pitch

With the second annual 4Talent Mobile Games Pitch due to kick off this morning, here’s a quick run-down of the 9 contenders, who we whittled down from several hundred entries.

For those not familiar, in a nutshell this is a pitching competition in partnership with EA Mobile, Nokia and the Golden Joystick Awards, as part of the London Games Festival.

We asked 4Talent readers to throw us ideas for innovative, experimental games for mobile phones - and based on judges’ scores for originality, innovation, commercial appeal and technical feasibility, and in no particular order, here are the finalists:

Miles Boylan (22, from Preston)
Miles’ idea Snapshot pinpoints a player’s location with GPS, and then sets area-specific photographic tasks that can then be uploaded and rated by other users online.

Tobias Rowe (22, from Colchester)
In Tobias’ idea Finders Keepers, you’re an elusive cat burglar who must steal antiques from local museums and other players’ vaults via Bluetooth, while defending your own using bespoke puzzles and mini-games.

Nicola Depuis (28, from London)
Nicola’s idea I-Queu allows players to compare their IQ against an international playing community by setting each other questions, and working together to jump the virtual queue.

Steven Fraser (from Edinburgh)
Steven’s idea Street Art sees graffiti turf wars springing up across the world, with players manipulating photos into works of art on their phones, rating them online and challenging each other to claim the streets one by one.

Trevor Conway (49, from Belfast)
Trevor’s concept Alter-Ego places the player in a parallel existence affected by genuine real-world events and breaking news stories, making choices from the perspectives of those involved.

Matt Watkins (37, from Nottingham)
Matt’s idea Running Rings is a game of physical exertion using GPS, in which players literally run circles around each other to score points, annex space and reach a new level of networked global domination.

Dominic Brancaleone (25, from Bournemouth)
Dominic’s idea Treasure Hunt allows players to hunt for genuine loot by responding to text, photo and video clues, and can be personalised to create your own trail.

Robin Clarke (28, from London)
Robin’s idea Way of the Dodo is an adventure/puzzle game designed to encourage thinking about the natural world, in which players guide the last known colony of helpless birds to safety whilst sharing real-world info about conservation.

Hamad Hussain (27, from London)
In Hamad’s idea The Contract, players choose to be either a government agent or a sleeper, are given a unique key code and must then locate, identify, recruit or entrap the opposition, obtaining their code by whatever means possible.

Good luck to all the finalists: we’ll announce the winner on the blog soon!

Film-maker Chris Bates blogs about his second day at Britdoc festival, pitching his film to commissioners.

A big day today. My first time pitching face-to-face to an actual commissioner.

Current TV is a great platform for first time filmmakers, and if I can get a few pieces on their channel, then that could provide some serious opportunities further on down the line. We met at 10, and informal as it may have been – sat on the grass outside the café – I was nervous. Had I prepared enough for this? It was a simple idea, but had I fully thought it through?

My fears were confirmed when I ran out of things to say. Current TV liked the concept – it was modern, linked to youth culture and urban social conflict – but it needed more development. Obviously being a documentary we do not know exactly what will happen during filming, but it is essential to have some knowledge of the film’s structure beyond the original concept, and this was my stumbling point. ‘Go away, think about it and come up with some structural ideas, then get back to us.’ Ok, let’s chalk that one down to experience.

So I had lost my pitching cherry, and it was all over rather quickly. But hey, it’s never that good first time round anyway, right?

Before arriving at Britdoc, I had arranged through the online delegate messaging system to meet with Brian Woods – 3-time BAFTA and 7-time Emmy award-winning documentary director and producer. He had been involved with films in Eastern Europe before, and if I could get his interest with my Bosnia project, then possibly he would act as my mentor, maybe even come in as executive producer.

Brian was fantastically helpful, but unfortunately here was more of the same: my story needed more character-based development: conversations, arguments, convincing, desperation to achieve the goal; and specific knowledge of how this was to be filmed.

Brian also said that the reason the pitch and proposal are so important to get right (which seemed obvious once he’d explained it), was that these things were all the commissioners had to make the decision whether to fund the film or not. If some details of the pitch end up different in the film, or even if the main character changes for example, that is generally fine, but you need the pitch to be good enough for the funders to agree in the first place, otherwise there’s no film.

I watched several screenings after this, all excellent documentaries. But for the most part I was distracted, thinking about what my next steps were for my Bosnia project. New pitch, proposal and trailer; character struggle, secondary narratives, arguments, build-up to a final event… I really have my work cut out.