When I took this course on the main aspect I was interested in was the practical filming side which involved using the camera's, sound equipment and Mac's for editing. I didn't think that every member would be as involved in the script writing phase. When found out that we all had to perform a script re-write I was gutted, especially when finding how fundamental the formatting general aesthetic look played such an important role. Format and punctuation has never been one of my strengths.
We were all told by Mike that for our first film we had to all use the same script due to the fact that we are new to script writing, and it would be good to manipulate a pre-existing script rather than starting off from scratch without any foundation. Mike sent everybody this script unformatted and asked us to re-formatte it using Celtex. At first it seemed really daunting, but because Celtex is so simple to get to grips with, it didn't take long. All I needed to do was to highlight the text and select the format from the drop down pallet (like I posted in last blog). However, the text did contain certain commands that should not be in a film script. These were commands that the director as power over, not the script writer. It was highlighted that the main role of writing a good script was to please the Director or producer by making sure it was formatted perfectly, with no comments at how it should be shot. The script is simply an idea they can work with. This is another element that I really don't like about scriptwriting is that the script can be changed as much as desired by the producer/ director once the copyright has been passed. It seems so disrespectful to change something that has had so much effort and time put into it. This point has also been highlighted in two another module's I have taken this year; Film noir and Hollywood. They both highlight how little control the scriptwriters have, especially in the early stages. It has been highlighted that the most common script writers came from the journalist industry as they are used vigorous edits to their work.
Now Back to the Team...
Now that we had our teams and we had all performed the re-write of Pascha's text individually, we needed to come up with a group version. On our first meeting in the class we talked about different ideas, but struggled because we didn't know how much freedom we had over changing the script. We found from other groups that some of them had made some drastic changes, keeping one underlying theme that they thought the script was about. The theme of desire was one that kept creeping up around the class. One weakness of the script for us was the fact that the main teenage girl character was painted to be a very hard worker that seemed to work for what she wanted, this is a trait that I personally respected in her. However, in the second part of the script she is described to have taken a purse and then buy the shoes she was working for with the old lady's money. I felt that the script contained two different characters, which is something i could not understand as the only motive was the fact that the old lady was snobby and rude. This in my opinion was not strong enough to convert the girl into what the actions that she later carried out. I could not see the young girl we had been introduced to being the same girl that took the purse and money.
As a group we talked through different ideas and then delegated Yaz as the re-writer as she enjoyed this aspect and was most competent with Celtx. One of the common ideas that we all agreed with was the idea that get to the point in the story just before she takes the purse (when she first notices that the old lady has left it). We thought about showing two different snapshots of her imagination of each scenario, her running the purse outside and getting treated really badly by the old lady when she gave it back to her, and the other of her taking the money, quitting her jobs and having the shoes. We all felt that this would strengthen her motive to take the money, while adding a little more complexity to the narrative. We also thought about using voice over to help define what was happening. Although this was something that Mike discouraged us away from, he said that short films should be showing and not telling. He said it's better if the audience can get everything visually. I personally still favoured the idea of a voice over though, who wouldn't if we had an amazing voice like Sir Ian McKellen. In my head i just imagined a voice over performance similar to the introduction of Stardust. None of us could think of anyone with a voice like that, so we decided to drop the voice over idea. Although I guess we could always use the voice over is everything does not seem to go to plan in Post production. It could be our safety net. Anyway, we are a long way off as we still need to form a group script. Without this script our project is motionless. We have planned to meet up later this week with the script so we can start organising locations, cast etc.
I feel a lot of pressure as much of our group keep making jokes about how important my role is. I hope everybody chips in in the production stages of this film because I don't feel every member of this group is giving it the same amount of effort.
