Screenwriting - Week 9



08/04/2019

Patrick felt that I had a solid concept, target audience, characters, and format, but I focused more on an artistic tone rather than a narrative tone, which would had been a naturalistic tone. Patrick was encouraging towards my choice on doing a subject personal to me. But I need to further develop a stronger objective for the main character like he has a dream job to wants to do, but his mental health is an obstacle to that. 

In addition, I need to strengthen my character arc for Darren and go back to filling out the roadmap with those things in mind.
Because of the rules of this paper (e.g. themes), I will need to break the rules of a naturalistic tone in order to offer complications to drive the story forward.
Finding the right job for the character
I looked online to browse random jobs that may suit the characters or careers that are stressful or in high demand. I went along with nursing.

 https://www.careers.govt.nz/job-hunting/whats-happening-in-the-job-market/jobs-in-skill-shortage/result/it-and-telecommunications#results

 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11928979

 http://www.voxy.co.nz/business/5/265923
Development idea
Be interesting if he did a taster nursing class at a polytech?
Stumped?
However, I have forgotten what Patrick was wanting in improving the character arc, so I'm stumped on how to go forward from here, now that I have established a stronger objective. Just another morning of mental blocks.

BSA204 Concept Roadmap

 Title: State of Mind
Genre: Slice-of-life drama
Themes: Mental health, the human condition
Setting: Invercargill
Protagonist: Darren
Super-Objective: To be a registered nurse
Outer-want (external objective): To find work that doesn’t affect his mental well-being
Inner-need (internal objective): To get a clearer mind without worry and feeling down
Inner conflict / dilemma: Darren’s anxiety and depression, fear of having student debt, not knowing where to study nursing, not knowing how to handle the stress and workload of studying nursing.
Inciting incident / External obstacle (or antagonist): 
1TP / How does my Protagonist react to this obstacle? Encounters someone from his past, which causes him distress and his sister intervenes.
Further complications: 
Mid-point: Darren saves someone's life
“Dark Night of the Soul”/2TP: Darren breaks down. His sister finds the right thing to say to Darren
Character Arc: Mildly depressed, anxious, and is unhappy about life to having his mental health slightly improved and has a pinch of hope towards life.

Resolution: He is slightly better and finishes the counselling session with a hopeful outlook on life

What is a treatment?

  • Prose version of your script. Prose? Natural form of speech and lacks a formal structure
  • No dialogue and camera direction, so try to avoid it
  • Document that clearly shows stakeholders (producers / funding body / film studio) how the film will be.
  • Expresses your creative vision
  • Do not use words like 'We see/hear"
  • Don't fill your scripts with technical jargon
  • It's essentially your film's blueprint
Producers will ask for a treatment to save money and not pay for a screenplay, in case it's bad

Beat sheet - Brainstorming, working document that's for writer's eyes only. It allows you to put ideas onto the page and place ideas for events in each Act

Use bold for signs in the film and titles on the document.
I told Patrick about my mental block and that I did what I could with what he suggested. I told I have added more obstacles to the plot as a result of developing a stronger objective. He advised that some obstacles come out of the blue in the moment.

 I managed to get the gist of what is a treatment and am confident that I'll get at least a rough, completed treatment draft by the start of next term. I will still look at film treatments online and develop a beat sheet to help me further develop the structure.
https://nofilmschool.com/film-treatment
http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/spidermanscriptment.txt
http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/StarWarsTreatment.txt

It was interesting coming across a Spiderman film treatment by James Cameron, but is more of a sample of a script and doesn't have anything beyond just a short excerpt of a script and includes dialogue. The same goes for the early treatment of Star Wars by George Lucas.

 A film treatment can be helpful against writer's block.
Patrick reminded me to develop the character arc and suggested to improve the character's inner conflict and dilemma by sacrificing something the character uses day to day as a crutch as a way of coping through his mental health issues and finds a way to live without it.

 Patrick suggested to get my main character active about inciting incident. Active by doing something about it. I need to break the rules of reality when comes to mental health on this, in favor of the needs of this paper. He also suggested that someone bad happens to the person Darren saves as the second turning point

 My outer want needs to be more tangible, in which the main character is doing something, but for a reason deep down

 Outer want: Action
Inner: Reason



10/04/2019

 I was drinking water from a water bottle and was looking outside at the rain. It felt like I was drinking the rain. This could be something that I could include in my story

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