{"id":6727,"date":"2018-02-23T22:35:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T22:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/?p=6727"},"modified":"2018-03-16T15:29:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T15:29:54","slug":"week-four-screenwriting-history-and-a-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/2018\/02\/23\/week-four-screenwriting-history-and-a-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Week four: Screenwriting history and a deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I’ve written my first treatment. Previously I have been so eager to get writing the script I have forgone these stages of script documentation which are both methodical and sensible steps to take in planning a story. And it has meant that I’ve dived head first into a script where my understanding of where I am going to take my characters is sketchy at best. This time I am very sure I have a structure for my story. I know, in the main, what is going to happen in each scene and that feels exciting and liberating because now I can place my characters there and let things play out. I feel that if I am not worrying about where this is going<\/em> I can think more about how it gets there<\/em> – the details, the bits that make it feel honest.<\/p>\n

I’ve shown my treatment to several friends (okay, not the most critical audience) but I wanted to ensure that the visuals of the piece worked. Everyone has come back saying they had a clear image of who the characters were, the environment they lived in, and how the story played out. <\/p>\n

It’s interesting to think what this short might have looked like as a scenario from the era of M\u00e9li\u00e8s’ Le Voyage dans la lune<\/em>. I don’t think the complexity of the human drama would have been effective, so the nuance of the story as I see it would be lost, but the fundamental events would be clearly communicated, and easily demarcated within a simplistic scenario.<\/p>\n

In the future it would be good to see the screenwriter being an active component of the film set in the same way that other creatives are; in the same way as playwrights are. Able to edit and respond to changing creative landscapes, input on casting and location, perhaps to have greater influence over the end product. A Writer\/Director already has this ability, but the traditional model is that the Screenwriter hands over to the Director and thus it becomes the Director’s work. Which seems a shame given the collaborative nature of the film making. Yes, the writer’s work must be done predominantly before production begins, and I suppose there is some crossover \u2013 some arena for conflict \u2013 when a writer and director, both with strong ideas on how the film should look and both invested in its success, are both heavily involved in a project through production. In creative advertising the writer and art director work as a team, develop ideas and see them through to fruition together. It would be great if film could evolve the role of the writer to emulate that.<\/p>\n

One thing I am becoming aware of is the ambiguous nature of screenwriting documentation. Different people have different definitions of the same document, or a different name for something which is essentially the same. For some, a treatment is a scene by scene, prose version of the story. I have also seen this described as an outline. I’ve also seen the treatment described as a document which should be produced after the writing of the script, as a tool to explain your screenplay. Even scripts are not standard. Some shows have a specific way they want their script formatted.<\/p>\n

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This entry forms a part of my MA Writing for Script and Screen Reflective Journal.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I’ve written my first treatment. Previously I have been so eager to get writing the script I have forgone these stages of script documentation which are both methodical and sensible steps to take in planning a story. And it has meant that I’ve dived head first into a script where my understanding of… Continue reading Week four: Screenwriting history and a deadline<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[137,116],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6727"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6799,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6727\/revisions\/6799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wefloat.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}