This week I had the chance to meet with my Writing for Filming, Filming for Writing team, which consisted of two other media students and three creative writing students. Upon pitching our ideas for things we’re interested in doing for the course, Paul, one of the CW students, proposed the fantastic concept of creating an anthology series based on Melbourne, with each of the characters we created covering different elements of the main character; the city itself. Paul proposed that each of our characters (whoever they are and however they imagined them to be initially) would be connected by a mysterious, neutral person whom the audience may not even come across, but has somehow played a part in our characters’ lives. Someone even mentioned the idea of this neutral character’s funeral being the event which brings together our six characters.
This was the perfect idea for a collaborative project. By doing it this way, we are not only engaged in our own personal projects so to speak, but we are given free reign on how our character’s story arc would play out in their own episode. For those who struggle to comprehend how the group has planned out the anthology series, think somewhere along the lines of The Slap (my personal favourite) or Skins, where every episode has a focus on a particular character’s story and their relation to the overarching element of the “mysterious, neutral character”. On top of this, the city itself plays a part on the characters’ plight, just as Litchfield does for Orange is the New Black and city of love for Paris Je t’aime.
Prior to the meeting with Stayci, the group must then share a character they would want to write an episode for on the Facebook group. From there, we will come up with the linking character and see what Stayci has to say for the series conception.