WWF TIGER'S - Two Rangers Per Week Pitch
They serve under various titles—rangers, forest guards, game scouts and field enforcement officers—but share a common purpose: to protect the world’s natural and cultural treasures.
Rangers work tirelessly to watch over some of the most endangered wildlife on the planet, like tigers, elephants and rhinos. Many of these animals are among the most widely targeted by poachers for the illegal wildlife trade, and rangers regularly pay with their lives while trying to keep them safe.
More than 100 rangers died on duty in 2015 and many more were injured, according to a recent report by the International Ranger Federation (IRF). Of these rangers, 42% were killed by poachers. And almost 90% of them worked in the two most dangerous continents for rangers: Asia and Africa.
Governments often lack resources to equip and train rangers, and rangers typically earn very little. Some go months without receiving their salary or seeing their families.
Rangers on the ground must be better equipped. But they also need support beyond backpacks and boots. They must be respected and supported by their governments and national laws against poaching enforced
74% of rangers feel under-equipped to deal with their roles, and 48% feel like they're inadequately trained.
VIDEO PROPOSAL -WORKING TITLE 'TWO PER WEEK'
Mission
To raise awareness to the human cost of WWF's effort to protect wildlife around the globe. Using the fact that two rangers are killed per week on average for the last 10 years. We propose shooting an informative and cinematic short that follows the path of a young ranger and points the finger at the participants of the illegal poaching industry.
This pitch
The short film that we want to shoot is split into three acts, and the entire film will be around 3 minutes long. The story will cover the childhood of a ranger, then following him through his training and eventually onto the day that he is ultimately killed by poachers in the final act.
ACT 1 - Motivation 'Why I became a ranger'
Youth and Innocence
We will open with a shot of the ranger as an adult getting ready, looking nervous but focussed. From this, we cut into a montage of the ranger in childhood, playing in the forests and environments that they now protect. There is a voice over.
"I grew up in these lands, they are a part of me. The animals that I serve to protect ....... ."
Montage
The aim of these scenes is to build a relationship with the ranger and the beauty of the environment that they are protecting. As they grow up, we will transition into adolescence, and end the act with the ranger volunteering to join the ranger service.
Act one ends with a shot of the young boy volunteering to become a future ranger. This will transition us into act two, which is the training of the ranger
ACT 2 - Training 'How I became a ranger'
Drawing inspiration from Army recruitment videos, we transition into the training element of the rangers career. We want to make this section informative, and therefore would like to portray as much of the actual training process as possible.
This section will then cut back into the first shot, of the ranger looking nervous and getting ready.. this will lead us into the final act.
ACT 3 - On Duty - 'The Human Cost of Poaching'
We cut back into the opening scene, where the ranger is preparing to go out on duty. In this routine, we see that he/she is nervous. As the ranger goes about his routine, we will cut into parallel scenes of illegal poachers engaging in their criminal activities. The ranger will wash his hands, and we will shoot a close up, and cut into a poacher washing the blood off his hands having killed a tiger. Then we will show the ranger putting on his boots, and we will get a closeup up and match this with a shot of someone putting on shoes on a tiger skin rug. As the ranger cleans his gun, we cut to a matching shot of someone preparing tiger parts for use in medicine.
We will cut from the ranger washing his face, and going about hsi routine, into the violent acts of the criminals.
We like the build up and the montage element in the below video.
Following the ranger after he has got ready to go out on patrol, we follow him and the mood changes to reflect the approaching danger. We then see the ranger come under threat from poachers, which takes a turn and there will be a chase. The poacher is ultimately wounded and we will draw parallels between him failling to the floor wounded, and a tiger rug also hitting the floor. We want the viewer to understand that there is a human cost to the tiger trade.
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