To say that this class was like any other would just be a lie.

We started the class with a speed dating exercise. No, we weren’t actually speed dating, but more like speed presenting our ideas (or rather lack thereof for me).

To be completely honest, at the beginning of the class (and even the days before this class), I didn’t really have much of an idea of what I wanted to write about for our short screenplay. I did have a few ideas, but they’re all very vague and like I said, I didn’t really have much of a direction.

But doing this exercise, and listening and talking about each other’s ideas about 10 times (literally), I actually got something out of it. I think what I find challenging (and it’s also a reason why I chose this studio and hoped I got into it) is that I’m more of a visual thinker. I have this idea of how it will look like but it’s putting that idea on paper first that I find a little bit hard.

In the personal projects I’ve done, and relating it to audio visual storytelling, I don’t really use any dialogue for instance. It’s all visually directed and usually supported by music. And in regards to writing, I’m used to writing prose and just getting the general idea of a story down without dialogue.

But anyway, this exercise did help me expand from the very little that I had to begin with. The Up (2009) montage of Elle and Carl’s relationship that we kept on watching seemed to have subconscious effect because something I knew I wanted to explore is doing a similar montage but instead with just one person. And about half way through talking about this vague idea I was holding on to, it reminded me of my Year 12 Media final project.

I made a short film about one character going through something in her life, and it was primarily a montage supported with music and voiceover dialogue (to transpire her internal thoughts). It got me thinking about how I could make that story better and how I could do something similar to it. But the interesting thing I found through out this entire exercise was how I started with nothing, then got something halfway through, but by the end of it, it made me think twice about how good the concept was.

I think that over the next few days, I really need to think about what ideas I do have (like the one above) and see which one seems to have a clear direction in regards to plot and is achievable for me to turn into a short screenplay.