PLANNING: THE TOP LINE AND BIG QUESTION

Frank Ash is a creative consultant who has taught story telling and creativity techniques to teams across the BBC and beyond. In this presentation he said to develop and strengthen the story of a film you need to think about the audiences and what do they want from the story they tell. To tell the audiences what the story is all about, he gave advice saying can you tell you story in one sentence? The second most important is telling the audience 'what is going to happen?'

I have recently watched the film 'Catch me if you can'. If I was to describe this movie in a sentence it would be 'a funny, inspiring and suspense cat and mouse chase between two very much alike characters'.

The big story question in the movie 'catch me if you can' was 'is he ever going to get caught?'. Although they hint in the very first scene what happens in the end, they don't show all of it. The movie then starts the story from the beginning after that, then when it gets to the end of the film, you realise what the main character is really like and you get a better understanding of the beginning again.