MDA2100 - The Next Step

This is the final version of 'The Next Step', which I have submitted for the MDA2100 Screenwriting project.

The Next Step - Final by

MDA2100 - Idea Change

After trying to redraft the story of 'One Night Only' I have decided to redraft and write the script for another idea I had early on in the project.

My reasons for doing this are that I feel, due to parts of the story being based on personal experiences of myself and friends, too personally attached to certain parts of it, which is, in my opinion, inhibiting me from changing too much of it and carrying on writing to the best of my ability. I do enjoy the idea, but I feel that right now, I am unable to make it a better script, and still keep some of the essence of what I enjoyed about the story in the first place, so I feel it is better for me to start afresh with another idea which I still feel for and which I believe has the ability to be an entertaining and suitable script.

The new idea with the working title 'cold feet' is a story involving a young couple, moving to the next stage of their relationship and spending their first night in the new flat they recently bought.

Returning home from work, the man finds that his girlfriend has cooked a meal for them to celebrate, and is wearing conventional, feminie clothes. This is unlike their real personalities (the conventional, 9-5, working couple), as they are much more bohemian and still young at heart, and neither express their fears of changing and maturing into the real world.

In the night each partner has a dream which explores their unexpressed fear and as they awake the next day, each partner's actions indicate that perhaps a part of their younger self still exists in them.

While I feel the above description doesn't do the story justice, I feel the completed script will be an intriguing story of how people, especially around my age group, are afraid to face the fact that one day they must grow up, and enter the 'real world' and how some people do it even though they are not exacty ready. I plan on using surrealist and almost avant garde ideas and techniques in the dream sequences, which will draw parallels to the now-mundane lives of the couple, and also to use the actions and visuals to express to audiences the character's individual fears which they are too scared to express to one another.

MDA2100 - One Night Only - Full Draft

This is the first fully completed draft for One Night Only.

One Night Only Draft01 by amini93

After presenting the script in University, I had class feedback and received the following tips:

• Dialogue needs to be more subtle, it is too expositional and bulky
• Too much of the story is in the past, brought up and not a major part of the film
• Need more drama - perhaps 'Harry' makes an appearance and adds more of a dramatic climax and adds more to Sean's development
• Perhaps turn the melancholy around in a more obvious way
• Not the best idea to have the feelings shown relying on Sean's explanation of them
• Micromanaging - Too much direction in action and parenthesis
• Actions need to be more succinct, it is too cluttered and slowed down - I need to only mention what is essential to forwarding the story in the script
• Why does this happen to Sean today? - So far it is dramatic convenience
• Nothing in the script so far seems strong enough to 'tip' Sean to change
• Dialogue is too on-the-nose
• To many elipses, hesitations and pauses

MDA2100 - Script - First Scene Draft

This is the first scene draft for 'One Night Only':

One Night Only Scene 01 by

After getting feedback I was pleased with the desired effects: Using minimal dialogue, I had portrayed the fact that the Character of Sean is not living well: he is in a rut and something (related to sleeping with and/or relationships with other men,) is causing his almost-depression.

I used repetitiveness in the characters apathy to portray the rut, and the imagined quick cuts to portray how he seems to be doing the same thing every day.

As shown by his actions with the phone, the story starts 'in the thick of it' meaning that the exposition is implied by the onscreen visuals and not explicitly stated.

I feel happy with the results and hopefully the rest of the story will be as strong as I feel the opening is.

MDA2100 - Treatment

This is the page-long script treatment I read in class, based on the idea for 'One Night Only':

An untidy Central London apartment.

After having his heart broken twice in a short period of time, Sean Ryan has resorted having many meaningless one-night stands with random men and drinking heavily to escape the fact that he hasn’t moved on from his previous heartbreak.

Sean sits in his bed, reading sadly through a text from one of the aforementioned unsuccessful relationships, as an unnamed man leaves his apartment. The state of his apartment, (discarded cans, bottles and plates litter the rooms,) reflect his current lack of passion for anything, or anyone. He looks melancholic, evidently ashamed of what he has done, and dwelling on the sender of the text message. He remains in bed for most of the day, seemingly apathetic to everything.

As darkness descends outside he has a shower and starts drinking, preparing himself for another night, and another meaningless fling. He stands in the shower, as lethargic as he was while in bed. He finishes getting ready for the night out, and after making a downcast toast to his own reflection, he finishes his drink and leaves his home.

Sean returns sometime later, drunk and in the company of Jonah, an Australian tourist he met on the night. They sleep together, and afterwards Jonah falls asleep while Sean lay awake.

Eventually, Sean leaves his bedroom and goes into his kitchen, and after pouring himself another drink, breaks down into tears. Hearing this, Jonah wakes up and comes into the kitchen. He comforts Sean and asks him what is wrong.

His genuine concern throws Sean off his guard, and he begins to talk about his recent heartbreaks and how he’s been having meaningless encounters to cover up his fear of having his heart broken again. At the end of the conversation, Jonah says that it’s a shame he has to go back to Australia soon as there could have been potential in their relationship, had they gone on to get to know each other.

Upon returning to the bedroom the two sleep together again and unlike before, Sean falls asleep afterwards, no longer regretting the encounter.

The next morning, after a pleasant yet nonetheless awkward goodbye, Sean sits in the kitchen, looking at his phone. He picks it up and almost goes to read the messages, as he did at the start, but stops, and puts his phone back on the table. Looking around the apartment, and seeming less apathetic than before, he opens the blinds letting in the morning sun, and revealing a view of the Central London Skyline. He surveys this for a moment, before starting to pick up some of the discarded bottles littering his home. 

The main criticism for this idea is that the ending seems to upbeat, and not realistic enough for the timeframe of a short film (as it seems resolved). A resolved ending, however, was not my intention, and I now agree that the treatment makes the ending seem a lot happier than it should, as I only imagines Sean considering how he could change and maybe making a minor change to represent this.

I will consider this while drafting the script. 

MDA2100 - Step Outline

This is the step outline I have written to go with my pitch idea, 'one night only'.

‘One Night Only’

1.       Sean lies in his bed looking at his phone as an unnamed, man leaves his bedroom, he re-reads the text he received, stating the end of a relationship, and with an almost resigned reaction, closes his eyes and tries to sleep.

2.       Sean is in the shower, vacant look, as he gets ready for another night out. He contemplates texting the boy who broke up with him earlier, even starts writing a message, but he deletes it and continues getting ready.

3.       He comes back from the club with Jonah. They passionately kiss and drunkenly start to sleep with each other.

4.       Waking in the middle of the night, Sean goes into his kitchen, and has a drink, starting to cry, as he thinks about how the meaningless encounters aren’t helping him.

5.       Hearing the crying, Jonah comes in and they begin to talk about Sean’s history with men and why he has so many meaningless, drunken encounters.

6.       Towards the end of the conversation, Jonah says it’s too bad he has to go back to Australia, as after getting to know Sean more, he sees they could have been good together.

7.       Jonah leaves and Sean sits, contemplating recent actions. He slowly starts to clean his messy flat, tidying away bottles and seems more hopeful, and happier as a person. 

MDA2100 - Pitch Idea

This is the pitch idea I read out in class as part of our assignment:

‘One Night Only’

                ‘One Night Only’ is a romantic drama detailing the start of the repair of a heart, not the usual two hearts joining together.

                Almost a cross between 2011’s ‘Weekend’, with certain, more serious elements from the rom com ‘Friends with Benefits’

Sean, the protagonist, is a single, 21 year old Gay man who lives in London, who after having his heart broken twice in the past year has resorted to drinking and meaningless flings to get the attention he craves. His main goal is, actually to find someone who will love him and treat him with affection. His obstacles are the fact that as a person, he puts more into relationships and gets feelings for others quicker and more than they do, even if they aren’t usually 100% into the relationship like he is. This being why he gets heartbroken in the first place, he tries to deal with it by having meaningless flings, (his situation during the start of the film), though this is an obstacle, as while he gets ‘attention’, he doesn’t get the love and emotional attachment he really wants.

                It is only when he meets Jonah, an Australian 23 year old, travelling in London and they share one of Sean’s usual nights together, that they start talking about Sean’s life, and how he doesn’t, once they start talking, seem like the person who would usually do this. After talking they begin to share a bond, and it is when, during the next day, that Jonah declares it’s too bad he has to go back to Australia, because they could have had something special, that Sean has a revelation about his life, realising that the meaningless flings are only giving him short-term satisfaction, and not the emotional love he really wants. Realising he shouldn’t be doing this as it’s not helping him, he starts clearing up his flat (and life), leaving the prospect open that while not having meaningless flings, he will look for something more serious and perhaps take things slower and differently than he usually does.

                The story is more the Ritual Occasion structure, because while Sean seeks meaning flings, his obstacles were initiated mainly due to having his heart broken by somebody else, not something he directly did, and it is only the events initiated by Jonah which bring about the small realisation about what he has been doing and leave the future open for change. 

MDA2100 - Week 3

This week we looked at the Genre of 'Comedy'

I had never really studied or worked on comedy in depth, so I enjoyed the opportunity to see the theory behind a genre which you wouldn't usually think about in a 'scholarly' way
We looked at the 4 different types of comedy: (Superiority, Incongruity, Ambivalence and Release) and the way in which they are explored in films and even gained from everyday situations. The idea of a Payoff and Setup also was put across as being important within the genre.

One of the films we saw was 'Desserts' starring Ewan Mcgreggor, in which a man was hooked while on a beach and dragged into the sea. While the film had possibly deep themes of man's effects on the environment, I thought it was a funny, if morbid film (and morbid humour is always fun to be honest). The ideas of Superiority and Incongruity are where the humour was generated: Spectators felt superior to the character as he fell for the fish's trick, and the events were incongruous, as it is usually a fish getting hooked, not a man).

We then watched George Lucas in Love, which was a short, rom-com which generated comedy from using the traits of well-known Star Wars characters to generate humour, in showing a possible, unrealistic way in which George Lucas gained inspiration for the story. This was an example of 'exclusive' comedy, in which only people who understand certain aspects will get jokes. This could also in a way indicate superiority, as you get a joke other people may not.

In the afternoon workshop, we discussed turning our own experiences into stories, pitches, and how to write a pitch.

I found the own experiences aspect interesting, as it was useful to see how as you have been part of that experience, you may be almost biased in your thinking of an idea, and it was useful to see how other people responded to those ideas. We then had to make up a story idea based on one of the other people's experiences. This was interesting, as you really had to consider other people's views and how they may have been affected by an experience, and you had to get out of your own mindset and step into anothers shoes, which is a useful skill for when you write an idea based on an other person's life, for example.

MDA2100 - Week Two

In the second week we looked at personal experiences, memories, emotions, and how your own life itself (pretty much) can be turned into a story which you can adapt into a short film.

I found it very interesting when we talked about how emotions (such as love) form part of human experience and can form the basis of a story idea, such as how Love normally drives the subplot of a film (i.e. the romance in 'Witness', a particular favourite example of Middlesex Tutors).

I also found how each of the four primal emotions (Happiness, Sadness, Fear and Anger) can effect characters and story in strong ways, particularly interesting. When you think about it, they form the basis for characters' identities, their actions and stories and plots in almost every film you can think of.
The emotions all affect characters in different ways:

• Happiness - Brings a character 'up', often tied in with the character's goal (i.e. happiness from love, or achieving their goal)
• Sadness - Brings the character 'down', (often tied in with the character's failures)
• Anger - Drives a character forwards, urging them to further achieve their goal (e.g. the death of the yoda-like figure in the 'hero's journey' story structure can instill the character with a desire for vengeance assuring that they will be able to achieve their goal)
• Fear - Pushes a character backwards, hindering them, usually entwined with an aspect of their past which the character has to overcome in order to successfully achieve their goal (e.g. in the final addition to the Harry Potter series, Harry has to overcome fear of death, which gives him the power to defeat his enemy)

In the two films we watched in the seminar (Lynne Ramsay's 'Gasman' and John Giwa-Amu's 'Barrie the Barber') the ideas of emotions and experience driving characters and their story's became relevant (i.e. in Gasman, the young girl realising her father has another daughter, and her realisation that she must accept that, and in Barrie the Barber, the eponymous Barrie realising that dwelling on the past isn't doing him any good).

As evident in both films, there is no major change, it just becomes clear that the character has had a realisation and will probably (but in the case of Barrie, maybe not definitely,) make a change in the way they are in the future. 

Personally, I find the endings to these films (in which the story is not 'resolved' so to speak, it is just set up for the path of resolution) much more poignant and impacting than if the film had had a clear resolution. This, I think, is possibly because the fact that the characters' journeys aren't over, (they have changed and are possibly beginning), means that the spectator still identifies with the character's journey, (as their story is not yet resolved,) so they still have the character on their minds and feels for their story, meaning that even though the film is short, it still has as much an impact on the audience, as it could have done had it been feature-length. 

In the workshops we were given a writing task in which we wrote in constant prose without thinking too much about it, a scenario involving a character, and then we had to answer questions (in a similar writing style) about the character. This was a particularly interesting exercise, as I had never really thought about a characters motives in as much depth as I did for that exercise. 

After answering the question we were then asked to write the prose story in a screenplay format. Given the understanding of the character's feelings, past and motives, I found it much easier to translate her as a person in the specific situation to her actions within the script. 

My story, a noir-esque revenge story, in which a widow sought revenge against those who killed her husband, was given a whole depth by my considering the character's feelings, emotions and motives. In the exercise I found it much easier to script a character's actions when I knew them as in-depth as I did this particular character. 

MDA2100: First Assignment

This is the story I wrote for the first task, it has the 'Ritual Occasion' short film structure:


               Rose, a twenty-two year old magazine intern is running out of a London Underground station. She is meeting with her boyfriend of two years , Jason for lunch; running late, she texts him, also apologising for already having cancelled their dinner plans the night before at short notice, due to extra work needing to be done at the magazine. Understandably, her boyfriend isn’t happy when he arrives, and after having to endure half an hour of her lunch-break being an awkward, heated discussion, Jason ends their relationship, stating that Rose hasn’t got her priorities in order and that she cares more about her job than the relationship. He doesn’t listen to Rose’s arguments that she works a lot now to pay off in the future. With one last look at her as he leaves the café, and with an hour of her break left, alone, Rose breaks down in tears.
                A waiter at the café, seeing the girl alone, crying pays for two cups of tea and sits down at the table with her, asking what’s wrong. Rose, who is not used to people in London acting this way, is surprised but appreciative, and explains about how her career has been causing some strain on her relationship and she supposes Jason finally had enough. They talk for a while, moving off the subject of Jason, and as the time for Rose to leave arrives, the waiter leaves her his phone number, saying that he knows it’s too soon after Jason for any sort of relationship, but if she ever needs to talk to a friend, she knows where to find him. As she leaves, feeling down still, but surprisingly optimistic, Rose decides she might have a night off work later in the week, to have some time to herself. 

While as a film, I feel this tale-of-morality in a nutshell story may be a tad boring, It demonstrates the aspects of a short film and the ritual occasion structure.
were the story scripted, the fact that Rose is a workaholic would perhaps be shown by the character looking flustered and busy, perhaps implied by her cancelling the date via the phone.
While she doesn't actively do anything, the inciting incident would be her boyfriend breaking up with her, (something which happens to her), and the waiter approaches her, she does nothing.
There are also only three main characters, and there are no major plot changes, or high stakes.
The ending of the story is also similar to the typical short film, as while she doesn't explicitly change, she considers taking a night off work, which while a small action, implies that in the future she may change.
While I probably won't take this idea as far as making it my final idea, I feel confident in knowing that I can create characters and stories which can be applied to the short film.

MDA2100 - Week One

In the first MDA2100 Session the main focus was covering the Hollywood Restorative three-act-structure of films we first encountered in the first year's Storytelling for the Screen module.
It was initially useful to recap this, as a summer away gives a lot of time to get your head cleared of anything useful, and I also found it interesting how the Restorative Film Structure can be tweaked and applied to the structure of the short film (a type of film which I have never really studied theoretically).
These are characteristics of most short films and the ways in which the restorative film structure can be applied to the genre:

• Sub-Plots are pretty much (but not always) non-existant
• The exposition is not shown on-screen
• The film starts with the inciting incident
• Brief establishment of the Status-Quo
• Characters kept to a minimum
• Development is shorter
• 3rd act may be very short
• Turning points are not as impacting or reversive
• The plot is not as frantic as a feature film
• They cover only a short period of time
• A Short Story to the Novel is analogous to the Short Film and a Feature Film
• Not enough time to get 'into' a character so radical character development is not believable
• Unity of action is present
• Often but not always both a protagonist and antagonist
• Lower key conflict
• Characters are less goal-driven
• The stakes are not as high

We then watched 'The Lunch Date' (U.S. 1990) and mapped the story onto the three-act-structure.
It was interesting how the story, while initially seeming too short, could be applied to the Hollywood structure and as discussed beforehand, certain characteristics, such as the Third Act being much shorter, and the stakes not being as high were evident. I also found it interesting, how even though the film was only around ten minutes in length, there were still deep-running themes (race and class division, prejudice) and character traits (prejudice and 'self-righteousness' almost), exposition and personality aspects which were shown visually in the actions. Were it a short film, these aspects could be stated, but due to the time 'limit' they were visually implied. This definitely intrigued me and got me thinking about how I could put across themes and aspects of a film visually, given a short time constraint.

In the afternoon workshop with another David, we once again discussed the differences and characteristics which make Short films different to feature films, and then we thought about places from which we get ideas/inspiration:

• The World around you
• 'Stories'
• Cultural Stories
• Myths
• Legends
• Fables
• Fairytales
• Experience
• Your own
• The experience of others (from an objective point of view)
• Additionally, it is important to know what you write
• Dreams
• Things you overhear
• The News
• Other places or 'things' you experience daily whether direct or not

We then did an exercise in which on the spot, we came up with a character, and wrote about their external (physical) and internal (i.e. personality) traits. This ended up being a lot more difficult than I though, as I had never really thought that in depth about a character's personality before, and I found it especially difficult to do on the spot.

After this, we watched the French film 'Gare du Nord', and discussed the 'Journey' and 'Ritual Occasion' structure of short film.

as the 'Journey' structure was the one I had encountered the most previously, I was really intrigued by the idea of the Ritual Occasion film, in which a character doesn't actively seek a goal, until an event happens to them. 'Gare du Nord' was a Ritual Occasion film, as the woman, while dissatisfied with her life didn't do anything to change it, until the man encountered her. As it is a short film no large change happens, but given her shock at the random man's suicide, whether he was real or imagined, it is implied that she may be, for example, more spontaneous in the future. Or, possibly, the ending is more melancholic and the moral could be that if you don't take a chance when it comes along, you could be stuck in a rut forever. 

I also enjoyed the fiarytale/dreamlike quality the film had once the woman left her apartment and encountered the man.