hello candidates, and welcome to the fourth boardroom.

Are you all here? How are you currently feeling about this task?

Good evening, Lord Sugar.

I'm reasonably confident, but a little anticipatory all the same.

Evening Lord Sugar

I'm here and feeling okay! Pleased with the general reception etc.

I am here and I feel the same way as I always do with the previous tasks.

Which is?

We will start with Team Aptitude. I chose Steve as your project manager this week, how did you find fitting in to the role Steve? And for the rest of the team, any opinions on Steve as PM?

Nervous but happy the task is over.

I believe that for a first time as PM, I did alright with keeping it together until towards the end. However, I also feel that I should've done so much more by maintaining the team spirit and I feel disappointed at myself that I wasn't being serious about it. But I have learnt a lot about being a leader and I'm just glad that it's over for the time being.

For Team Inspired, this may seem like a bit of a redundant question as he quit before the task ended, but what did you think of Zak as a project manager for the parts he was here?

Also, did his quitting part way through cause many issues for the team? How did you get around this?

Sorry I'm a bit late was answering a final question, I'm a bit nervous as we were late posting our pitch up and I feel some of the decisions made diluted our target market. Though I recognise that there were some problems with parts of our plot.


I wish I could say that he was good as PM but I'm afraid I would be lying. Steve is a nice guy and he had some good ideas but was not very strong and rather indecisive. The pitch was thrown together due to a lack of real organisation which lead us to post up late.

I didn't feel like Zak was a very good PM at all. He delegated things to us, which myself, Shadi and Roxie did our best on, and it felt like we were doing nearly all of the work. When Zak quit around the end of the second day, it made us more anxious about what would happen if we lost, but it didn't affect the overall way we were undertaking the task, as the three of us had already done the lion's share of the work without Zak, so we just carried on with what we had been doing.

This seems like quite a negative appraisal of yourself as a project manager, do you really think that's the best thing to be doing when there is a chance you could get fired at the end of this? Also, a thing that surprised me in your evaluation is that you named yourself as the weakest in the task, regardless of whether this is how you actually feel, do you REALLY think this is the best tactic going into the boardroom?

Hi back, I think George did a fantastic job of answering questions while Shadi and I were away and Shadi clarified many of the points about the plot. I think the task went really well tbh.

And it's a shame about Zak it really is. He was so enthusiastic and I've always thought that like myself he really tries to make an idea work and tries to work on the main contradictions. It's a real shame he had to resign because he was doing a good job up till that point - the duties were a little in the air at times but he did delegate well. I do wish he informed us a bit earlier but with personal life these things happen so quickly so it is understandable. I wish him the best of luck.

Yes George and I together sorted out the other things last night when we learned Zak would not be participating any more and I think we did a fine job. I did try and make sure everything was organized and made sure everyone was in the loop about the pitch/who was doing what/what still needed to be done for tomorrow and George did an excellent job of bringing everything together so yes some fantastic team helped us pull through.

Well, there were people who wanted me to start being more honest, so here I am doing just that, it also has nothing to do with being tactical about it, nor do I intend to make it so.

Judging from the opinions on here and from what I've seen in the evaluations, it does look like a fairly negative reception to both project managers.

Getting on to the actual task now. Inspired, your choice of the British film industry was interesting, drama films in the British film industry are usually based around social realism, whereas I felt there were quite a few aspects of your plot that went way beyond the realms of realism. Why did you decide to go with the British film industry, and do you think this was possibly not the best decision for your particular film?

Aptitude, one thing that a viewer picked up on and that we did pick up on ourselves was that your film appeared to be pretty similar to 'Divergent' story wise. If your film was released, do you think the fact that it's similar to a film so recently released would create issues? Comparisons would be made by audiences, surely?

I pushed for the British film industry. I personally really like British films, and I do feel that our industry is somewhat underrated. The most notable films are made in countries such as the US, India, Japan and other countries. I think that there have however been many times in which the British industry has proved itself as being very capable at making really high-quality drama. I also think that there are many fantastic British actors who are underused in films, or if they are used they have to imitate American accents to match the accents of the other actors. I thought it would be great to show that the UK industry can produce a really engaging film.

Obviously, the plot was written by Shadi who isn't British, so maybe it would have been a bit different if he had been. However, I don't think that it really opposes the social realism theme that much. As I said in the pitch, the central characters depict archetypes that many British viewers will be able to identify with. The plot itself may require a little suspension of disbelief, but I don't think it goes to the extent of falling out of our genre.

As I answered in the questions it was unintentional but yes we were aware of the similarities but we felt that with the animation and our very different theme we would be able to differentiate ourselves. Also our target market is different to that of Divergent but I do see why issue has been raised.

But the point of the task was to ensure that your film would fit into/be appropriate to your chosen industry. Do you think you've achieved this? Do you also think that your plot was appropriate for a drama? I found many aspects of the plot completely unrealistic and too far-fetched to suspend my disbelief. If the film had been another genre, or set in another period, or even another world, then maybe I would have bought it more.

Initially I did want to go for a more thriller based Hollywood film - something that would allow Shadi to be as freely fictional as we had wanted to. But it was decided that we should do a film for the British industry as George said he wanted the film to be as relevant as possible to people today so we went for a drama-based approach to the film. Besides that a bit of research reveals drama-based films do well in British cinemas as opposed to Hollywood ones as I put in my target film industry section. Advertising and marketing wise I also think that there a lot of pro-British cinema magazines and newspapers that our film would be quite easily available as opposed to being lost in a sea of drama films in Hollywood.

I tried to make it as realistic as possible and made it so that Annette's character was humanized (with the abusive relationship with an alcoholic husband and unable to have children of her own). These various issues would quite easily and relevantly lead themselves to British audiences as they are topics which are discussed upon in the country.

At the same time I had also put in another suggestion that Annette's character with the death of her husband and lack of financial support (along with Jacob's bills to pay) then gave the baby away for adoption making a hard choice based off financial considerations. Nina's incentive to have given Annette the baby in teh first place could have been that Annette was still in a stable job and that she would have received some financial support from her husband's death. As especially when a single mother, people have considerable financial burden.

Unfortunately this point was not put into the synopsis but in the end these 'unrealistic' points can be adjusted for the end product as I did come up with various ways around them to make it work.

Sorry I might be patchy due to being at a meal but I feel that Steve was good. I had no say in the plot nor have I seem Divergent so I can't comment

Well, personally I felt that it was close enough to work. I can certainly imagine it working. Although the fact that you have asked that question shows that the opinion here is clearly that it doesn't fit, and if that's the case I suppose we have to deal with that. But I think we could all see it working, and I certainly still can, I don't know about the others.

It's a shame to hear you weren't involved in the plot, I did hear that you had some issues within the task about feeling like you were being sidelined? Do you have anything else you want to say regarding that issue? Does anyone else in the team feel like this was the case?

Anyone from Inspired care to give their views?

I would say that Arran being late didn't help matters as we had to make a start without him and by the time he came in we had all come on to an idea and started to develop it. Maybe with hindsight we should have waited a bit longer before setting things in stone but I don't feel we sidelined him - that certainly wasn't the intention.