script polishing 1

Had a few feedbacks from a director and an actor -
the script is good, but the technicality gets increasingly complex. It is essential that I am able to divorce myself from the reality when continuing to polish the script as it's all to easy for me to write soemthing that I relate to and forgetting about the end audience.

I'm currently working on my character study - so I know how to develope the story better and give the character more detail.

I'm also going to start adding in series of questions and sub-script feelings in major scenes. It is becoming more and more apparent to me that since there is no sound, the narrative needs to be well delivered visually - to do that I need my actors to be able to know how to feel.

I'm working on the shooting script. I think it is essential that I don't give too much directions as to where the camera should go within the script as it is irrelevant to the actors. It will also help me straighten out exactly what I'm looking for visually, so to enable further visualizing in my small puny brain.

marital difficulties

style - film noir / chiaroscuro
I want it to have a strong lighting contrast feel to it, perhaps a touch of elegance, just as the Baroque genre of Art - highlighting the details, but in black and white.


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An idea occured to me today - the idea of having several actors for the same scene and intercut during post-production to enhance the idea of loneliness - there's a bit of primal instinct in all of us, the fear of being alone.
Visually speaking, this will be messy and will require plenty of pre-planning, detailed. However, I think it would strengthen that theme I'm trying so hard to desperately explore by far.
Practically speaking, however, I think this may happen in the future instead of current. The cost and the cast management seem overwhelming - the project will be too big and too ambitious perhaps.
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I've spent a whole night trying to find something similar to what I'm doing - results are weak. I have no been able to find any (yet)

However, hours of research on marital difficulties have paid off - this may be weird, but its certainly worth the pain.
Through research, it has actually put me back in perspective - all the minor things that never strike you as 'harmful' towards a relationship all of a sudden were all lethal.

sites visited...
http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/canorshoulditbesaved/qt/maritalproblems.htm
http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/three_fears_haunting_relationships
http://psychology.suite101.com/article.cfm/emotional_cheating
http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Signs-of-Relationship-Problems&id=502612

research

Increasingly as I re-draft and re-draft, I'm finding it more and more obvious that research makes such a difference.

As my script will have no conversation, it is therefore essential that I have to prep it well. There may be no 'sound', but as my lecturer pointed out, there is no such thing as silence.

Even when there is no sound, you still hear your blood pumping through your body - that is not silence, that is a moment of quiet. Just because it has no conversation, if anything it makes the sound design for the script even more important as it should I have to make silence speaks, a discomfort, and how I may go about achieve that.

There is also the 'awkward' element that needs to be portrayed through sound. Visually speaking, however, it is important that I should be able to capture the essence of the deteriation of the relationship.

proposed research areas include:

• problematic relationships - causes and consequences
• the experience
  
• the body gestures, the minor details that makes a visual difference, an impact
  
• a common factor - something the audience can connect with in terms of their personal past relationship experience(s)
• gender issue - how male and female may react differently to problems - established or not
  

polishing my diamond

I've re-drafted my script 3 times so far, having had different people read through it, the feedback had been good in general, storyline is apparently clear and simple, but scenes have had to be changed as I re-draft.

Polishing and polishing, despeartely wanting that diamond to outshine the moon.

For example, originally, there was a scene of the couple sitting at a cafe sharing a sundae on a mid summer day. That was the perfect scene for me, the perfect day out for a young couple.

Then I got feedback that perhaps I should take account of cultural references - and my friend was right - if they are British, why should they be sat at a French style cafe sharing a sundae?

So the alternative I'm considering, is either a walk by the river, or simply a picnic in the park whilst playing scrabble. It's a tough call to be fair, I'm trying to take into consideration all that is associated with the action.
I want to be able to portray the same feeling of 'sharing a sundae with a sweetheart at a cafe on a summer day' but do it British style - which involves perhaps a 99p flake cone.

but the practicality is I won't find an ice cream truck near a park(with relatively less people around it to make it more believable that it's in a park). I'm filming in winter, have to accept that grim bit of life.

It's a new thought, I think I'm going to sleep on it.

"shattered"

My story is called Shattered.

I wanted to explore the idea of loneliness, but as I started writing the script I realise that was hard to do. It's a script, it doesn't have to have a plot, but it does need a storyline for time to pass through.

So I thought, if I come up with a beginning and an end, the rest will fall into place easily.
The one thing that definitely contributed towards my lonely childhood was divorce, that struggle between my parents. Conviniently, I needed a story, so a married couple who're driven apart over the year it is.

I'm trying to go an abstract way, the movie, behold, will have no conversations.
and will mostly be in black and white.

Script

Further to reading the Rabiger book regarding story ideas development, I have come to realise that every single script has its' own soul.
To a certain extend, reading a script is like getting to know a person. There is so much you can tell from a script - the style, the atmosphere, the theme - it's all part of the writers' experience and history, where he's been and what he's done.

In my script, I want to discuss and explore the theme of 'loneliness' - the idea that people 'pretends' but emotions are often much deeper and there are always reasons and justifications behind actions.

I came up with this idea as I feel it was soemthing I could connect with - it's hard describing something you don't feel and you can't connect with.