PITCH

DAVID LUNN

WHAT I AM ADAPTING

• I am going to adapt the film Now You See Me into a TV series and potentially have 2 UK seasons of 6 episodes a series that last 30 minutes per episode. It was a film before that lasts 90 minutes. I am adapting this in order for me to develop the backstory of the film and focus on each characters stories.

Movie Trailer

• Now You See Me Trailer

GENRE AND NARRATIVEThe genres of this film will also be the same for my TV series, they will be; action, fantasy and crime. This will be interesting as typically these genres are going to suit male teenagers, however I am also aiming this at male juniors. I am not changing this because the film and TV show are following similar story-lines.

However in one of the magic shows, there will be a completely live episode so everything that they see is going to be actual magic not edited or camera affects in order to show extreme magic.

The narrative will follows a crack team of FBI agents attempting to bring down a group of flamboyant magicians, who use their performances to pull off a series of outrageous bank heists. Four magicians each answer a mysterious summons to an obscure address with secrets inside. A year later, they are the Four Horsemen, big time stage illusionists who climax their sold out Las Vegas show with a bank apparently robbed for real. This puts agents Dylan Rhodes of the FBI and Alma Dray of Interpol on the case to find out how they did it. However, this mystery proves difficult to solve even with the insights of the professional illusion exposer, Thaddeus Bradley. What follows is a bizarre investigation where nothing is what it seems with illusions, dark secrets and hidden agendas galore as all involved are reminded of a great truth in this puzzle: the closer you look, the less you see. This is the basic story of the film but in my adaptations of the characters that will be given a British personality and it will be set in Britain.

CONSTRAINTS• I would need to drag the TV series on longer then film would last

this is because I aim to have my episodes lasting 30 minutes for 6 episodes so in total it will last for 3 hours so I will aim to drag it out for an extra hour and this may bore my audience.

• Another issue would be copyright, the storyline is almost an exact copy of the original film, so in order for me to do this I would need to purchase the rights from the company that made Now You See Me, this will not be cheap and as a British TV show, the money I have been budgeted will not be as high as an American movie. This is going to cause a problem as then my budget will be significantly lower and I will not be able to use top actors or use the best equipment and use less money on editing which is a significant part to make this successful.

OPPORTUNITIES

• The opportunities is that my first series will only have the storyline through half the film, this will enable me to make a series 2, which will have more action as I aim to establish the background story in the first series and after that use the second and other seasons to be made more actionable and more interesting and this will be watched more, I predict my TV show will be more seen on Netflix then it will on TV and be similar to Breaking bad, the first series was not as successful as they aimed to establish the storyline in the first few series but was watched more on Netflix then it would on TV. This enables the opportunities for it to be put on online streaming.

TARGET AUDIENCE• I will have 2 targets audiences they will be teenagers and magic

fans. This is because teenagers will like action film so they will also like action in TV shows. People that like magic tricks will also be impressed because I aim for the standard magic shown to be real and not done by computing.

• My secondary audience will young children aged 4-10, the language I will be using is not explicit but when the episodes show the magic, the colours that are used are very childish and will attract children to watch this and the colours that are going to be used are eye catchy. The gender will most likely be male as they like a bit of action. The interests in these people are going to be sports and like to be fascinated. They will be in the social grouping of E as they have disposable income as it is money given to them from parents.

CINEMATIC IDEAS

• My ideas that I aim to bring to this would be expanding what it is and so that the audience will get to know the characters more and where they come from and how they started in the magic industry. I will also aim to have a live show, therefore the actors I will be using are magicians, for example Dynamo may star in it because he has been on the BBC before.

YOUR STORYBOARD

In this sequence, this is the part where Merritt hypnotizes a couple a tricks them in order to get money off them, and takes £200 off them.