Today was a rather messy class. After sending the writers our second prompt in response to their character ideas, we were all looking forward to reading what they had written in response to our questions and video. Alas, a response we were not to receive. While the assortment of notes on premise, theme and aesthetic were obviously developed from their original characters, they were notably incoherent and had no notable regard to our suggestions.
This did not bode well with the class. Everyone was quite angry as it seemed that we had no contribution in the progression of the dialogue and ultimately, the script. I think that a lot of the issues we have with how they responded could be cleared up with some communication. It is obvious we’re not on the same page in terms of how this dialogue is meant to be working, and actually talking to them would be very productive.
For me, one of the biggest issues was the lack of cohesion between the documents they provided us with. They all had different lengths, different writing styles, and different ideas. While developing separate ideas and giving us each of them as separate documents is not at all a bad idea (more options, more material for us to work with), I wasn’t aware that was the aim, or idea of the project. After the last time we met with the writers, we were all under the impression that they’d be working on the one document. Again, separate ideas and suggestions would be needed for the one document, but it’s not what we were expecting for the dialogue.
I think we all made each other angrier by talking about it in class, but as I mentioned, I think it is because we have not had nearly enough communication with them. We also had different expectations of the dialogue, which again would have been improved with communication.
Apparently, we will be getting a script on Friday! It is evident that the light-hearted mockumentary style we had developed with our second video prompt was not what the writers had in mind. They also did not acknowledge our vlog style introduction. They did seem to take notice when we said we wanted a female protagonist. I’m sure some of our other ideas and notes might come up later in the series or script writing process because a lot of them were rather specific that mightn’t need to be mentioned in the premise documents.
More than anything I’m keen to meet with them and discuss it all, and really keen to get the script as these vague premise documents aren’t that useful for us if we want to shoot an actual script. Time will tell.