Film, TV & Digital Media Production students Kateryna Kononenko, Catherine Marcy, Delisa Hernandez, Olga Kobzar are one of only four finalist teams to be selected by MIPTV to take part in the MIPTV Student Pitch Challenge in Cannes next week.
Held in Cannes from April 8-11, the MIPTV Student Pitch Challenge is a new pitching event for the entertainment television industry, and is open to university and media college students from around the world. The competition aims at highlighting the creativity of students and their ability to pitch a television project to a panel of industry professionals.
As part of third year study for Film, TV & Digital Media Production students, lecturer, Michal Ben-David takes the students through the process of developing a format show, before putting them forward to the competition.
"Congratulations to our Regent’s students, who were selected to pitch their format Seven Keys, at the international industry event MIPTV Student Challenge in Cannes!” said Ben-David.
“This is an enormous achievement and a wonderful opportunity for Kat, Delisa, Olga and Cat to highlight their creativity, originality and imagination, and show their ability to pitch facing professionals, at an international level."
Seven Keys, the concept put forward by Kat, Cat, Delisa and Olga is a reality game show format that brings the escape room trend to television. It's an intriguing mix of unscripted and scripted TV, targeting a millennial audience.
Seven contestants are sent to live in a mansion belonging to an enigmatic fictional character named Frank. Frank is highly mysterious and never seen by contestants or viewers, however he can be heard throughout the show as his voice flows through a gramophone. Once the contestants enter the mansion, they must go through a series of escape rooms; each thematically related to Frank's life story.
In each episode contestants enter a new escape room, and must work together to find clues, solve puzzles and eventually claim one of the seven keys to the next escape room. The contestant who finds the key wins the challenge, and is safe until next week. However, the rest of the contestants fall at risk of elimination and must face another challenge to determine who will continue to the next episode.
Frank's story gradually unfolds through each of the escape rooms, and the contestant who manages to go through all seven will uncover the entire story and win the big cash prize.
"This is just a dream come true,” said the four Regent’s students. “For months, we have been tirelessly working on this project, and when we found out that we became one of the four finalists to pitch our TV format at the competition – we couldn’t believe this was actually happening! We are so excited to go to Cannes and present our work to the industry giants."