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Now that we have finished the script we can enter our pre-production phase. The script forms the foundation for everything as you might expect.
We have now estimated all the filming times for each scene and logically grouped them where possible into days and are in the process of drawing up the ‘filming schedule’ and ‘rehearsal schedule’ which will be the focus of all our work over the next few months. As soon as everything is agreed we’ll move on to location hunting, read throughs and rehearsals.
We spent some time too talking about equipment requirements and how we might actually film some of the scenes. It all started to sound very expensive. More discussion and practising required as things develop.
We also spent 5 minutes coming up with a working title. ‘Believe’
More to come…
Last night was a very productive one. Although it began slowly, we caught up in the end and actually overran! A bit like the first draft of the script! Pace was the "word of the session" as we discussed whether the end was to quick. Trying to balance impact and believability was a big task and was definitely discussed at length. As writers, we want you to feel for the characters we've bought to you and we want you to follow their journey. But ultimately we don't want you to feel you've wasted time following them for a half baked ending!
We also needed to create some dramatic tension and so we took some inspiration from Jaws! Once we were on a roll we actually re wrote the ending for draft 2!
Don't worry though, Lindsay and I wouldn't let Darren write his psychopathic ending!!
To think, he could have got away with it if it hadn't been for us pesky kids!
In football parlance when the final whistle blows it’s all over. In this metaphor we have just started extra time (I’m going to football today in case you hadn’t realised!).
The tidying up and continuity correction went very well, even to the potentially controversial can the plot have 2 streams and still work. So, swimmingly so far. Until the last page. Independently we had all read through and all written that, as in a couple of our previous films, it ended too quickly. Lovely to be in agreement as a team you might think and it was. It is just that the solution began a whole variety of suggestions ranging from extend the backstory explanation through throw in an immense story twist to an almost rewrite to fit in altering personalities. Poor old Jess wondered what had hit her.
But, as any aspiring and achieved script writer will be able to tell you, this is what drives a good film. We will again float the script to close friends and see if their feedback can inspire us to agree on tidying up the end where the key story premise is believable to our subsidiary character.
Next week’s session will be a good one!
After many evenings of story writing, scripting and discussion, out first draft of the script is finished.
There have been many challenges along the way on how, what, why and when things should happen and to whom but we now have a workable script.
The next stage is to read it several times from beginning to end to make sure we haven’t missed anything and have got the pace right for the film. It is easy to write scenes in isolation but when you string them all together sometimes you think that scene ends too quickly, etc.
We’ll be meeting again next week to challenge the first draft, before sharing the script with a wider audience for comment, before going into production.
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... 😘
