Screenwriting - Week 12


29/04/2019

Patrick to us about Short Film Otago and that you can apply for $10,000 to make a short film if you are from the Otago region or have your short film set in there. I cannot take part because I am from Timaru, which is in South Canterbury and I don't see how feasible it would be a make a short film in like Dunedin or some other place in the region, especially when it comes to location scouting.

 As a class, we watched an hour and a half video on what makes a good ending, which was narrated by the guy who wrote Little Miss Sunshine, and he made notes on the ending that films, as well as others like Star Wars and The Graduate. After a while, the video was hard to follow with its analysis on great ending. It was also hard to configure the structure into a short film.

 Good ending notes

  • Stories are guides to life and how you should live it
  • There are two set of values
  • Endings should be surprising and meaningful, in order to be not predictable
  • A risk, complication, and surprise happens in the ending of Star Wars
  • There are three sets of stakes, you gain or fail something
  • The hero or world is flawed
  • In the midpoint, we see a setback that makes the protagonist see within him or herself and see their own inner flaw
  • Discussing about the stakes are complex in this video
  • An MP, sister? - mentors for my screenwriting project
  • Remember the type of person you used to be is something I include into my story

Stakes
Fear vs co-operation in Star Wars
Nihilism vs compassion and morality

In the afternoon, we watched another similar video, but this time it was on beginnings. It was interesting and I learnt that to make a good beginning like a Pixar film, we must have a protagonist with a passion and have that passion taken away, which puts the protagonist on a journey. Watching these videos today, it's made more more insecure and uncertain about my story being able to work in those types of structures.

 On top of that, I am nervous about the progress with my film treatment because I haven't written anything yet because nothing had popped up in my mind while needing to complete assessment with closer due dates. I'm not sure how the character can growth consistently through the story arc and it feels like a mess.

 It's difficult to make the ending surprising for my story, but it could be meaningful. 
I eventually managed to come up with a rough story arc with a beat sheet, but I just don't know what I am going to in putting it into a film treatment. 
I'm at a lost on the film treatment because of the strain from forming the story arc, so I went away for a while to get some fresh air (nature's Panadol).

 I came back and am still in the blank state of mind and I'm stumped on the feasible inner and outer wants for the protagonist.

To an extent, Patrick was fine with the beat sheet. However, he thought the character winning lotto was bad story idea and felt that everything will fall into place with my treatment once I have got the inner and outer wants sorted for my protagonist and so that is my goal to complete aside from having the treatment ready for submission.

Patrick will talk to Kathryn and see if we can get a 3 or 4 day extension, so that we will get the opportunity to improve on our treatments after getting constructive feedback in the next class.



Beat sheet

 Act 1
Darren goes to his appointment and starts talking to the counselor
Establishes Darren as a character (pens, estranged from his family)
Darren's sister arrives and get directions
Accused of stealing from a dairy because he is wearing a jacket (inciting incident)
Darren's sister interferes
Counselor asks Darren questions about the events (asking about his emotions and he asks her thoughts)

 Act 2
Darren argues with his sister about being lonely, mentions his dreams about nursing and the complications around that)
Darren saves a life
Something happens to the person he saved
Darren has a breakdown and reconciles with his sister. His sister figures out the right thing to say.

 Act 3
Darren goes for a long walk and has an epiphany
Darren talks to a course adviser at a polytech
Darren gets a taster session in nursing
The appointment ends and Darren leaves

30/04/2019

I typed the file name (as you can see below) in advance on this blog to have it ready for when I submit my short film treatment next week

 BSA204_JerryWestaway_Ass2_ShortFormConceptTreatment

 I received an email from Patrick informing us that he managed to get us a 4-day extension on our deadline for our film treatments, but I doubt we will get feedback on our progress next week because we will all be away on the day trip to Dunedin. However, it does make the assessment less stressful with a deadline that is slightly further away. We were also informed that the course descriptor for this paper has been updated and is on Blackboard and the resources part of the Y drive.

05/05/2019

I was wrong about the Dunedin trip, it will be on Tuesday, not Monday. So, we will get feedback from Patrick concerning our film treatment. My film treatment has been incomplete because I was meant to yesterday because but I was spending time staring at a screen and obviously had another mental block, but some related things did pop up as I was doing domestic stuff at home. 

 The biggest flaw to my film treatment is that I still haven't come up with an inner and outer want for my protagonist. I'm just really stressed about and felt really behind, it depresses me like the protagonist in my story.

Random things that came up

  • Sister stands her ground and insists on staying
  • He has doubts about getting better
  • Wanting to get better. Why he isn't a nursing student. The plan has been to get better then study, but it hasn't panned out. Life can be a bitch. 


    • Outer-want: He Wants to be a registered nurse
    Inner want: He wants to help people
    It's potentially not tangible enough, but it's the best I can come up with at this stage.

     I went for a walk outside, but could only do a paragraph at best.
    A young man in his 20’s called DARREN is sitting in a waiting room. He looks bored and sighs as he looks at time and then takes out an appointment card out of his jacket pocket with the time on it and then looks at the clock again. He shoves the card back into his pocket and takes out a pen, which he fidgets with in fascination. A door opens. It’s a middle aged counsellor that Darren has come to see called 

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