In Class on Wednesday, I gave a short 3 minute presentation about what I had written for our final assignment. I talked for about a minute on what I’d written so far, one on the visual inspiration I was drawing upon and one on the audio inspiration I was hoping to use to influence my work.
The biggest piece of feedback that was important in my opinion was that the main character had no real sense of identity. I didn’t really elaborate on them at all in the presentation, because in my short film they are much more of a vehicle for the film to explore visual and audio experiences. However I think I still need to develop him further. Its one thing to have a film use a stereotype as a character to discuss something bigger (breakfast club for example) but I think having a character without an actual identity is something else entirely. And while anything is achievable in film with a good enough script, it might be making it more difficult than is necessary.
So I think my first course of action over the coming weekend is probably have some kind character backstory laid out for my character. Even if the audience never learns about any of it, I think it would be useful to flesh out the character more because the kind of person he is would influence his actions in certain situations. It will obviously be reflected in his behaviour and how he responds to this strange, illusory world that he has found himself in.
One other piece of feedback I wanted to reflect upon was the lack of an end goal in terms of what I want to achieve in week 12. So I thought I’d elaborate on this a bit here. After thinking about it, I doubt I would be able to finish this script in its entirety to be handed in by week 12. It started out as just a simple idea of “what would happen if someone woke up and had no idea who they were, and there was no one around”. But now its evolved into (hopefully) a vehicle for a surreal audio/visual experience and I think it will be a much longer screenplay. So, because of this, I think I’m going to aim for maybe aim for at least 5 pages of a script, and have 2 different areas of his city (hopefully one indoor and one outdoor) explored on top of the opening I have already written. While this obviously wouldn’t be a finished piece, I think it will be a good representation of the feel of the film I’m trying to write.