Over the Christmas holidays one of our tasks is to revisit our five ideas and think about how they’d be different based on what we’ve learned so far.
I didn’t quite have five ideas when I first came to uni, but since I’ve been here I’ve had a few new ideas, one of which I’m starting to work on. I suppose being here has encouraged me to think more openly about ideas, and thus come up with a few more.
First I’ll look at the three ideas I brought to uni. The post containing these ideas in full is here: https://natashaharmeryear1.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/five-ideas-task/ but in a nutshell the ideas were as follows :
1. Sci-fi drama type film in which someone wakes up to find time has ceased to move. Filmed as a hand held video diary type film
2. Thriller in which a girl tries to solve the mystery of her sisters’ disappearance (this wasn’t really a full idea, but I have an opening scene in mind)
3. A drama about a blind girl and her guide dog.
In our lecture this morning we talked about the importance of re-writing a script, and how the first draft is never perfect.
I finished my first draft a few days ago, and I was quite pleased with it. However I re-read it today and sure enough there were a few things I needed to change.
The main issue I had was the dialogue. When I re-read it, two things stood out; 1. there was too much dialogue and 2. I hadn’t written it as the character would speak.
I decided to delete all the dialogue, read through the action and add dialogue where I felt it was needed. It turns out that the action was enough in most cases to tell the story, and I’d massively overdone the dialogue in places. I also wanted to work on the voice of protagonist Chris, because I didn’t feel like his dialogue was authentic to the character. I’ve done character profiles on my three characters, and feel like I know them pretty well, so when I re-wrote the dialogue this time I found it easier to think of what he would say, and how he would say things.
Here’s my second draft of the script:
This is my first draft for 162 MC. I was so surprised at how easy the script writing was having written a detailed treatment. I thought it’d be the hardest part of the process. I’m quite pleased with the script, its three pages long; so about a 3 minute film. I will need to re-read and re-write the script at some point, and tighten the story, but here it is so far;
After thinking about it, and gathering some feedback from various people, I’ve decided to go with my first idea.
Personally its the one I’m most excited about, and I feel like I’ve spent more time developing it both on paper and in my head than the other idea. Some feedback suggested it was too generic, and reading it back I agreed so I added a twist; inspired largely by one of my favourite films, Dog Soldiers. I think as a whole the story is stronger than that of the other idea.
For 160MC, we learned today about the importance of creating detailed characters with back stories. I don’t feel like I know the characters for my script idea well enough yet to actually know what they would say and how they would act, so I’ve come up with some character profiles and a bit of back story:
This is the treatment for the second of my two script ideas for 162 MC
This is my script treatment for my first 162 MC script idea
This is the character profile of our missing person, and her story;
Continue reading “Cabinet of Curiosities Task; our character”
Based on my script pitches, I have written two outlines for my two ideas. These will then go on to help form treatments, and eventually scripts.
During our skills instruction with the Nikon D90 DSLR cameras, we were shown the light painting technique, so I’ve been practicing at home.
My first attempts weren’t so great;
Films and Things 