Week 4B’s ‘strictly scripted’ challenge (what I’d call it if ‘Writing For Film’ were a competitive reality show) was a lot of fun to produce. Not only was I placed into a really inspired, engaged and enthusiastic group, I found the task at hand to be really straightforward and enjoyable.
I acted in one of the shoots and felt as though I learned more about the intention of the task by doing so. Although cast and crew were tempted to go off script, incorporate additional actions and manipulate the original script to something more exaggerated and outlandish, it was a test of our ability to abstain and subsequently capture the writer’s vision. Luckily our script was quite sharp and straightforward, and delivered well on screen.
The dialogue felt easy to deliver as my character ‘Herb’ had short, intentionally absent-minded sentences. Had I been handed a script with longwinded soliloquies, I feel this result would have been completely different.
Alternatively, in the scene that I shot, written by Dylan, the larger number of characters and more public location created some obstacles for production. I discovered that actions in the big print can depend heavily on the layout of a space, and such circumstances may have caused discrepancies between what was shot and the writer’s vision. I found this revelation subconsciously emphasized the intentions of the ‘Writing For Film course’ – writing for location, writing for character, writing to shoot and writing to edit can produce almost entirely different results on screen. I am yet to decide on a favourite method.
Although I have just discussed what I feel is the outcome thus far, I predict that the actual results and theoretical findings of this activity/experiment will be revealed once the footage has been cut together, and then assessed by the writers. It will be extremely interesting and insightful to find out whether the films live up to the expectations and intentions of their original creators.
