Tonight we got down and dirty with our penultimate scene. We discussed the need to find the answers that maybe hadn't been addressed in the film so far and made sure we left no stone unturned. Digging deep into our characters stories we thought about how sometimes the character follows a different path to the one you'd originally laid out for them. For instance sometimes you'll plan on a character acting a certain way but you can't always bank on that, they may surprise you!
Getting down to the bare bones of the characters and the storyline really helped us with this scene. We are getting very close to the end here and I'm very excited to thrust myself into the next part of the filmmaking! I'm sure we'll start shooting in the next few months and I hope you'll give us a hand!
Also, Lindsey's watch shows when he gets a message... Not relevant to the story but seemed to think we should know... 😘
Another successful session this week with scripting a move from town to countryside. The dilemma was how do our protagonists travel distance without things seeming contrived. The answer - to contrive it! To make things real takes script and story time to no purpose to the story and the lack of explanation is sometimes criticised at both our level nd major feature film level. We hope we have got around this and woven it into our character development.
There are also quite a lot of locations creeping into the story to help move the plot through the journey literally and metaphorically. That’s going to be a nice day out locating them! Maybe fit a pub lunch in eh Jess and Darren?
I’m predicting 2 more weeks then a tidy up read through.
Yesterday’s scripting session was far more productive than the previous weeks. We actually wrote some script!
Last week’s troubles were centred on trying to solve several problems at once. Having had a week to mull things over the team were a lot more focused on what we needed to do.
Jess had pre-prepared some script and this was used as a basis to then script a further four scenes.
We didn’t quite finish the last scene as we were debating if we were boring the audience, giving too much about the character away or even not enough. It was felt that sleeping on it would give us time collect our thoughts and to make sure we were going where we wanted to go.
Last night's scripting session was an interesting one! We managed to write 0% of the script. However! That is not to say that it was unproductive. The scene we're working on at the moment is valuable to the characters and ultimately to the impact of the whole story. All three of us care about the characters, their journey and the audience's experience with this film, that's what makes it more difficult!
We all agreed on what we need to get out of this scene but struggled when it came to the surrounding that this would be set in. As creative people, it's easy to say "let's film in a shed" but the reality and practicality of filming in a shed is far from easy! So, armed with a few notes from this week we shall tackle this scene again next week! I know last week we said about the "scenes writing themselves"... In this case, it did not...
That is apparently our new technique for scripting according to Darren! At least this is where we got to when discussing the practicalities of filming on a train travelling across the country. Apart from the quagmire of getting permissions from the different organisations that run the railways there was the access to a carriage where different angles and shots would be required and members of the public would be inconvenienced by our antics.
So lengthy discussions took place about how we could resolve this ending with Darren’s typing the title of this blog as the scene description. In major productions they would just pay shed loads of money and buy the access from the corporations. Our budget wouldn’t really stretch to the tickets let alone exclusive use of carriages and trains!
So it’s a work around required. I think we have although I may have a chat to the station staff next time I am down there.
A good nights writing with the steps on the journey coming together.