Moving Narrative Evaluation - 18th May - BAFI102

Wednesday 18th May 2016                              Moving Narrative                                Alistar Gall

Written Evaluation - Bloody Stake Out

For this module I had to create a 6-10 page self-contained script, correctly formatted. I decided to research into existing scripts to help format my script, in my case I referred to “The American” which was a screenplay written by Rowan Joffe, based on the novel “ A Very Private Gentleman” by Martin Booth. 

I participated well within the lessons and the exercises that were set. They enabled me to create a protagonist with a goal i.e. Paddy wants to find out what his neighbor Cameron was up too. I then created a protagonist with a setback i.e. Cameron was always on the move, acting shifty and carrying black sacks, a shovel and rope from his house to his car. From the character bio’s I was able to create a dramatic situation using Aristotle’s theory.

I thought about how the beginning, middle and end could be storyboarded for my short film script, possible camera angles, sound and additional dialogue for the content which were developed as the exercises went on i.e. dramatic situation, monologue, 2-3 page script as well as a presentation which I thought was useful as it helped to engage my peers with my idea, deciding around what I could add to make my content a lot more interesting for the reader. The mood Reel helped me to visually portray how I wanted the scenes to look and feel – wrote my script with words that could be seen and heard.

I tried to bring the reader into my scenes as late as possible and finished them as early as possible to make them want to carry on reading. The majority of dialogue can be found at the end of my script, where the protagonist and antagonist finally crossed paths.

Reading back on my character bios I have noticed that I have developed my final script a lot when compared to my first drafts, I have changed the ages, even tinkered with the characters descriptions. I feel like the reading of “Walk the Line” script has played a part in the style of my writing as I feel like I have set my main characters apart, given my script a sense of loneliness, just like in Walk the Line where Joaquin Phoenix’s life continuously goes from good to bad due to the excessive drug taking and drinking, while he’s on tour with his band, he becomes further apart from the other main character Reese Witherspoon.

I now understand how much crafting that a screenwriter would have to do; it takes a lot of time to generate a correctly formatted script, a lot of proof-reading to make sure that everything has the correct punctuation; grammar is the key to a good script as well as the format, a perfectly formatted script will be given a lot more attention unlike a sloppy script - “The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything.” – Ewan McGregor.

On reflection I think it would have been a good idea to get one of my peers to proof-read the script, as feedback has been the key throughout this module to develop my scripts structure.

Here is a link to all of my blog posts for Moving Narrative BAFI102.
http://lukecurnopca.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/BAFI102%20Moving%20Narrative

References

Walk the Line: (2005) directed by James Mangold. 20th Century Fox

Admin (2015) 35 Screenwriting quotes from the masters. Available at: https://screencraft.org/2015/03/28/35-screenwriting-quotes-from-the-masters/ (Accessed: 18 May 2016).