Beat Sheet

Scriptwriting

What happens in your short film idea?

A girl (Molly) goes on holiday to Athens and meets a boy who she falls in love with as soon as they lay eyes on each other. She becomes very attached to him and spends the whole holiday with him making new memories and experiencing new things with each other. She faces the difficulty of leaving him and going back home or continuing her life with him in Greece.

What is it about? (i.e. what does the conflict/transformation symbolise?)

It is about a couple who meet on holiday that have to face the difficulties of living in different countries.

What is the Ordinary world?

Ordinary world is her home life. She goes on holiday expecting just to have some sun.

What is the extraordinary world and what takes it the character into it?

Extraordinary world is when she gets to Athens and meets the love of her life. She continues to live in the extraordinary world until she comes to the realisation that she has to go home and leave him.

What is the goal of the main character?

The goal of the main character is to convince her lover to move back to her hometown with her.

What obstacles do they face?

They face the obstacles of leaving each other and coming to an agreement. Whether they want to be together forever or to go their separate ways.

What External conflict is there?

What internal conflict (if any) is there?

The internal conflict they face is the difficulty of making a decision of where to spend their lives.

What (if any) are the conscious desires and unconscious needs of the main character?

Conscious desire: She wants to stay in Greece to live with the love of her life and spend the rest of her life there. She loves Athens and wants to stay.

Unconscious needs: She needs to go home to her family, friends and life.

Describe your first scene/sequence, beat by beat, up to the moment the main character enters the extraordinary world.

1.     Molly jumps out of the taxi.

2.     Takes a deep breath of warm Athens air

3.     She sighs with relief, admiring her surroundings.

4.     She begins to walk into the hotel

5.     A hand grabs her bag off her

6.     Before she has chance to say anything he says “Let me Madame.”

7.     She looks up and notices the man

8.     They look into each others eyes for a few seconds

9.     He winks at her

10.  She smiles back

Narrative Structure

Narrative structure, a literary element, is generally described as the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer. The narrative text structures are the plot and the setting.

Generally, the narrative structure of any work—be it a film, play, or novel—contains a plot, theme, and resolution. It can also be divided into three sections, which are together referred to as the three-act structure: setup, conflict, and resolution.

Freytag's Pyramid
1. Exposition: setting the scene. The writer introduces the characters and setting, providing description and background.

2. Inciting Incident: something happens to begin the action. 

3. Rising Action: the story builds and gets more exciting.

4. Climax: the moment of greatest tension in a story. 

5. Falling Action: events happen as a result of the climax and we know that the story will soon end.

6. Resolution: the character solves the main problem/conflict or someone solves it for him or her.

http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/ref/fiction/freytag.html 

"Lavender"

Our task is to, in groups, create 6 film still images. We firstly need to think of a film idea and then produce 6 images as if they were taken from that film. We were put into groups by our lecturer and were put to work. 

My group and I began to brainstorm some ideas for our film. We wanted to create something with a strong background and that will make powerful images. We came up with the idea of showing the progression of a a teenage girl suffering with an illness, more specifically, Cancer. We want to show this through our images by showing her mental and physical deterioration as the illness progresses. 
     We will be displaying our images end-beginning. We have chosen this layout because it’s a unique way of showing our work, as well as it being a way to avoid the story being linear and predictable.
     To help the images connect well together, we will be using the technique of subtlety placing an object in every shot. We will be using a red bracelet on her wrist – red to represent danger. We will be having the colouration of the images slowly decreasing and becoming more dull as the series goes on to emphasize the deterioration.

6 Image Inspiration: 
For a couple of our images, we are majorly inspired by the TV series Breaking Bad. BB is based on a middle aged man, Walter White, suffering from cancer, as well as his journey as a drug dealer to fend for his family. The cinematography during breaking bad is very unique because while it shows Walter having treatment, the colours are much different than when he's living his every day life. 

For our first image, we would like to have the character experiencing treatment. It will be the 'end' of the story because we don't want there to be a conclusion and for the viewers to make their own decision on the ending. We would like the character to be in sharp focus in the centre of the image with her family around her. The family will be blurred and involve lots of movement to show the isolation of the character even though she's in a room full of people. This not only shows her physical deterioration (treatment) but her mental state as well. 

Image number 2 is also inspired by Breaking Bad. We want to have an image of the character on their own, just to show their mental state. A cancer patient as a lot of mental struggles to face as well as their physical appearance change and struggle. I think that it's important to show both elements in our project. I plan to have a similar image to this, but may experiment in different locations to see which works best. 

Image number 3 is inspired by images we found on the internet. The aim of the images is to have the character noticing/realising that she's losing her long hair. Her facial expression needs to show that she's unhappy with it. We plan to have her looking in the mirror with her long hair falling out. The mirror may also by misty as if she just came out of the shower, to add to the 'story.' The idea of this task if to have it as if taken from a film so it's important to show different stages of the "movie."

Image number 4 is the stage in the story when the character finds out that she's ill. It's slightly more difficult to show this without the use of dialog and film so we needed to think of an image to show all the information needed for it to be clear of the situation. We will be using inspiration from 'The Fault in Our Stars' purely for the reactions of the characters. We plan to have our character outside the 'Cancer Unit' at a hospital, showing her emotions clearly through her body language. Having the cancer unit sign in the background will make it more clear of what's going on. 

Image number 5 is the realisation that she's not well. It's very difficult to show this without dialog and film so we needed to think of a strong idea to show the information needed for the audience. We plan to have an image of the character sleeping with her mum overlooking her, with a full plate of food infront of her. This indicates that she's oversleeping and not eating, making it clear that there is something wrong - as well as this being one of the symptoms for cancer. 

Finally, image number 6 is an establishing shot of the character. We want to show her personality through using her bedroom. People's bedrooms very often reflect the type of person that they are so we would like this in the image. Our character is a very creative girl and her room shows this perfectly.