This week’s class exercises, while quite introductory, set up a premise for the understandings we will adopt throughout the semester. The highly experimental nature of the studio enabled a script/film writing novice such as myself to navigate my own way through the various concepts and practices we have been taught.
A characteristic of our class exercises that has stood out to me is the notion of fluidity. Not only in terms of the on screen continuity we aim to achieve, but the overall structure of the activities has been, well, fluid. Taking inspiration from existing media artefacts, whether it be character profiles, a piece of prose, an existing script or a film produced by the creative writing kids, has been a fun and straightforward means of beginning my ‘Writing For Film’ career. A fear I had going into the studio was arriving and being told, “here you are, now write a script” – this process has alleviated that fear and provided me with something to work with.
Witnessing the different ways each student approaches a piece of inspiration has been eye opening, and in a way, epiphany inducing. We’re so stuck in our own minds and familiar to our own ways of thinking that it’s somewhat crazy to consider the unlimited number of ways a story can be interpreted, whether that be by means of genre, visual impact or dialogue.
In the initial stages of task two, my group managed to transform (in theory) a mysterious, ‘spy-centric’ drama into an overblown, satirically innocent, playground western. This derivative was the result of a great session of just bouncing off each other in ~fluidity~, adding our own individual twists upon another’s. The pretty cool and out there concept we managed to develop really highlighted the benefits of collaboration in film production.
I look forward to the challenges future weeks will bring!
