Critique time! The brief for this piece of writing was:

Conny’s on his way to his leaving party at work. He has mixed feelings about it – the work is boring but he likes his colleagues. He’s not sure if he’s made the right decision.

The task was to rewrite this using visual storytelling techniques, like evocative action verbs. Below is what I wrote:

Firstly, I think the piece works pretty well to communicate the brief. I think it’s clear that Conny is hesitant about entering the party, stalling by being on his phone instead. Also, I think it’s pretty act-able, as it mainly consists of actions instead of ‘Conny looks sad’ or ‘Conny looks hesitant.’  Perhaps the only thing that might be more difficult to act out would be ‘he puts on a fake smile.’ But then it’s also good to give the actor some room for interpretation.

On what doesn’t work, I think that the act of him scrolling past photos is probably a little heavy handed. There are definitely more subtle ways of depicting this, like one of the other students had Conny staring up at the lights of office building party to show his hesitation, which I think is more subtle, and also has the metaphor of the building looming over him, intimidating him, just like the prospect of entering the party is intimidating him.

Also, the dialogue in the scene is not really necessary. Possibly the piece could end before the dialogue begins and still convey the same message, or cut it out and just go straight to him glancing at his phone, the bar, and then pocketing the phone. But the dialogue is still okay in the sense that it indicates that his colleague were waiting for him and they like him.

To come back to the earlier example, I think that the setting of an office building also indicates better that it is a workplace party. The setting of just the bar is a little unclear, it could be any type of party – but of course, Conny’s workplace could also be the bar. This is why the brief was a little imprecise, to allow room for interpretation.

The use of the phone also brings into question how this same scene could be represented if the screenplay was set during a time where mobile phones didn’t exist. Perhaps Conny could be looking at letters or cards given by his colleagues as ‘going away’ presents?

Nonetheless, I still found it a useful exercise, especially because it was one of the first time I’d actually tried to write a screenplay using layout conventions, and it was good to hear how the rest of the class had interpreted the exercise.