Wednesday 7th November- Working On Both Assignments

 My Assigments

Today was a difficult day as I had to work on two assignments, mine/Lewis and Aaron. I have taken on the role of script writer for Aaron’s assignment and have to work on all aspects of my own assignment.

Whilst at home I looked over the idea we were going with and thought it would be better to not have the back story for the driver, it seems a bit too much drama in this and now it is based around the two young people, the girl and bully. It is fascinating how discussing one idea can lead to something completely different. We were discussing on further character development for both these characters and how their paths entwine. In my opinion the best aspect we came up with was the twist of the girl’s hatred towards her father.

         We decided to both have a task on certain elements of the story. I would write up the somewhat order of things to happen and Lewis would right up other points that would help with the audience understanding the character development.

 Re-written from notepad

Opening Scene

• Ryan is going to break into a house and rob the place.
• He gets in a struggle with the father.
• Lisa is in her room.
• Lisa hears the struggle and goes to check what is going on. As she gets to the stairs she sees a glimpse of Ryan.
• Half screen of both reactions, Ryan panicking for hurting the man and Lisa crying.

Ryan path

• He is watching Lisa at the funeral. He looks at the stolen wallet and recognises Lisa as the dad’s daughter.
• When she leaves the grave, Ryan goes over to put the picture down by the grave.
• He sees Lisa by the pub where she is having the wake; he is drinking because he feels guilty.
• Ryan walks down the street away from Lisa but notices her across the road. She crosses over so he does too try and keep away.
• She touches his hand; he gets confused and turns around to look at her. She is stood in the road waiting to get run over.

Lisa Path

• Lisa at funeral crying over the fact her dad is dead, but she wanted to kill him. She spits on grave.
• Walks over to car, she see’s Ryan putting picture down at grave.
• She looks into window and sees Ryan reflection. Get confused by who he is and what he doing. Sees him leaving so she follows him.
• She follows him walking away, she wants to get close to him so she crosses the road towards him, and he crosses over so she touches his hand.
• She stops in the middle of the road waiting to get run over.

 Ending

• Lisa is standing in the middle of the road
• Ryan runs out to save her
• Slow motion, cuts to black, car screech and horn.

 Once I had finished writing this up I showed Lewis and asked what he thought of this, he mainly fedback criticism. His main points was it seems to happen too quick which won’t allow us to create much character development, also it felt like something was missing, that it needed another crossover with the two characters. I suggested that in Ryan’s guilty state he wants to be punished so has a fight that goes a bit wrong and causes Lisa who is just passing by to get hurt, but once we talked it out in detail it seemed to take up too much time. After some time of debating we ended up with this.

  

Rough sequence

Re-written from notepad

Opening Scene 

• Ryan is going to break into a house and rob the place.
• He gets in a struggle with the father.
• Lisa is in her room.
• Lisa hears the struggle and goes to check what is going on. As she gets to the stairs she sees a glimpse of Ryan.
• Half screen of both reactions, Ryan panicking for hurting the man and Lisa crying.

 Ryan path

• He is watching Lisa at the funeral. He looks at the stolen wallet and recognises Lisa as the dad’s daughter.
• When she leaves the grave, Ryan goes over to put the picture down by the grave.
• He sees Lisa by the pub where she is having the wake; he is drinking because he feels guilty.
• Ryan goes home.
• Window smashes, he rushes out to see Lisa about to be hit by a car.

 Lisa Path

• Lisa at funeral crying over the fact her dad is dead, but she wanted to kill him. She spits on grave.
• Walks over to car, she see’s Ryan putting picture down at grave.
• She looks into window and sees Ryan reflection. Get confused by who he is and what he doing. Sees him leaving so she follows him.
• Throws brick through window
• Deliberately tries to get run over.

Ending

• Lisa is standing in the middle of the road
• Ryan runs out to save her
• Slow motion, cuts to black, car screech and horn.

      Shortly after Lewis had finished writing up points that he believed to be of benefit to the story and character development, overall most of what he put was very good but there was some elements that I didn’t agree with. He put that Lisa should be playing with a knife the second we see her but in my opinion that is too obvious, it reveals that she is unhappy with herself or her father and we want to twist at the end to be that she hated her father and having the knife so soon reveals it. I recommended that at the beginning she is just sat in her room looking distressed in the mirror; maybe she could throw out some comments that hint she hates someone. Also she could possibly have some form of tool out in her room but only seen brief so not to give too much away.

    Lewis suggested that we see the inside of Ryan’s house to create more of a back story for him, living in such horrible environment and him being young and alone. We could also use this as the next crossover; this then led to us changing how the characters are followed. It was originally that Ryan follows Lisa, just watching her and feeling guilty on what he has done but now we are having it as Lisa following Ryan. Ryan does still feel guilty but he doesn’t dare go near her; however she sees him and knows who it is. We learn that she hates Ryan but idolises him at the same time, she hates him for killing her dad and idolises him for killing her dad. We are going to get across that the father was very bad and she wanted to kill him but Ryan accidently did it.

    Seeing as I had to go and work with Aaron, Lewis and I decided to end pre-production there for the day and we would both go home and work on something separately. I was to work on script and he was to work on location. Unfortunately I was unable to begin writing the script seeing as I was busy that night working on Aarons project.

Aaron Assignment

       We started work by starting off by making clear on everyone who is involved in the project and what roles they will perform.

Re-written from notepad

Roles

Director/camera operator

Aaron Dunleavy (aaron.Dunleavy@outlook.com)

Producer/writer

Alex Brand (a.brand94@hotmail.co.uk)

Boom Operator

James Hibbert (James.hibbert.92@facebook.com )

Production assistant

Christi-Leigh Cooper (Christi-leigh@hotmail.com)

As I noted Aaron had a rough beginning to his idea and he wanted me to try to further develop it into an interesting drama. Here is the initial idea;

Aaron initial idea

• Old woman - wealthy but lonely.
• She wants to do something meaningful before she passes.
• She writes her telephone number on a £5 note.
• Spends the note in hope of someone contacting her.

     It was difficult to think up much with this beginning but I had an attempt at making something decent. Here is what I came up with;

Idea 1

• A somewhat montage of the fiver passing through a range of people. The money ends up with the person most deserving. It is meant to be a piece with the message “judge a book by its cover”.
•  Problem- it doesn’t give a lot of room for character development.
• Problem- not much of a storyline. 

 Idea 2

• Same as the above but the money ends up with the woman’s daughter as if fate is bringing them back together. What we see and the people we see are going to be going through stages of life which would be deemed domestic such as kid running away, fighting, drinking etc. This is meant to reflect the relationship of the mother and daughter, possible could be seen as what happened as they grew up together.
• Problem- can be seen as  predictable having the daughter be the one to find the money.
• Problem- the audience might not pick up the purpose of seeing everyone else story.

 Idea 3

• A kid/teen is getting battered and bullied by older kids and after they finished with him, he finds the money. He decides to try and return the money to the women but is forced to have a full conversation with her. They appear to have similar lives, the women thinks that the child is her or even her daughter. What the elderly women says makes the teen feel better about them. Also the elderly woman leaves money for teen.

Aaron poetically liked the third idea but thought it needed further development; he poetically liked the idea of a bit of violence because it adds a good depth of drama is done right. So went off from expanding on the idea, it was a bit difficult for us both to come to an understanding on some elements so I asked another member of our group to give her opinion, I asked Christi to come and join us. Whilst doing this we gained a lot more to the story but we also decided to get rid of elements such as the fiver which was what inspired Aaron in the first place. It’s quite amazing how the process on gaining a final idea can develop, below is the stages that we went through.

Re-written from notepad

Money ends up with old woman's daughter and fate brings them back together from bad previous relationship.

We see a teenager who is getting bullied, finds money and goes to house of old woman before finding a friend in her.

Young lad forced into breaking into house by a group of older teenagers. Finds old woman in house and changes attitudes.

Final idea:

Doreen, a senile old woman is seen on her deathbed.
Her son, Mick, is at her side talking to her.
He goes out to the shop and tells her he won't be long.

Shaun, her grandson, enters her house and goes up to see her.
He notices a bruise on the side of her face and he questions it.

We hear the front door open and Doreen tells Shaun that his dad must be back.
Shaun reveals that he doesn't have a dad.

           Aaron poetically liked the third idea but thought it needed further development; he poetically liked the idea of a bit of violence because it adds a good depth of drama is done right. So went off from expanding on the idea, it was a bit difficult for us both to come to an understanding on some elements so I asked another member of our group to give her opinion, I asked Christi to come and join us. Whilst doing this we gained a lot more to the story but we also decided to get rid of elements such as the fiver which was what inspired Aaron in the first place. It’s quit
       Once we had finalised our idea we started on looking at possible people to play our characters and the most feasible location that we could use. At this time I remembered that my grandmother was coming down from Scotland and she has always asked to be involved in one my college pieces, so i asked her for her services. I am a bit worried about the acting because she isn't an actress but the character is simple and I will be spending a lot of time working with her so that she is prepared for the shoot. I also offered Aaron to do the shoot at my house seeing as it would be easier for my grandmother; also the size of the bedroom is of adequate size for this narrative. Aaron asked if I would take some Reccy pictures of the bedroom so that he could get a better idea of what possible camera angles he can get. Here are the pictures below.

In my opinion this idea could be great, it had everything we wanted; chracter development, a twist, drama etc. So going off this I decided to spend the rest of my day writing up the scipt for Aaron. Overall today was a very productive day; I was able to cover many aspects of both the assignments I am working on. I am excited to work on both these assignments as I am in control of the aspects i mainly want to work which is script writing.