Short Film Evaluation - Research and Development

Intro:
I always wanted to make a film portraying Death as a charter like the writer Sir Terry Pratchett in his Discworld Series. To me they are full of wonder and magic and quite a read for me when I was in secondary school.


Sir Terry Pratchett - Writer

Death (The Colour of Magic - 2008)
















I thought really hard about my story and how I could create "A Meeting" to involve Death as one of my characters, but I also had to think of a second character to go with him.

So I had an idea that Death had a family, a son even, and I had the perfect actors in mind. My good friend Ben Fleury as the son and Dave Tuner as Death himself.

Ben Fleury - The Son (Thomas)

Dave Turner - Death

Research and Development:

Pitch:

Living with Death. Is that even possible? Find out how one choice can make all the difference when The Reaper's Son makes the ultimate sacrifice.

The Story: I thought about the story as a whole when it came to the genre, I came up with a Thriller Comedy genre to get the right edge I needed to produce the right amount of dark humour for my short film.

To help with my production I researched a little bit of the genre I would be targeting with, so I started watch a couple of films with the right amount of dark humour that I needed.

These are three of the films I saw to help give me inspiration for my film:

• Terry Pratchetts's The Hogfather Directed by Vadim Jean - 2006
• Tim Burton's Corpse Bride - 2005
• Jonathan Lynn's Clue - 1985

Research on the art of screenwriting:
There were many inspirations for the screenwriting process for me, The Hogfather was defiantly one of them, the way it used magical and dark humours language to form a conversation as well as telling the story really got me hooked which is what I wanted to do with my film.
Like the beginning of the Hogfather, it's a great way to start a story by telling us where the story takes place in a very creative and cleaver way and at the end, it's quite funny.
For a book to be turned to a 2 parter series, for me, it was brilliant and Vadim Jean, in my opinion, did a great adaption.

http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=hogfather


The major part of my research was lacteally the lectures we had from Steve Combs, I found him to be very interesting, since he is a screenwriter I feel that we couldn't have learned from anyone better.
Here is his website:
http://stevecoombeswriter.co.uk

He worked on a show called Outlaws which was BAFTA nominated, and he even made an appearance in one episode. He said "the best way to write a comedy script is to not make one joke but keep on joking though out the script, make it a continuous joke!" (Steve Combs, 2014).

I tried to adapt that to my script and at some points DID in fact make it better, and the dark humour was amped up a notch which I liked. Thanks to his advise and feedback I was able to write and edit my first proper Final Draft Script.

From his lectures I took many notes and here are some that helped me with my screen writing:

Screen Writing 3 with Steve Coombes / Lecture Notes – 07/10/2014

“A character is someone you know, but just doesn’t exist”

Clip: Annie Hall, Part 10 directed by woody Allen.

The premise relates to how through art, everything can be made perfect because life isn’t!

Time &Time Scale:

·        Think about what time period your script will take place over?

·        Does your story begin with the ending or does it begin at the beginning?

·        Have you considered using Flashbacks? If so, flashbacks need to be introduced early on   in your film not later.

·        Voice-overs at the start of a film can be a useful device to indicate and tell a back-story to

      your character/s.

·      ‘Songtage’, is a method of editing a series of events / clips together with music, allowing the audience to be carried along with the emotion & lyrics of the music. 

·         Split screen when used effectively can have different stories playing on screen at one time.

·         Snapshots are useful for quick story telling. E.g. Seinfeld episode ‘The Contest” – Sleeping scene.

Storytelling:

·        ‘Hill Street Blues’ was a police detective series aired in the 80’s which was the first show to introduce the concept of telling 4 stories in 1 episode over 1 hour.

·         Storytelling is like a ball. When you throw the ball up in the air it can engage an audience the more ‘air’, you give it. However, you must catch the ball to keep an audience. 

Trying to throw several balls can be compared to trying to tell several stories at one time. If you drop one it can lead to an audience switching off!

·         Clip: 

      Annie Hall: ‘The Universe is expanding’ scene.

·         This is a concept about tragedy. If it is a good tragedy you will want to watch it! Our biggest fear like the young Woody Allen in this scene is that everything is pointless, so what’s the point in anything! We are all doomed!!

Scenes & Acts:

·         A scene is made up of acts

·        Seinfeld is a 2 Act structure made up of 1 commercial break and 2 12 min acts.

·        A 4 Act structure would normally have 3 commercial breaks.

·       Jokes have a 3 Act Structure.

     Syd Field created the ‘4 Act drama schema’ this could be considered as a checklist when

     writing a script / screenplay.

     

      

·      You need to have your ‘inciting incident’ within the first 5 pages of the script.

·      An inciting incident is the thing that kicks off the story. It could be an event or an arrival (like the introduction of Buzz Light Year in Toy Story).

·      Normally in a great film you would find 5 or 6 great moments. This can be called a ‘5 plot

    point structure’.

·      Clip: Inciting Incidents, Supercut – 50 movie moments.

·      Mid – Point: 

This is where the story turns – you think the story is about one thing when actually at the    mid point it turns out to be about something else. E.g. Psycho has a mid point where the story changes from a film about a female robber to a male serial killer. Casablanca’s mid point doesn’t happen exactly in the middle of the film.

·      Pitch 1 & 2: 

    These are heightened moments of tensions

·      Climax: 

    This is when the story turns around. You shouldn’t predict how the story is going to end.

The Plot:

·       A plot is what happens!

·       Story is what keeps your plot together!

·       A good script burns plot! (Don’t take 2 hours to explain something when it can be shown in    2 minutes.)

·       Have lots of plot!

·       If you don’t know your ending, you don’t know your script!

·        Every scene should have a beginning, middle and an end! Just like a script tells a story.

·         A scene shouldn’t be about what the scenes is going to end on!

·         A ‘McGuffan’ is when you tell a story without showing what’s going to happen. 
     The audience point of view is made by their anticipation of what is going to happen.

Endings:

Clip: Shawshank Redemption: Ending.

Clip: Casablanca: ‘Here’s looking at you kid’. ‘The Beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Technical Terms: 

·      Lock in: An Inciting incident

·      A 3^rd Act Twist: This is an ending or a twist in the ending.

·      Teaser: A very short scene that happens before a surprise!

·      A tag: This works on the same principle and happens at the end of the show. Normally after the credits.

Clip: 

Breaking Bad – Los pollos Hermanos – Loading Drugs (A teaser for the show)

Screen Writing 4 with Steve Coombes – Notes – 13/10/14

Dramatic Irony:

·      Video Short – www.mytimes.com ‘A clip from Stand in’ the creators of South Park.

·      Don’t just have your story explained by the phrase, this happens and then this happens

    Make sure there is a ‘this happens, but then this happens, because this has happened,

    therefore this will happen.

·      Clip – Rain Man – 

   ‘I’m an excellent driver’ this clip has an example of ‘Dramatic Irony’. This

    moment is the inciting moment that kick starts the film.

·      A dramatic ironic moment can be described as a truthful moment. It’s when the plot comes

    together at a point.

·      Dramatic Irony is when the words and the actions have a different meaning for the audience

    than for the character. ‘The audience has a greater knowledge of what’s happening than the

    character himself.

·      There are three types of Dramatic Irony: Tragic, Situational and Comic.

·      You set the Dramatic Irony up like a joke. It has three parts. The installation, the execution

     and the resolve.

·      Clip – Gone with the Wind – 1939. (Ending)- 

    ‘Frankly my Dear I don’t give a Damn’.

·      Clip – Cabaret ‘Tomorrow belongs to me’

·      Clip – ‘Lord of the Rings’ – Smeagol Dancing.

·      A guide to creating Dramatic Irony can be followed by thinking about Aphorism’s, Paradox’s and Platitudes.

"Aphorism" is a noun meaning a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation. One famous example of an aphorism is: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

A platitude is a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement, generally directed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease.

A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself and yet might be true.

Situational Irony:

·      Films with examples of situational Irony / comedy are ‘The Wizard of OZ’, The Producers.

·      Clip – ‘Cabaret ‘if you could see her from my eyes’. A situational comedy can be funny but it 

    can arise from something shocking for the audience.

·      A Cornelian dilemma: is a dilemma in which someone is obliged to choose between two 

    courses of action either of which will have a detrimental effect on themselves or on someone 

    near to them. In classical drama, this will typically involve the protagonist experiencing an 

    inner conflict that forces them to choose between love and honour or inclination and duty.

·      Clip – The Producer’s. This is a film about the worst show an audience has ever seen. The 

    comic Irony comes in the line, “Where did I go right?”

·      An impossible decision creates drama.

·      Films to watch with situational and impossible decisions: Sophie’s Choice.

·      Hobson’s choice: This is when you give no choice, It’s a no win situation for your character.

·      There are other such dilemmas such as the ‘Prisoners dilemma’!

·      Clip – Dr Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick. Clip 7 Kong Rides the Bomb.

·      Clip – Dr Strangelove – Living Underground.

·      Clip – Outlaws – By Steve Coombes. Episode 10 ‘Damaged Goods’

·      Clip – Outlaws – Episode 11.

“Put your characters into situations that puts them into contradictory and conflicting situations, to help create those moments we will remember”.    

The Script:
At first it was easy how I wanted it to begin, but then it came to me what I wanted in the middle to the end, I wont lie, I did get stuck at some points. For me it was really hard to get the right formatting and layout of the script just right.
The first draft was a little messy and messy was just an understatement. After my feedback from our screenwriting tutor Steve Combs I set to work on re editing it, I even changed the ending which for me worked with the story which I was quite relieved with. After that the rest came easy by re editing the grammar, spelling corrections, re editing the scene headings, and cleaning up my work. Here is the final result:

Risk Assessment:

What Went Well:
The Filming -
Some of the filming went better than I expected, the weather was on my side, Ben and Dave were concentrating for the whole shoot and some of my cinematography came out quite professional if I do say so myself.

The Story -
The story Was powerful yet funny which I was quite proud of, it even made my screenwriting tutor Steve Combs laugh, which he said was quite rare so to me that meant a lot. But I think what was quite hard to do was be unique, I was thinking to hard about the story, so hard in fact I was brining magic into the story, which often made me think, is this really good material to work with? Especially with the equipment and editing software that we have? I tried to make it a lot simpler so I could make it. Simon, my tutor, told me that he saw a lot of potential for this idea so I decided to keep at it and tried to make the story seem exciting so within the two minutes of the film, it would make you want to watch it.

The Preparation -
What really helped my vision is the storyboards I made and drew to help visualise the way my film was going to look and be shot. Storyboards always help me visualise how I want my film to look. Since I had to focus on the two minutes, I decided to do the first two pages, meaning 1 page equalled 1 minute depending how well the filming went.

I also made sure to get necessary paperwork done like Public release forms for my actors, and the location agreement form for the owner's for the house/ property we were going to be filming in.
Here are a couple of examples, confidential information have been censored:

Release Forms for Actors:

Location Release Form:

The Editing -
Some of the editing process was quite simple for me as I have had some experience with the editing software Final Cut Pro X. The shots were clean and fluent and my personal tutor said that in the end the shot still told a story which I was going for in my film.

I loved the piano room scene when Ben Fleury's charter is playing the piano. it came out better than I expected and I am glad I did all of those shots as it gave me a lot of freedom to do a lot of editing to see in which direction my piano scene could go. Quite a lot of time in that one room when it came to the filming, but it was worth it.

What Didn't Got So Well:

The Filming -
I have to admit when I was shooting the outside scenes there were more cars going past us then I anticipated and the sound of them messed up some of the film process.
There was also a dog that my friend had that would usually make a noise which interrupted a couple of takes, so Ben put the dog in the piano room where the dog was then quiet for the rest of the shoot.

The Story -
Just because my story was good didn't mean script wise it wasn't perfect. I wanted to get more into script writing in this course and this was one of my first experiences of writing a script within a time limit.
When I got my feedback from Steve Combs he said he did enjoy it, but my script was a "little" messy and I really had to clean it up by doing spelling corrections, changes to scenes headings, and some dialogue to the story to make it even better.

The Editing -
My first draft edit was enjoyed by my tutor Simon, but again nothing if perfect first time, so there was some changes I had to make to please him. I think my flaws with the editing was because I was sticking to the brief and trying to make two minutes exactly. Because when I was in college doing media, if we were given a brief with a time a leant of time, we were not aloud to go beyond it otherwise it was considered a fail.


What I would Have Changed:

The Editing/ Filming -
I would like to think I could have changed to a better shot in my final edit with a different angle of Ben Fleury's character when he is cleaning his wardrobe apart from another shot of Death walking down the road again.
I might of considered changing some of the music as well and exploring more of what royalty free music I had and see if anything can more the film more dramatic and moving.

The Story -
I could have also changed the twist need the and bring it more to the middle of the story as my tutor (Steve Combs) suggested, but the way my story was made and the time scale that I had, it was to hard for me to think how and where to bring such a twist more to the middle of the story.


What I would Reconsider Doing Next Time:

The Filming -
Doing more shots in each scene and bringing the camera battery charger next time to do even more filming. So that way when it comes to editing I will have more shot and more freedom to change the scenes however I want, and see if it comes out better than I originally thought, Like the piano scene.

The Story -
When I am writing my scripts, explore more of the software Final Draft and make use of it's spelling and grammar checks. Also try and plan out the story more and refer to some of the notes my screen writing tutor has taught me that could form my story even better and efficiently.