Post seven: Creating your own script.

I personally found the planning of my script one of the easier elements of the pre-production work scheme. This process begun through us watching several short films, due to our teacher's personal taste in short film genre as a class our short film viewing had been mainly focused around the heavier social realist films. With this in mind we were then given a lesson in which to watch 'Signs' a romantic comedy, eleven minutes long short film directed by Patrick Hughes a film based around a man's life, the lack of and the different forms of communication within it: "Where do you find love? Sometimes all you need is a sign". Shown at 'Schweppes short film festival' the film was warmly received by the 'maturer' audience that the festival is aimed at. Whilst watching the film our teacher would pause the film at certain intervals and asked us questions about the film, such as what did we think was going to happen next. Of course due to the twists in the film none of our predictions were completely correct, this meaning the film achieved a pleasant surprise for the audience at the end.

Watching 'Signs' both enabled us as a class to realise that not all short films need to be based around political or economical issues as many of the 'gritty' social realist films we had previously watched were. It showed and encouraged me personally to focus on a creating a film based around subject that will have an effect with the audience and that would avoid the predictable and venture into the almost erratic. With this in mind, whilst creating my script I decided that I wanted to include strong twists to in a sense, confuse and throw the audience out of place making my short film unpredictable and leaving the audience wondering what is actually going on.

'SIGNS'

During the process of planning my script after coming up with my initial idea I developed the major points I wanted involved in my script a rough beginning, two twists in the plot and the rough ending, I achieved this through the use of mind maps.

My next focus was the central protagonists in my short film - once establishing a rough idea of what I wanted in my characters I focused primarily on the details of the characters so i created character profiles:

GRACE:

My central protagonist 'Grace' is a relatively stereotypical female teen, she is physically feminine and is noticeably popular in school. There is one major difference between Grace and most girls of her age and that's her home life. Although the audience remain completely unaware of what truly goes on in her life throughout the film 'Grace' is a silent victim of child abuse, when Grace returns home after her days at school everything changes. She is the representation and the physical embodiment of the message running throughout the short film "Abuse is not always physical".

GRACE'S FATHER:

My Second character profile is of the other protagonist 'Grace's father', physically well built and  fitting to most stereotypically masculine traits. He is an erratic person with an abnormally short fuse, he generally has an aggressive tone about him and is often unnecessarily confrontational. A seemingly normal, 9-5 working and well-respected man who's home life, much like 'Grace's' is dramatically different from his work life. He abuses his daughter, 'Grace'.

PLOT OUTLINE:

The short film begins in the evening after Grace has school, she enters her home still in her school uniform and carrying her school bad and heads straight towards her kitchen. Once in the kitchen Grace goes to get herself some food, she gets out a crisp container out of one of her kitchen cupboards but while doing so, she drops it. At this moment Grace's father yells at her and Grace hastily attempts to recollect everything she has dropped and put it back into the container and proceeds at a fast pace towards her stairs and up into her bedroom. We next see Grace sat in school, in an English lesson as she stares out of the window, completely unfocused. Grace's teacher asks her to repeat what she just said and as Grace attempts to regain a focus and remember what the teacher just said, the teacher carries on teaching.

Grace arrives back home, enters house and then then her bedroom to find a present on her bed, although she is confused about it her father soon appears and tells her that it's from him.

 

DIFFERENT THEORIES:

Due to our prior research in a range of theories within our organised lesson our understand of a variety of theories was above average. One we focused on was Todorv, he focused on the three main specific parts of to a film: equilibrium, disequilibrium and a disequilibrium. A prime example of his theory is presented in 'Goldilocks and the three bears', the beginning of the film involves a positive atmosphere in which the characters are stereotypically happy, this is equilibrium. As the film proceeds a problem arises during the second part, in the example of 'Goldilocks and the three bears' this problem would be 'Goldilock' herself being in the bear house, this is disequilibrium. As the film runs into the concluding stage the atmosphere and tone of the film return to being happy but with a significant change to the first instance of happiness, this is the new equilibrium. This is identified because the characters have adapted to their new situations i.e. Goldilocks being there and are coping with it, therefore the happiness is different than before, the happiness is not identical to the happiness they all felt at the beginning of the story.