Category / Assessment Task

by harrietread

Picture This! Final blogpost

This studio has been really interesting for me in getting a sense of what it’s like working in the industry as a screenwriter, and looking beyond simply how to write a story. I think that I’ve learned more especially about audio-visual storytelling, and how to convey this in my writing so that other people can understand what I’m talking about.

In my own creative practice, I feel like I’ve been able to get more practice in understanding audio storytelling. I am a very visual creative, and I wouldn’t say that I’m very strong in my understanding of sound and audio.

I also think that I have a stronger understanding of how to construct a visual story without the need for obvious expositional tactics like monologuing, flashbacks or bad expositional dialogue to drive it. Something that I think I need to work on more is not being vague without purpose. Lack of exposition and backstory can be intriguing, but doing vagueness for the sake of it would be insulting to an audience.

Something that I have tried to exercise in my final screenplay has been my confidence in writing consistently. I have found that, as a result of this, I tackled my screenplay in a way that I am unfamiliar with y not writing the script chronologically. I read some advice from a writer that I can’t remember the name of that a good writing exercise is to sit yourself down and force yourself to write for 10-20 minutes a day. So I did this, except that I wrote each scene as I felt like writing it as opposed to writing in chronological order. One day, I wrote the scene with Max’s death, then later I wrote the opening scene, and even later, I wrote the scene with the Sting. Doing this made me more invested in making every specific scene work, before I worked out how they would fit together in the overall narrative.

by harrietread

Picture This! W.i.p

SCENE 1 wip-1ivkf6z

This is the beginning of one scene that I’m working on for my final screenplay. I feel like I work best scene by scene as they come to me, not in chronological order.

For my story, I have decided to write a videogame. I don’t think that I’ll write the entirety of my idea, because that would be too ambitious to finish within the time I have left in the studio.

The story is that in a city where some rare people have magical abilities, a young woman develops powers and attempts to use it for vigilante justice. However, things go incredibly wrong for her, and she is forced to work for the most powerful criminal in the city.

I feel like listening to music lately has really influenced the idea that I’ve come up with. I’ve been listening to Junkie XL, who composed the score for Mad Max Fury Road, and I’ve also been listening to bands like AC/DC, Lonefree, Private Function and the Stiffys. Rock has definitely been instrumental in the kind of imagery and action that I want to write about and visualise, and the epic badassery of Junkie XL’s score is something that I’ve thought about a lot as well.

I think I want to write a videogame more than a short film firstly because I like the idea of playing with moral dilemmas and in game decisions that a player can make. Secondly, I imagine a lot of action sequences mostly, and I think that having an action videogame with my story would be compelling and exciting to write.

by harrietread

Picture This! MT wk4

‘Screenplays should be experienced as a form of cinema itself’ whereby ‘both, although via opposite polarities, are audio-visual (the screenplay cueing the images and sounds in our mind)’ – Chris Dzialo

What I’ve learned so far from this studio that can be related to Dzialo’s quote is that screenplays need a balance between being able to interpret a script freely and being strict enough to provide laws of the universe of the film.

In one of our first classes in this studio, we spent it in groups analysing scripts from existing feature films. For most of these scripts, we felt that they would only describe action and features of the film’s diegesis that were explicitly relevant to what could be seen on screen.
Unlike a novel, which will go into great detail describing how a character feels, what they can see, hear, smell or taste, a script will only go into what can be seen by a viewer. What I got out of the exercise is that the screenplay of a film is the bare skeleton of a film. It is up to the filmmakers, designers, sound designers, writers and actors to work together to flesh out a film visually and aurally.

It’s also important to realise that directors all have their own styles of filmmaking. Stanley Kubrick will micromanage a scene down to the last little piece, whereas Judd Apatow is renowned for being flexible with actors and coming up with new moments and dialogue in the moment of production. For someone like Kubrick, the screenplay will be the be all and end all of exactly what ends up being in the film. Apatow is someone that prefers working flexibly with his cast and giving everyone on set creative freedom.

In the end, the screenplay is the absolute basic framework of a film. It can be adjusted, or it can be relied on with absolute consistency.