I already have. I tried to make it work because both other members of my team wanted that. Yes I did have some hesitations to the story being a traditional British drama and so did Zak initially and I had even suggested that we do the story as a Hollywood thriller but I did not manage to convince my other team members this should be the case. I think at the end of the day we did make it work as a traditional British drama as the characters themselves are realistic and they do touch upon some very serious and contemporary issues.

EDIT: I do think that some of the 'realistic' criticism is looking for criticism in odd places especially considering Billy Elliot - an independent British drama certainly does not claim that every young British boy wants to be a ballet dancer - the plot certainly does not seem realistic in that sense, yet the themes and character himself make it appear very relevant and relatable. And I feel we have done the same here again and made the characters relevant and fresh and the overarching themes very realistic (that of transformation and social deprivation).

It certainly is a drama because of the social theme surrounding it. It is not an action movie, definitely not a romantic movie, it's not a comedy either, or a thriller, and it sure isn't a scifi movie. It deals with themes that fit tbe drama genre, and the fast paced action scenes (which are knly a couple) serve as a vehicle to the plot rather than just being showy scenes that action movies use for more flash.

As for why thw British industry was chosen, this was not really up to me as I don't know much about the british film industry or society for that matter. If I had the choice I would have gone with hollywood but I don't necessarily think that this story is strictly attached to only onr society. It could happen anywhere.

One thing I noticed about both your pitches was that you both decided to include things that were not initially stated as requirements in the pitch.

Whilst this is all well and good and can improve the quality of your pitch, we must stress that they shouldn't come at the expense of any other parts. For example, the poster, which was a specific requirement and I don't think it was carried out very well by either team. I do appreciate that probably none of you have much experience in graphic design and a film poster isn't exactly the easiest thing to create, but having been in your position as a candidate last year, I initially thought I was terrible at all things graphic design related but when I actually had a go at it I found I was better than expected, despite having limited resources. Do you think it may have been wise to have put more focus on the poster than both of you did?

I think the responsibility for going with the UK film industry is probably going to land with me here, which is quite right as I will openly acknowledge the fact that I was the team member who pushed that, for reasons that I've explained. Maybe it's about to come out that this was totally the wrong kind of film to make in that context. I personally don't agree, because I can really see it working with the actors and the setting that we have chosen, and I think that slightly more obscure plots such as this one work quite well in UK indie films, but I appreciate that I may be a little too close to it to be able to see that.

Do you not think it would have been better for you not to suggest a plot that is so personal to you? The fact that this plot is the central plot to a novel that you are writing brings up quite the conflict of interests. Do you feel that you were flexible when it came to others offering suggestions and/or alterations to your story?

I think we should have but George - the initially delegated person to do the poster - was finding it a bit difficult to use some paint so he let me have a go yesterday night too and unfortunately it was a combination of me thinking that something would work in paint when it would not and having to go to work and George not finding it easy to use Photoshop or other paint processors that did not let us finish that poster which is unfortunate. But we did outline what the poster should look like and we think it would be possible to do this quite easily in real life with an actual design team.

I'm not sure - I thought we spent a fair amount of time on the poster though maybe it was overlooked a bit too much and we didn't spend the time we should have done on it but on the whole I was pleased with what we had considering how little time we had.

Well it was mainly due to the cast. I was in charge and then Naruto said he wanted to but Steve had already confirmed I could do it. After a disagreement about voice actors, Steve agreed using a couple voice actors would show we haven't put in effort so we agreed on my actors. Then after I had gone THIS MORNING they all changed it

Personally, I tried exceptionally hard to get the poster to work. I downloaded the images, prepared everything that I wanted to be in it and worked very hard to put them all together. I was trying to use iPhoto, as I don't have Paint or Photoshop installed on my Mac. The difficulty that I found was cutting parts out of the images so that we could merge them together. There were a lot of ways in which I could edit the quality, colour, rotate the images etc but I couldn't find anything about cutting bits of them out. In the end, I got everything together and asked Roxie to put them into a physical poster, but she wasn't able to do that and I only found this out about an hour before our pitch, so I had to just say, 'Sorry, it's not quite finished, but we've designed it and this is how it will look.'

I certainly don't think that working hard on the other parts of the pitch that may not have been specific requirements had any detriment to the poster at all. It would have ended up like that no matter what we had done with the rest of the pitch.

This does make it seem like the idea was decided before an industry was even considered, and the industry chosen was just an afterthought. Do you think this was a good way to go around the task? Whilst the idea itself is as always of paramount importance, I did make it clear in the brief just how important it fitting into your chosen industry was...

I do admit that a film poster is not the easiest thing to create with limited graphic design experience, but I do hope in the future that graphic design parts of the task are taken more seriously and seeing as it's something that quite a few candidates seem to have issue with, it might be something that a few of you would want to improve on in future tasks...

And as PM, I should've been more sensitive and stuck with the original idea throughout the whole duration, a critical mistake that I shall never try to repeat.

I'll admit I took serious issue with your choice of cast as I felt that it didn't fit into our theme. A lot of the time it felt like ass-covering rather than what was best for the film. But in all fairness we agreed that it was unfair to completely change what had been done but this resulted in a cast that I was less than thrilled with.

So what would you suggest that I actually do differently, in the situation I was in? I had been delegated something that I was not experienced at doing, I didn't have the programs that I needed to do it, and I tried my best with what I had. I worked extremely hard to get the photos together and edited, and the tools that I needed didn't seem to be available with the program I was using, so I asked someone else to help me out with it. If you feel like I haven't taken it seriously of course I'll take that point on board, but I genuinely don't see what else I could have done in order to improve the poster situation.

Niall, I had actually suggested the idea right after the task was announced and I said that I had a couple more if memory serves me well, but everyone liked the script especially Zak the PM so we started working around that script. I had different ideas in mind but there was a consensus that the plot is very solid so per Zaks orders we started working with it. Organization falls on the PMs shoulders.

David, haha I knew this will be brought up. I was a bit resilient to major plot changes, yes. As the alternate ending suggested, imo, wouldn't have worked with the vision I had for the theme of the story. And yes we could've gone with another scenario but because I wanted to give my all to win this task I laid out my best idea on the table.

The cast I feel was great. I had looked at interviews and movie scenes to see their tones.
I was in charge of the poster and had sketched it twice, having to redo it the first time as the main character shouldn't have had a weapon. I thought ours had turned out well but it could have been executed better

From what I gather, it does seem like it was all a bit last minute so seeing as it's something you seem to have trouble with, in future if you are given that kind of task again I would maybe suggest giving yourself more time to make sure you are able to complete it to an adequate standard. To be fair, I do think you provided a good alternative considering the poster being made was not possible and I did see what you were trying to do with the poster, but I would have preferred a proper poster - even if it was just a very basic example of what your film poster would have been.

Ass-covering? I was passionate about my choices and completely against primary voice actors. Seperate actors added a human touch, and I always tried to do what would be best to win and for the team. You were compromising price for quality

I did feel this way too and made a point about it. But I did try to make this work. And I did make sure that the target genre, film industry and budget - the bits you highlighted - were touched on in as much detail as possible with minimal contradiction and I think we achieved that. And we made it work with the social realism element and I offered suggestions to adjust the plot and really like I have highlighted above with regards to my point about Billy Elliot, I tried to make the characters, issues and themes integrally reflective of traditional British society. Certain aspects of the plot are a bit removed but again we can come up with ways (as I did for one of them initially and still feasible to change) to work around it quite easily and at the same time there is this point that Shadi and George were raising up that there needs to be a certain degree of fiction in any movie.

Voice actors are voice actors for a reason - they can manipulate their voices in to many different sounds and consistently stay in those voices, how is that compromising quality?

I think we've discussed the two pitches thoroughly enough, we'll discuss the losing team's idea further. I will now get on to results...

Because the audience won't care! There's nothing noticeable or passionate or MARKETABLE about it. One of the purposes was allowing the audience to discover new talent.

Before I reveal the winner, I would just like to say that I was a bit dissapointed in the posting of Aptitude's pitch today. Not only was it late, but it was also only carried out by only one person for the most part. This was definitely a shame, and I would like to stress that in future you should try and be more organised in terms of making sure people are actually online for the posting of the pitch and by no means should it be posted late. I gave you lots of time to post the pitch today so there wasn't any excuse to not be able to post it properly on time. There is not really any penalty we can implement in this specific task except for making you lose, however as you were only 6 minutes late we feel this is a little harsh and will therefore not be implementing any penalties. I would like to stress that lateness and shoddily organised pitch posting will not be tolerated in future tasks, and I hope not to see such a poor display again.

Inspired, I actually feel that despite your PM quitting midway through and the fact that he wasn't a very good PM in the first place, you actually produced a very good pitch with clearly lots of detail and thought gone into it, which I was impressed by. I do think that the fault in your pitch mostly lies in the actual idea and a poor choice of industry however...

Aptitude, as I touched on earlier, I don't think your pitch was as good and on a superficial level, that puts you behind Inspired. However, I do think your idea for your film fit in well with the industry and genre you'd chosen and I did enjoy several aspects of your idea, such as the idea to go with animation.

After careful consideration, the winner is...

eeeeekkkk good luck Inspired