goosebot:

 

If you’re not already, follow new Screenwriting tool @sceneheadings on Twitter. Original and inspiring Scene headings every day.

 
Inspiration, begin!

This is the image I use when I write Deb. She is pretty, but stern. My Deb would perhaps not wear such dark lipstick, at least not until things get serious with Job, because until then there hasn’t been anybody to impress for nine years. 

On our way to day one of shooting Let Me Go at the pier. Should be a full but fairly straight forward day. Got all my little forms and papers. Bring it on.

An updated Character Biography for Phineas.

Who They Are: Phineas is a 13 year old, scruffy boy. He is a little short and underweight for his age with thick, knotted hair.

Phineas is an only child and lives at home with his Mother, the extent of their family reaches about as far as their fat old housecat and no further. His father died some nine years previously, having drowned whilst filming a documentary in the rough sea. Phineas, witnessing the death, has understandably been left a little messed up, now extremely uncomfortable with getting wet. He avoids baths and showers, swimming and even the rain.

Despite his notable apprehension around water, Phineas adores fish and other marine life, keeping countless fish tanks in his bedroom which he insatiably maintains with relish. With a couple of precautions in place to ensure he stays dry, Phin lives for these fish, revisiting his father’s natural life documentaries over and over desperate to be part of that world. This admiration has resulted in Phineas adopting his father’s old woolly hat and taking it down to the brook where he tries to film wildlife regularly with no real success. The problem with becoming an oceanographer whilst also surrendering to his phobia has not escaped Phineas.

Phin goes to a small school in a small rural town where he hasn’t anything remotely like a friend. The other boys are filling out, their voices dropping and scrawny Phineas is more often ignored than included.

Phineas is a smart enough boy, he does his homework without having to be prompted and has a stable relationship with his Mother, however whilst the loss of his father, her husband, seems to constantly hang in the house, they rarely talk openly about it. Phineas, having no social life, spends a great deal of time in his room, rereading books on the ocean and talking to his many varying fish. A habit that has his mother a little concerned.

The last time Phin really remembers being happy, when nothing could get him down, was as a child on his father’s boat. He wants to recreate that good feeling and almost carry on his father’s work by aspiring to follow in his footsteps. It is common in this small town for people to grow up never looking past the limitations of their parents jobs. The sons of policemen become policemen. The daughters of doctors become doctors. Phineas really just needs someone to talk to, and someone who will talk back. He can’t really talk openly about his father with his mother; because he is afraid it will upset her. The staff school are made up of semi-retired spinsters and old fashioned academics that seem to have never left school. He isn’t comfortable talking to them.

I’m constantly throwing Feature/TV concepts around in my head, and wanted to ask:

out of interest, guys, if You were setting up a completely self-sufficient community of over 100 people, what would you consider important to include. e.g. Pubs, Schools, Power, Agriculture?

 What could your town or village not survive without?

This is what Wikipedia has to say on script supervising:

A script supervisor (also called Continuity Supervisor) is a member of a film crew responsible for maintaining the motion picture’s internal continuity and for recording the production unit’s daily progress in shooting the film’s screenplay. The script supervisor credit typically appears in the closing credits of a motion picture.

Normally we have had the editors on set to preform this task, but they’ll be cutting as we shoot for the continuous drama so I have offered my services. Think I’ll get a clip board and just learn the script inside out. 

Deb and her new Boyfriend.

Deb has been single for around nine years by the beginning of the film. Has she been out with anyone since then? If so how did those dates go? If not, then what has been stopping her?

I think Deb could potentially be worried about upsetting Phineas, and he has grown up used to the idea that she could never be with anyone other than his father. When Phineas begins to suspect that she is seeing another man he should be suitably conflicted. Initially I think he will struggle with the information, perhaps lashing out although more likely he will retreat further into himself.

                I imagine Phin would try to deal with this internally and choose not to voice his emotions, however this isn’t great for drama and so potentially allowing this friction to boil over could help to engage the audience.

                Would Deb be secretive? Would she sneak around? Probably not, however I think it should be the case that she never parades him around, she is afraid of confrontation with her son, surely, he is really all she has left whilst the prospective new relationship is developing.

Interesting Moments in this subplot:

·         Phineas suspecting Deb is up to something.

·         Phineas meeting the Man for the first time (does he know he is a romantic friend of his mother’s? He is old enough to figure that out).

·         This new guy interacting with Phin and his fish. (Good opportunity to show how closely Phin guards his fish tanks.

·         Deb telling Phin she likes the man?

·         Phin telling Deb he doesn’t like the man?

·         Bonnie mistaking the man for Phin’s father. (Phin wouldn’t like this and it would allow Phin to go into his backstory).

·         Phin seeing the pair kissing? Maybe put this just after the montage and move Jazz’s attack further back.

·         Would this chap have any part in the conclusion of the story? Probably not present during the finale or else he would step in and deny Phin his chance to shine, maybe he HAS A SCOOTER! Maybe they take it from him during the conclusion so that they can get to the stream in time. This guy could catch them trying to get away and offer his bike. Or offer something that would help them on their way and help Phin soften up to him.

I’m spending a lot of time looking at Monologues at the moment. I think, when done properly, they really express what a specific character is all about. Here is one from Gondry’s The Science of Sleep:

 ”P. S. R. Parallel Synchronized Randomness. An interesting brain rarity and our subject for today. Two people walk in opposite directions at the same time and then they make the same decision at the same time. Then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it. Basically, in a mathematical world these two little guys will stay looped for the end of time. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe and it’s right behind the nose.”

On the surface this tells us nothing about who the character is, but between the lines, it’s so Stéphane.

Writing a feature can be difficult and boring at times and immensely rewarding at others.

I was just experiencing a bit of a dip in creativity then I got a chance to use the phrase ‘Hurriedly hushes’ which was a lot of fun.

I don’t know why I thought Writing a feature would be easy!

Even when I have a good Character, a good setting, a good idea of where everyone starts and where everyone ends up, a grasp of the theme of the piece and a crib sheet for plotting each sequence it’s still incredibly difficult to figure out what people actually do and why.

This is the spine of the script, the boring stuff! Heavens knows how manage things like the specific dialogue and making genuinely dramatic sequences!

Sleep = Optional

Coffee = Mandatory.

Bonnie is an intelligent and confident young mixed race woman.

She is a new student at Phineas’ high school and immediately attracts attention from everyone in the class despite not really caring about making any friends.

Bonnie wants to be a writer, she enters into a creative writing competition for adults but is massively uninspired by the quiet and uneventful town she has moved to. That is until she comes across Phineas. To her, Phin is such an oddball that she finds him fascinating and believes he will be the perfect subject and inspiration for her piece of creative writing.

She latches herself onto the boy, often playing around with his emotions or cruelly forcing him out of his comfort zone in order to see how he reacts. She kisses him, makes him cry, and publicly humiliates him and everything in between. In this sense, she is far more concerned with how her work is progressing than whether or not she is actually upsetting the protagonist.

As things stand, Bonnie is struggling to prove her worth and is furious at being filed under the same heading as the idiots ‘children’ she shares a class with. She doesn’t subscribe to any of the typical high school girl politics despite being very pretty and drawing the attention of her new class mates.

Maybe she’d look something like this (only slightly younger)