Reflect upon an influential text (e.g. a reading, or a screening) you encountered during the studio, and discuss it in terms of your own developing practice. This might be (but not limited to), how it introduced you to new ideas. Or, how it changed or reinforced your previous ways of working. Or, how it inspired you to begin thinking about your ideas for the final project.
For our class reading in week three, we were given the script for Frozen River (Hunt, 2008). Frozen River is the first feature written and directed by Courtney Hunt.
During our analysis, we (as in the class) found that the film showed its exposition in a very organic way. Quite seamlessly. In our discussion around this realisation, we found that the reason behind this was that the script starts off with an event. It starts with the day that the rest of their home is arriving, but an issue is brought up immediately between the mother and the son – the father took the money for the house. As she puts it, “he’ll be in Atlantic City by now,” revealing that the father is in fact a gambler. This event establishes the immediate need for the characters. They need money so they can have a complete home, and therefore a complete life and family. The need for the mother to achieve this is emphasised even further as each scene deliberately marks the father’s absence from the family’s life, making her the sole ‘bread winner’.
It was most interesting comparing the script with the film, especially since Hunt both wrote the script and directed the film. The film was lacking compared to the script, which is something you don’t often find. The opening shots don’t seem to establish much, other than the environment. They don’t establish tone or mood, as the script does brilliantly. On top of that scenes which seemed more visceral in their description in script, seemed to be almost unmemorable. There was no emphasis, or viewing the landscape through the lens of that film’s world, as for instance, Fargo (Coen Brothers, 1996) did brilliantly with it’s opening shots.
Another interesting detail when comparing script to film was budgetary constraints. Elements in the script that really set the scene, were removed and replaced with lesser versions, a necessity for a small budget film. In my own experience, the often grandiose ideas are lost throughout the production process, as it simply costs too much money. The constant battle between what is written and what is achievable physically, the constraints of production, heavily influence the translation of a piece from script to screen.
Comparing a well-written script to the end product really helped me to solidify my own experience with production constraints and see how the budget of a film, it’s ability to commodify, really effect the end product. How translation from script to screen can be a bumpy process as the filmmakers are confronted with the realities of production.
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