So this week, we pitched our idea to the class.

Our idea is fairly straightforward. Our piece (currently) tells the story of an arts/media student who has just moved to Melbourne, who lives with a slightly unhinged/odd med student in a sharehouse. We want our piece to address feelings of belonging, home, the fish-out-of-water sensation and some of the experiences of student life. We want our piece to be quite understated in its comedy, almost acting as a sort of drama/coming-of-age film first, comedy second.

We have the skeleton for our story (which Amy kindly wrote some notes in class for as I don’t have a laptop, those notes can be seen here that details some of it). Some details are missing that we’ve talked about and agreed to that will see if they make the vomit draft.

Generally speaking, our three act structure consists of the student getting fed up with his roommate/not feeling comfortable etcetera, who then tries to go out and find somewhere quiet and comfortable in Melbourne before realising that his room is probably the place he is most comfortable, and comes home to a supportive roommate who despite his unhinged qualities, is also able to look out for him a bit.

We have ideas for how we want that to look which we will continue to refine for this week, but we have a structure with intended feelings, gags and moments that we are all working towards. Hopefully our script will achieve this (a vomit draft is the weekend job after work for me!)

The main protagonist is inspired a bit from my likeness, as anecdotally I share a lot of the experiences with the protagonist student. This will probably end up being a big part of the character’s development, leaning into my experiences and likeness to some extent, which will be… unique, I’m sure. Some of the roommate is inspired by a relative, who works as a doctor and very innocently says some pretty unhinged and emotionally-detached things due to the nature of her work.

But we have a lot of small bits we can run with or glue in to round out the story and situations. Particularly prevalent Melburnisms (and some that most Melburnians don’t really question), the emotions and feelings of moving far away from home, and just general being broke early-twenties life, give us plenty to draw from.

Skeleton is set, time to give it some muscles!