Category: Another World

“I am thinking about how screen stories are crafted, and wondering…”

For me so far, what has got me “wondering” about “screen stories” is the sheer depth in which one can delve into these worlds. While contrasting my own work’s development, with the writing prompts (about what we hate/like) we were given and the process of answering the prompt, I found it very powerful to see how much depth these characters and worlds had. In contrast with a lot of my work, which seemed to only really have superficial, face value development. The characters were underdeveloped and the overarching themes took control. This meant that my work seemed to only think of and exist in the short form world, because the world seemed impossible to expand. However, now I can see the limitless possibilities worlds have.

The other exercise was also intriguing, as we had to take an already established world and develop it further. The collaborative nature of this exercise was very unique to the art of story telling and world building. Everyone was throwing out ideas, what ifs, trying to link concepts, genres and character attributes into a unique whole. As soon as we knew we were going against the believability of the original world, we would backtrack or start anew. We, like every other group it seems, started out with a revenge tale. We also contemplated developing the story and the world from the man’s perspective. All of these concepts led to something entirely different, and possibly too dramatic for the class, a borderline agoraphobe (believes she is steadily becoming afraid of the outside world), who works as a phone sex worker (acting like someone new and entirely different in the process), and continuously day dreams about what her life would be like if she did have social contact.

Even though to me this seemed like a great fit for a very meek and shy character, I found, once I had explained the idea out loud to the class, it wasn’t as true to the original character as I had once thought. This new version was far more frustrated, numb and hollow. She was a shadow of herself, which in context of the day dreaming could make sense, but I still believe was too much of a negative jump. Possibly adjusting her character to someone who is sick and tired of seclusion, and decides to re-explore the world, gradually building herself up both mentally and physically, for the task at hand, would suit this world better?

1. Who is the protagonist?
2. What is the protagonist’s situation at the beginning of the film?
3. Who or what is the antagonist?
4. What event or occasion serves as a catalyst?
5. What is the protagonist’s dramatic action? (first act in the direction of need/want)
6. What is the antagonist’s dramatic action?
7. How is the protagonist’s action resolved?
8. Do you have any images or ideas, however unformed, as to the climax? The ending?

If you can’t answer these questions, executives will believe you have no story. Skirting the lines of convention always, never fully breaking it.

Scriptwriting. A necessity of sorts in this industry. But it’s more than that. Not only is it a dream for many, but you could consider it the art of translating dreams. Translating our perspective, how and what we observe into a format, a bare bones structure, that is born specifically of the mind. It is not a visual sensation we absorb and disseminate. The visual translation is someone else’s job, the job of the director, cinematographer, set designer… It’s your job to build the WORLD in which they work. The WORLD they must translate into a visual context and reality. And this is where my final studio comes into the picture.

Another World is a studio based on creating scripts and observing screenworks from the perspective of the worlds they create.

We kicked things off with probably one of my favourite writing prompts:

Write something you like. Then something you hate. Add five reasons why you like what you like and why you hate what you hate. Write five reasons why someone might like what you hate, and five reasons why someone might hate what you like. Who would these people be? What stories could they tell?

This exercise was the first time I had every really thought in depth about characters, and with each point of the exercise, I could feel these unique characters forming and coming to life. Worlds developed around them the further into their reality I went. Previously I created characters based on myself or on tropes. They were never really multi-dimensional. This exercise really drove me to develop characters far beyond that point, on the verge of uniqueness.

Exercises like this make you think outiside the box and realise just how large that space is. How much can truly occur outside the box, as opposed to skirting the boundaries of the box. Go out into the wild, green yonder. I dare you, and I bet it’ll be worth your while.