My first real taste of collaboration with in this project came during the editing process of the script. I came up with the first draft on my own, and then showed it to Dylan, Hannah, Jess and Jenny to get their advice.

It was a strange feeling submitting my script to the rest of the group for their approval, but it proved to be a positive one. One of the first things I learned was that people can have very different readings of the same script. When people read through your script in their head, chances are that they’ll imagine the lines with very different inflections to how you imagined it yourself. We discovered that half the group had interpreted the script as quite a serious drama, whereas the other half had read it as a comedy (it was intended to be somewhere between the two). After this realisation, we went through and changed a number of the lines, in order to make the tone come across more strongly.

One of the biggest alterations of my original idea, was abandoning the voice over, which I had intended to have throughout the film but had not written yet. It was the opinion of the group and myself that the script conveyed the essence of the idea very well, so we wouldn’t need a voice over. However, Robin pointed out that using voice over should be a stylistic choice rather than one made out of necessity, so we considered the possibility of using the voice for stylistic reasons. In the end, we decided to abandon it in the interest of focussing more on the dialogue and the relationship between the characters.

I found that having different peoples’ input for the second and third drafts of the script was completely invaluable. I think i had started to get tunnel vision when writing and could only see the script from my own perspective. For this reason, it helped immensely to hear an outside perspective. Also, the group contributed a number of new ideas/variations that tightened up the script and made it much more succinct, clearer and overall better than the first draft.

I learned through this process of editing that collaboration is vital for creating a finished script. It is essential to have a outside perspective/opinion on the writing to ensure that you are conveying the desired ideas effectively. For our group, this was a very helpful and mercifully painless process.