Find ideas around you - Independent study

Find ideas around you
Ideas for film scripts can be found all around you. Here are five different places to find inspiration and ideas that you may not have thought of. 

Task:
Choose three to kick-start an idea and then develop them using the 5 Ws.
Bring in your written up developed story idea and the original piece of inspiration. 

Deadline: Start of the lesson, Tuesday 18th of Dec.
Any issues? deh@thomasadams.net

Rewrite a scene from a story that you like.
Choose an unimportant and certainly not ‘iconic’ scene from a favorite book, comic or video game. Make sure that you adapt the story and characters so that it suits the tone of your film or genre but also add new elements or unique changes that make the scene that little bit more important.

Be a spy.
This one might not be for everyone, but a classic movie-trope, a spy trying to find out information. When out in public be mindful of people around you. Can you see someone who looks interesting or looks like there might be more to them than what you can see? If they were a character in your chosen genre, would they be the protagonist, a love interest or maybe a classic villain? Keep an ear out also; being respectful and polite, conversations of other people can be fascinating starting points for ideas. Catching the middle of a chat could be an interesting prompt for your story as can a group of people chatting away. Being respectful and polite is key here though. 

Check your emails.
Find junk or spam email. Use it to form the basis of a story by imaging that you are the person sending the email and that it’s a genuine call for help or advert for a miracle product. Or, you could consider what happened if you replied and it turned out to be genuine, or if replying to the email did something to you or your computer.

Use Facebook.
Have a look at Facebook, choose a photo of someone you don’t know well and imagine them as a character in your chosen genre. For example, if you were creating a science fiction film for example, could this be the last photo they took before trying a time travel machine for example? If you’re creating a teenage film, maybe this is a photo they used for their school year book-why was this photo so significant? The idea here is to not use your ‘friend’ and their real life, instead to use your imagination in the chosen genre and to use the photo as a spark of an idea to develop a story from. And make sure that you don’t use their real name.

Rewrite the news.
Find a news story, it could be about absolutely anything. Now twist the details so that it fits the generic conventions of the genre you’re working in. Changing the setting is probably the easiest way to start; a story about a robbery in a bank might not be that interesting, but it becomes a story about a robbery of a fuel storage facility on Mars, it suddenly becomes the basis for an interesting science fiction story for example

Burroughs’ ‘cut-up’ method - Independent Learning Task

William S Burroughs on writing and cut-ups

Chance and random elements often jog our creativity. That’s why many writers who have writer’s block Google ‘story generators’ or ‘writing prompts’. The American author William S. Burroughs would take a text and cut it into strips of individual words and phrases, then rearrange them at random to create new sentences.

Aleatory (using chance and random elements to find new ideas) techniques have yielded interesting results throughout literary history. The French group of writers, OuLiPo, used made up constraints to write inventive novels. For example, Georges Perec wrote his novel La Disparation without using the letter ‘e’ (the most common in the French language). This constraint forced the author to find ideas and phrases beyond habit.

Task:
Get an old, battered second-hand book. Cut up a few pages into strips of words and phrases with a pair of scissors. Jumble these up and place some at random on a page (or choose your options more carefully). Does a line or phrase (or strange pairing) spark a story idea? Do a load.

Bring in your stuck down lines of inspiration and evidence of at least one that has been developed into an interesting story idea.
Use the 5W's to help develop your ideas fully. 

Deadline: Start of the lesson, Tuesday 11th December

Screenplay a first Page

Screenplay a first Page   https://www.livewritethrive.com/category/first-pages/

Legend Screenplay

http://screenplays15.universalpictures.com/legend/Legend_Screenplay.pdf

Extra help for Bladerunner question

Ridley Scott Homework

Exam question (just FYI): Compare how far your chosen films reflect the auteur signature features of their filmmakers. [40]
The exam question will ask you to take into account Ridley Scott's Bladerunner. 
Watch the youtube clip above and - more importantly - read THIS essay. Make notes using this grid as a guide.

Quizlet cards HERE

Generating Story Ideas - Independent Learning

A Creative Box. 
Creating the spark that enables creating a story requires inspiration; creating a box of possible inspirations can help in developing the basis of an idea or story.

Completing this task provides a framework for the collection of a range of objects and materials that could provide that creative inspiration. 

This can then be used in two ways; either by collecting all objects and ideas from a group to produce one larger box that anyone can select any ideas from. The second method is to create one smaller box per person that each individual can use as and when they need.

The objects and materials are:
• Two famous paintings that you like or admire.
• A local news story.
• A national news story.
• An international news story.
• A story about someone in your family from either the past or present.
• A dramatic story from you when you were younger.
• Lyrics from a favourite song.
• A strange object you’ve found or a photo of a strange object that someone else has found.

Of course, the possibilities here are endless and it’s encouraged to think of many other possible objects and materials. 

With your ideas, mind-map some ideas. Explore and develop key ideas. Mix ideas up. When making notes, consider vital aspects of the film idea such as location, characters, conflicts and key moments.

You should return to class with your collection of objects and at least one developed idea for a possible story. 
Use the 5W's to help develop your ideas fully. 

Independent learning task. Deadline: Tuesday 4th of Dec

Screenplay Tips

Story / Screenplay / Cinematography

Story - is what the director is trying to tell the audience. It is the plot. Well, almost. It is like saying "I was on way home from the office today and met a cop on the way. As we were talking, someone shot him. Being scared that they would kill the witness too, I shot off from the place instantly, and panicked my way home." (the plot could be, whether the guys who killed the cop, manage to catch the witness, or whatever.)

Screenplay - is how the director wants to tell the story, to the audience. It is how the story plays out - the scenes, their order and their style. What is revealed, and when? He can first show the guy panicking at his own doorstep, looking around, hiding, trembling as he slowly crawls his way inside. Then it gets into a flashback, and shows the shooting, and the guys chasing him, and how he manages to reach home safe, or otherwise.

Cinematography - is how the director wants to show the screenplay. It is about how the scenes play out - their shots, their lightings and their movements. It is about how the guy crawls, it is about how he looks around... it is every shot that is included that brings to the audience the emotion that is needed in that *moment* from that scene.

(note that I say the director wants because it is his ship at the end of the day. whatever the cinematographer brings to the table, is null and void if the director brushes it off.)

Let's take Memento.

Story - how a man, who has a certain memory issue, kills the man who killed his wife.

Screenplay - Let the man's present condition be shown, and then show what he had done, before coming here. And then before. And then before that. And so on.

Cinematography - Apart from just the camera, the lens, the angles used in every scene, the Black and White treatment here is an additional way to visually tell the story (this may have been the director's vision, but how this is executed, or brought into reality, into 'shots', is the cinematographer's imagination.)

Screenplay task - Legend

 
Watch the short scene from the beginning of Legend. Write (and the type) a minute and a half of the screenplay using the correct conventions. 
Next, read the original screenplay and see how close yours is.

Elements of a screenplay.

The first formatting element is the scene heading – also dubbed the slug line. Screenplays written in the master scene format are broken into scenes not cuts. The scene headings are written in all caps, as well as INT or EXT for Interior or exterior. This is followed by the name of the location and a designation of day or night.

The next element is action. This should describe action that can be seen or heard.  Sounds Effects that are important to the story but are heard off screen need to be in ALL-CAPS.

Next we have Character name. This has it’s own line in ALL caps. A character who is off screen or speaking in voiceover should be designated by O.S. or V.O.

Parentheticals provide context or instruction for the dialogue delivery. These should be used sparingly so as not to reduce the readability of the script.

Next, dialogue blocks are offset from everything else and centered on the page.  Parallel dialogue (overlapping dialogue) is written in side-by-side blocks.

The final element is the scene transition. These should be used sparingly as well.  Readability is key!

Independent Study - Short Film Analysis

Now that you have watched all of the required short films, it is time to look back and recap over a few key points about their construction and reception. 
Over the next 3 weeks during independent study time, you will complete a detailed analysis of each of the 5 films. 

Use the SHORT FILM ANALYSIS helpsheet to allow you to structure your responses. Answer the 'Core questions' and 'Focus On Narrative' parts for each film.
Use at least 1 page for each film. Create a neat title and include still(s) from the film. Feel free to create these digitally, but more than anything, a deep analysis is what is required.

Deadline: Start of the lesson, Tuesday 27th Nov.

Meshes in the Afternoon (Deren, US, 1946) 14’

La Jetée (Marker, France, 1962) 28’

Pitch Black Heist (Maclean, UK, 2012) 13’

Curfew (Christensen, US, 2012) 19'

The Gunfighter (Kissack, US, 2014) 09'.

Students do... Contextual Research - City Of God

Film Key Terms 5

Key Terms Film Studies 4

Curfew

Content guidance: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2088735/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg

Nouvelle Vaugue

La Jetee (Marker, 1962) Questions

Take another look at La Jetee and answer these question in your notes. Go into detail, remember this is Advanced Level.

1. Establishing a protagonist - what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?
2. Establishing other characters - what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?
3. Establishing location (time and place) - what information do we find out? How is it conveyed?
4. Creating enigmas - what are they and how are they created?
5. Resolution - Is it open or closed? Discuss.

Key Terms Film Studies 3

Key Terms Film Studies 2

La Jetee

Independent Study Task:
Write 500 words discussing your thoughts on whether La Jetee is a film or not. 
Consider for and against the argument. Think about if La Jetee shares similarities to any other cultural form.
Due in Tues 2nd of October.
Any issues email - deh@thomasadams.net

Key terms 1

Genre conventions - Independent Study

Genre conventions - Independent Study
Identifying genre conventions is a great way into understanding how some films work. The Gunfighter relies on our prior knowledge of the western, so watch a few at the very least and watch some classic scenes such as the start of Once Upon A Time In The West, the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or High Noon.
Equally, acquaint yourselves with some revisionist film texts such as Tarantino's Django Unchained or the spoof Blazing Saddles.

In your notes, identify genre conventions such as:
Settings, iconography, costumes, storylines, narratives and typical characters.

Deadline - Start of Tuesday 25th of Sept.