The Art & Science of Screenwriting with Susannah

Using Philip Parkers book as a point of focus we talked about the elements of screenwriting, namely inspecting The Narrative Matrix which he talks about in Chapter 2 of the book

(pg.13)

Susannah's version was slightly different but she said that she had adapted it slightly to include Tone and indicated that the style section should be in relation to audio/visual. 

These are the elemenst that make up a script/ film and the white all around in the creative space.

We're planning to study a few of these elements from week to week, this week we looked at Form and Tone.

Form is how we view the film in a then and now sense. Different kinds of Form include Linear, Associational, Episodic and Circular the final two mainly being linked to television but can also apply to film. Episodic is how each episode is different but has underlying overall link. Most crime shows are like this, they have a major crime that needs to be solved but each episode they have a separate case on top. Film wise what came to mind for me was Valentines Day(2010), New Years Eve(2011), Love Actually(2003) having a six degrees of separation type movie is one of the many things on my long list of types of movies that I would like to make.

I mentioned that I was confused with the definition of Tone so we went through some of the parameters.

     TRAGIC                                            DRAMATIC                                   COMEDIC

          

Death & Disaster                                      Bit Of Both                                   Life & Success

Comedy has little bits of tragedy in it between so that it can bring you down before bringing you back up

Tragedy needs to have comic elements punctuated within it
Drama  is dramatic because it needs to incorporate the other two factors as well.

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For the second part of the session we looked at Miracle Fish by Australian Director Luke Doolan.

I personally found the film predictable, having picked up on certain shots and just by the vibe of the film but I am rarely ever surprised by movies. I did think it was very good and would class it under the "Dramatic" Tone point. It wasn't comedic but it had a lot of soft elements that would I would put under that category.

Then using information taken and adapted from the UK Film Council: Introduction to Screenwriting workshop we placed this short film and our own within two criterias

Major Themes: The desire for justice, The pursuit of love, morality of individuals, desire for order, pursuit of pleasure, fear of death, fear of the unknown, desire for validation.
Story Types: The romance, the unrecognised virture, fatal flaw, the debt that must be repaid, the spider and the fly, the gift taken away, the quest, the rites of passage, The wanderer, The character that cannot be put down

It was clear that although some fit within the boundaries others did not..... such as the film for my major project; Ridley It's not a bad thing that it didn't fit but just a point of thought we were asked to consider: If it didn't fit, why, what would you change to make it fit? Would it work?

Lastly we looked at the relationship between the Filmmaker, the Character and the Audience

                                                                Filmmaker



                                     Character                                           Audience

We have to make the audience feel like they have the upper hand are in complete light about the situation with the director over the character. It is then the filmmakers job to the change expectations by revealing an unforeseen event that then puts the Audience and the Character one the same page, a peg below the director.