It was the first seminar for semester two and we kicked it off with jumping straight into writing. Jasmine ran through a few activities including freewriting. I find the idea of freewriting, well… freeing. Sometimes it is hard to just get started unless I am under pressure or have concrete deadline. The process was almost like an unimpeded stream of consciousness. I have used websites such as Write or Die to increase my creative output, however I haven’t found them that successful because it is almost interesting to see what happens when your screen turns red! I really enjoyed the freewriting session because it stops the editing phase from taking over and allows the words to spill out, in what I recall another lecturer saying is a ‘vomit phase’. We then jumped into writing some prose and I must admit that I jumped straight in and wrote a script set in one location, mainly because I am not used to writing prose, and also because I misunderstood the activity and thought we were writing one scene in a script (I actually don’t have much experience with prose). I will definitely pay more attention in the future and listen carefully to ensure that the tasks are not misinterpreted again!
The best part from the studio was the ability to collaborate with other students about a story. I was in a group with Arthur Cortez, Angus Strachan and Matt Manning. We read out each other’s work and decided on Angus’s idea. His story followed Antonius, a 75 year old man with ambitions of building a rocketship and travelling into space. At first I could see that the story had a few challenges as there is some reference to the past, which is hard to show on screen, however together we came up with a creative solution and therefore enhanced the idea. I am now attempting to write the script focusing on the characters and how to make the idea more interesting and practical, because of the constraints of the assignment. It seems like the most practical ‘one take’ scene would be to either film on a steadycam, which offers a flexibility to the types of shots that we could get in the one take or to use a Dolly. I am also thinking about the work of Jim Jarmusch and how he constructed scenes in one take predominantly using a wide angle lens and the staging of characters. Thursday should be interesting!
