The perfect title

Imagine you are invited to write your own title for a movie screenplay. Movie titles can make or break a movie’s success! Now apply your title design skills as a creative way to improve your practice of feedback, by creating the perfect title to provide feedback to someone.

Tools

  • White sheets
  • Pencil
  • Markers

Steps

  • The facilitator starts the activity by asking participants to sit in pairs. The pairs can be randomly chosen or defined beforehand.
  • The facilitator introduces the topic of the activity and shares how a movie title can be determinant to the movie’s success, by providing examples of titles that speak to the essence of what the story is about.
  • The facilitator then asks participants to create the perfect title to provide feedback to their pair, by introducing the method for generating movie title ideas. The method consists of coming up with a great movie title by capturing the story’s essence from three different angles:
    • Characters: choose your title based on the protagonist, antagonist or some variation on who they are or what they’re about (e.g. Baby Driver, Black Panther, The Revenant, Ted).
    • Locations: choose your title based on a prominent location in the story. These can be general or specific, you can use real names of places or made-up names given to places (e.g. Dunkirk, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, 21 Jump Street).
    • Situations or feelings: choose your title through the characters’ feelings or the situation they find themselves in. These types of movie titles offer much more scope in which to intrigue the reader (e.g. Darkest Hour, It Comes at Night, Don’t Bread, Get Out, Game Night).
  • The facilitator should indicate that participants can opt for just one angle, two angles or combining the three, to provide a deeper feedback to their pair.
  • The facilitator then asks participants to share the perfect title in pairs, giving time for the creators of the perfect title to contextualise their choice.

Tips

  • The facilitator must have an active role at the beginning of the activity, by introducing its goal and rules and giving examples of successful movie titles.
  • The facilitator can give participants extra time for them to research movie titles if needed for inspiration.
  • This activity can be used as an individual or team self-assessment exercise, promoting individual or team growth and improvement.

An example developed by Slovenian teachers

Sources

Examples of movie titles https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll84

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.