The feedback we received during our work in progress presentation was so valuable to me. I thought we were given honest and thought provoking critiques, especially from Smiljana. I think she pushed us to consider the world we were creating, how it reflects us and how it reflects the people we decide to write. Our guest speaker Catherine mentioned that we should employ specificity when writing characters from diverse backgrounds or they might be susceptible to altering to fit the dominant ideology. Smiljana suggested that if we are to create a character from a minority, there’s a duty of care we need to take by connecting with the cultural community they’re from. Write from the beginning knowing they are of that race, gender identity, sexuality, and let it impact their character. It gave me a lot to think about regarding the universe I decide to create, and whether it’s impact will be positive or negative.

A key piece of feedback I would like to reflect on was some of the suggestions I received on how to write the ending. I brought up my concerns in my presentation about resolving the end the piece with an explosion of dialogue. I’m trying to come up with a way for the protagonists to express all the conflicting emotions they feel about self determination, fear and safety. My first thought was to jump to dialogue. The feedback I received acknowledged that using dialogue is one way to do this, however, maybe there should be no dialogue at all. It would be more impactful to communicate a feeling through visual language rather than express it vocally.

So thus in a rewrite of the order of action, we could potentially see something like this: As Carol blares her lights into the shadows, she swings the door open for her friend as if to say Get In. Clem gets in the car with Carol. The two sit there in the still car watching the headlights blare onto an empty street. This is the moment they non-verbally share another moment of camaraderie, again, of mutual suffering. Suffering under a system which confines the way they move within this world. Suddenly I’m excited to write this part, rather than dreading it.

Communicating without dialogue will push my visual storytelling further, to express such a key moment in this narrative  through human connection, expression, setting, movement and sound.
To end the piece like this brings even more bookends into the narrative; I’ve begun to visualise the car as being a sanctity – Carol’s presence and friendship brings the warmth back into the scene which we lost when the shop lights dimmed. Now headlights replace this brightness.  This moment highlights the value of solidarity between women when faced with adversity.
I was imagining a song to play as the women drive away, something along the lines of It’s a Man’s Man’s World.  This could come across as cliche but it gives a clearer message to a script I’m scared could loose it’s political motivations. The use of silence between the two women in the car is key to express their disenchantment. The use of a song like that playing as they begin to drive off could push this message further.

Another piece to focus on was expressing fear and apprehension without physically showing these figures in the distance. They might never need to make an appearance at all, if we as the reader know that there is something to fear from Clem’s behaviour and body language. The feedback focused mainly on expressing the protagonist’s inner emotions, something that will see me reflect on key readings from the course.

I began developing my idea when I was on my way home from work one night. I have been trying to observe moments of quietness in my life and see if this influences my visual intake. This walk was especially creepy and dark, and I was skating down Wellington street in Collingwood. My partner had vehemently warned me not to skate to the station, and rather to catch an uber. It was going to cost me $17 to get back to Preston, that was nearly an hours work. Nothing angers me more than two things; being ripped off, and having my rights infringed.  Walking safely in the dark should be a human right, and for a spooky girl like me, it’s a passion.
When I inevitably returned home later than expected, my girlfriend scolded me and asked; what if it was me? What if I was walking home in the dark alone?
I regretted it, knowing that when women walk home alone, it’s a gamble. It never happens to you but it could.  It’s a choice between autonomy or personal safety. I wanted to write a script that asks; does she walk home without fear, or is it safer to ask for help, and why does this system exist anyway?

Conflicting feelings about walking home safely is universal.  I’ve tried to illustrate this desire for independence and self-determination in a world where it’s not necessarily safe. I’ve decided to commit to the walking home from work narrative – it’s something I feel super strongly about. I’ve written about this film on my blog before but a key text that influences me for this is A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014, dir. Ana Lily Amipour). The title acting as a hook for the film shows how unsettling the circumstance can be. I had intention to write this script in the same tone as the film. In my original ideas, the protagonist walks home and confronts these attackers whilst walking home to find how worried her family and friends were. This was what I was working with for a while but every time I went to write the ending, it gave this sense of victim blaming; as if she made a ‘stupid decision’ and compromised the comfort of her loved ones. I didn’t want this to be my message – I wanted to express how depressing and disenchanting living in fear can be.

EXCEPT ONE:

Structurally I began in the beginning – I have been meaning to ask in class if this is recommended? I have never started writing anything from the middle or the ending. It could be a cool exercise to practise potentially.
I’ve began by attempting to give a feel towards the relationship between the two workers. I wanted this scene to be warm and feel safe, and the moment Carol leaves the fun and warmth is sucked out of the room. A revision I made after our Monday reading was to avoid double announcing location.
ie. INT. PIZZA SHOP. NIGHT
Clementine mops the floor of the pizza shop.
Now it has become Clementine mops the checkerboard floor.

Another revision is to give Clem some likability, so she can carry this narrative as a relatable character. I wanted to show her playing around at work, kicking mop buckets and joking with her friend. Determination is also a trait her character will have, also her enjoyment of quiet walks in the dark.

I’m hoping the feedback will help me wrangle this idea into a beginning middle and end I’m really unsure of how this will end, part of me wants it to snap back to the question where she is asked fir a lift and this time she says yes, but that comes across as a weird government ad telling women not to walk home. I hope they can help me resolve this ending without needing too much dialogue.

An influential textI’ve encountered within Picture This, which I have referenced previously in my blogging, is Claudia Sternberg’s “Written For The Screen: The American Motion Picture Screenplay as Text”. This reading is influential in the way that it highlighted the advantages of informal stylistic writing; how the tone of the genre you write in can influence the big print of a script.
Sternberg cites the screenplay Unforgiven. As a Western, It’s context within the oral mythology of the wild west sets us up with character descriptions that read in the same tone as the dialogue.

Alice is 25 but she’s been around some, whored some tough cow-towns, and she has too much bone and character in her face to be outright pretty but she attracts men like flies.

The screenwriter takes on not quite a narrator, but more-so a third character who belongs in this world witnessing the action, and from this unbiased third character we find ourselves, the reader. In my own developing practice, I found the loosening of formality in the big print beneficial. Not only my blogging style but my writing mannerism of the last three years has been strictly academic. I’ve struggled to loosen my writing to match my speech, which is littered with colloquialisms.

I think that writing a piece in tone with the genre is an exciting concept and immediately my mind ran two two of my favourite films: Priscilla, and Muriel’s Wedding. I am stinging to get my hands on a copy of P.J Hogan’s original screenplay. I love to write my characters in a strine, working class Australian voice, one I was raised with and one that defined my youth and childhood. I think the option of writing in this voice inspired my ideas for my final project. I also attended Melbourne Queer Film Festival’s short film exhibition. A combination of both of these had me thinking about writing some sort of backyard Australian lesbian romance, something with humour rather than melancholy mumble-core shorts I’ve reserved myself to writing. Not that there’s anything wrong with mumblecore, but this is my first shot at ‘proper’ screenwriting so I want to throw some dialogue in there, or at least some action that isn’t wholly conceptual. I’ve loved learning about screenplay formalities but I’m really keen to dig into some more theory on creating the actual story itself.

“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)” (2009, p. 109). Reference: Dzialo, C 2009, ‘“Frustrated Time” narration: the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman’, in W Buckland (ed.), Puzzle films: complex storytelling in contemporary cinema, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 107-28.

As I unpack this quote by Chris Dzialo, I believe he is discussing the equity between screenplays and films for their audio-visual storytelling purposes. Though we often credit films for the combination of sound and image to create meaning, screenplays are capable of pushing the reader to create the sound and image within our minds. Rather than to shoot directly from the storytellers prose, we use screenwriting to explore and develop these initial ideas an open them up to interpretation from others. This can lead to changes in the story, enhancements or destruction. Ultimately as screenwriters, we place our ideas in the path of change, with the hope they grow and develop from criticism, revisions or adaptation. This is what differentiates screenwriting from cinema – interpretation is as far as a cinema can change in our minds.

Cueing sounds in our minds is one of the facets of screenplays I’m becoming interested in. In Claudia Sternberg’s  ‘Written For The Screen’, she discusses the description of sounds across various texts, comparing them to the sound functions in comic strips. Total Recall utilises the style of a comic strip balloon text, as a character falls down an elevator shaft:
“Richter falls to his death, SCREEEAAAmiiiiinnnnnngggg”
This line not only cues the sound of a falling scream fading away into a hollow abyss, but also visually cues the elevator shaft depth, cues an actors expression and length of delivery.

There’s a specific script I want to reference, where aurally, we can find insight into the protagonist’s motivations and feelings, which we aim to illustrate in visual storytelling. The except is from Transamerica by Duncan Tucker, however I am unable to find access to the screenplay. The story follows the life of a trans woman a week before her gender-reassignment surgery.  The expert I wanted to reference shows our protagonist listening to a record on an old gramophone. She places her finger on the LP to slow the vocals down to a low baritone, before letting the song resume at normal speed, returning a high pitched female alto. This aural cue illustrates the character’s internal actions and motivations concerning her upcoming operation, and symbolises the weight of change they are about to experience. The combination of visuals and sound in this specific piece of writing allows us to explore this character’s emotions on screen and on page.

Doing not being:
As discussed in this weeks reading by Walderback and Batty, scripts must find a way to externally express what a character thinks and feels internally. Walderback and Batty suggest that we can achieve this with four essential writing techniques which I’ll try to illustrate below:

• Using active verbs ie.
  Adam is in the kitchen feeling miserable. < Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing.
• Working with environments to achieve metaphorical backdrops:
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.
• Body movements and physical actions,
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.  Adam sharply inhales and begins to frantically wipe his tears away with the back of his hand.
• Employing objects to express inner motivations.
  Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. A pile of unwashed dishes fill the sink.  Adam sharply exhales and begins to frantically wipe his tears away with the back of his hand. Pulling himself together, he turns to the cupboard and begins to pack his children’s lunch.

The reading has taught me to use verbs rather than adjectives in scene descriptions to effectively express a situation.  “Adam is in the kitchen feeling miserable” isn’t straightforward enough to translate to screen. ” Adam crouches over the kitchen bench sobbing. ” is visual and active, more direct and dramatic. In a class exercise we were asked to rewrite an emotional situation and translate it into visual storytelling. The prompt I chose was:
Rinaldo’s so tired of his children’s bickering. He can’t bear to be a single dad and is at the end of his tether. He feels guilty and angry with himself. 

I wrote:
Crumbs crunch under Rinaldo’s shoes as he walks down the hallway. His fists clench at the sound of thumping feet racing upstairs. He draws his leg back and punts a discarded teddy bear across the room, the force of which triggers the bear to play a monotonous electronic jingle – “You Are My Sunshine”. 

At this point the class suggested to construct a moment between the bear, the song and Rinaldo that shows guilt. These are my suggestions:

• Rinaldo looks up to see a shadow in the doorway. Connor (9), quizzically stares back at his father.
• From across the room, the pathetic bear’s button eyes bore into Rinaldo’s, A look of pity washes over Rinaldo’s face. He sighs deeply before collecting the strewn toys into a wicker basket. He gently places the bear on top.

I think what works in this technique is that it keeps my writing dynamic and full of movement. It’s much more entertaining to read and carries the narrative rather than placing it there. The still sentences look a bit chunky. Sometimes I feel like I’m directing or ordering a character around rather than letting them find their motivation naturally. Is this something that comes with a fully realised character? Right now Rinaldo is a stranger to me, and I am not invested in him or his past/future, and thus I suppose I feel like I’m directing him around. I suppose a character organically moving through a story would come with understanding their motivations, personalities, and what they would/wouldn’t do. Hopefully the deeper I write on a character in this studio the more this becomes realised.