Notes of the first week.

• All assignments to be written in present tense
• 3rd person point of view
• Visual voice

First person:
E.g. I pick up the gun

Second person:
E.g. you pick up the gun

Third person:
E.g. he picks up the gun

Why and when do we use present tense?
Directions and scripts

The person who is doing it, tells everyone of what we must do at the moment

• The written voice
Uses weak verbs
Tells what’s happening in the character’s head
Distances the reader from the story

• The visual voice
Uses strong action verbs
Shows action
Uses an immediate sentence structure
Conveys the story in a lively manner

• Passive voice
E.g. the sky was blue with a lot of white clouds

Changed to visual voice:

Just decorate it with words.
Add some action
Do wonders by adding life

TIPS FOR WRITING.

• If you have a work in progress, never stop for the night if you are stuck
• Always solve the problem and keep going until you are in safer water. A good night’s sleep is important. Sleeping on problems is a myth
• If you can’t get started on a project, start writing anyway. To do this you have to have some words to type
• It doesn’t matter what you write. You’ll soon begin to think and move in your own rhythm/ pace.

Notes of the second week

The role of conflict.

Conflict is the central feature of the screenplay
- Man against man
- Man against the environment
- Man against self

It’s variations of sex, age, religion and culture, which provide variety to the conflict

Conflict = change
- Change is common to everyone
- Change is universal
- Bodies changing
- Seasons change
- Lives change
- Relationships change
- Feelings change
- Locations change
- Technologies change

*As universal as change may be, people often resist it for fear of the unknown
*People must learn to cope with change if they want to survive
*The action in drama depends on conflict

Conflict:
Definition = Opposition of persons or forces
- It is the interaction of opposing ideas, interests, or wills and creates the plot
- Plot cannot be constructed without conflict
- As your characters attempt to reach their goals, they come into conflict with one another
- The end of the story nears when the protagonist and the antagonist approach their goals and the conflict rises to generate maximum suspense and excitement

Notes of week 4

Definition of tragedy
It is an imitation of an action (mimesis) that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, in the form of action not narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its kartharsis of such emotions.

According to Aristotle, tragedy…
- Creates a cause and effect chain that clearly reveals what may happen
- Arouses not only pity but also fear, because members of the audience can imagine themselves within the cause and effect change

6 parts of tragedy:
1) Plot
2) Characters
3) Thought
4) Diction
5) Melody
6) Spectacle

1) Plot
What is plot?
- Plot is the arrangement of incidents
- It is not the story itself. It is the way it is being presented to the audience.
- The structure of the play

Beginning
- The incitive moment
- Must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow end

Middle
- Climax
- It must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it

End
- Resolution
- Must be the preceding events but not lead to other incidents
- The end should resolve the problem created during the incitive moment

Episodic plots (nothing to do with the rest of the movie eg. Napoleon dynamite)
- According to Aristotle, the worse kinds of plots
- The acts (episodes) succeed one another without the probability or necessity
- The only thing tying together the events in such a plot is the fact that they happen to the same person

Simple VS complex plots
Simple plots => only a “change of fortune”
Complex plots => have a reversal of intention “peripeteia” and recognition “anagnorisis” connected with the catasthrope. (Things have changed – something that worked one way now works another way)

2) Character
- Character supports plot
- Personal motivations are connected to the cause and effect chain
- In the ideal tragedy, the protagonist will mistakenly bring about his own downfall – not because he is sinful or weak – but because he does not know enough.
- This lack of self-knowledge is called “harmatia”

• Katharsis – emotional release experienced by audience
• Mimesis – imitation of the real world in art and literature
• Anagnorisis – moment of recognition
• Perepeteia – the turning point in a drama (good to bad)
• Hamaria – lack of self-knowledge (goes away when anagnorisis occurs)

3) Act structure
- Advantage of working in 3 act structure is it breaks down the story and makes it more manageable

*1st act: set up
- Story begins with goal-orientated character introduced at a point of crisis
- The characters meet roadblocks produced by the plot and antagonist
- someone wants something and it’s hard to get it (most movies)

*2nd act: confrontation
- Action intensifies
- An event happens which forces the character to make his/her choice

*3rd act: resolution
- Level of efforts rises to new heights
- Both plot and character is resolved
- But main character either achieves or does not achieve his goal

Writing for an audience

Screenwriter = storyteller

The cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audience’s emotional reaction to that reaction.

- Director to a person
- Writer to a person
- Camera to a person

It’s actually people to people

What is the writer’s purpose?
To connect:
- Themselves
- Their unique vision
- The material
- The drama
- Others
*Audience wants to be transported by a screenplay.

Where do you look for a story?
- Inside yourself

-Everything to learn about other people is already in you.

-Now you need to figure out how to connect to it.

Experience:
Storytelling tool #2

- All people have fragments of stories
- These potential ideas prompt your desire to know more
- Respond emotionally and intellectually to what you have heard
- Good stories are born in the heart, not the head
- Remember the role of the audience
- After all, you are the audience

Storytelling #3: memory
- Your memory is a wonderful cabinet of past incidents which you have experienced or been told.
- These memories are points of references to your own past events
- Memories are filtered by time (eg. Letter to the past)

Dialogue

*Dialogue reveals character.
- A character talking about  themselves
- Other people talk about the character

*Dialogue establishes relationships between characters.
- Characters express attitudes and opinions that are in opposition to one another
- Good effective dialogue will move the story forward

*Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience
- It conveys essential exposition
- Characters will talk about what happened, establishing the story line

*Dialogue ties the script together

Common mistakes

*Dialogue should be used sparingly, never telling the audience what they can see for itself.
- Dialogue is no substitute for action

*Dialogue should not match conventional spoken dialogue, “real talking”.

Points to remember
• Film is a visual medium
• A script is a story told in pictures

Character
• A story starts with a character

The character is…
- The heart, the soul and the nervous system of your story

- It is through your characters that the viewers

- It is through your characters that they are touched

- Without character, you have no action

- Without action, you have no conflict

- Without conflict, you have no story

-Without story, you have no screenplay

When developing a character, ask yourself:
- Who is my character?
- What does my character want?
- What is my character’s quest?
- What dives my character to the resolution of the story?