In Kathryn Millard’s journal publication “Writing For The Screen: Byond the Gospel of Story”, she discusses the ways in which film makers, both old and new, approached film making and screenwriting. The two major points I took away from this reading are:

The importance of production notes – rather than writing everything on the script, in order to stay true to the tone or feel of the film, Millard emphasises the usefulness of production notes. For example, collecting images, sounds, locations and music can greatly help the script writer to stay within the confines of his or her intentions. This is especially poignant for me, as when I am developing a story, I am largely inspired by imagery or music to hel me realise the way in which I would like to approach and contextualise the writing.

The benefit of improvisation – while this is a fairly straight forwArd point, I have been. Little disheartened by the seemingly rigid way in which scriptwriters are expected to go about the production process. It has often been emphasised to me the importance of sticking to a script of story board, and have been discouraged to experiment too much. I am a firm believer that if you have an idea you should at least be able to try it out and see if you can develop something more interesting than was previously drafted. Knowing that film makers in the past operated in this way is both comforting and inspiring.