Wednesday 3 February 2016

Screen to Script: Online Greenlight Review (OGR) Part 2








1 comment:

  1. OGR 04/02/2016

    Hi Dinesh,

    Okay, so I need to be honest with you; there's quite a bit that still needs thinking about here, Dinesh. So, the brain surgeon is harvesting the hyper-energy from the children - but why? In your script, you say the brain surgeon harvests the energy so he can grow huge and smash up the fairground, but why would the brain surgeon do that if the fairground is the place from where he is collecting the hyper-energy via the gob-stopper machine? Why would the brain surgeon destroy the source of his energy, as the fairground itself is the bait that brings the children to the gobstopper machine in the first place? Wouldn't the brain surgeon want to keep his plan a big secret for as long as possible? I still think you need to think about 'the point' of the brain surgeon's evil plan. What's he doing it for?

    In your script, you also have the hero child defeating the giant brain surgeon with a 'special move' but you don't describe what it is; in fact that action in your script isn't described technically, so it's hard to visualise what you mean. It's also not clear from where the hero boy comes from, or who he is, and it would probably be better if you tried telling your story from the hero boy's point of view.

    So, there are issues with your story still; the motivation of some of your characters is still not clear. There are issues with your script, because technically it is not yet presented as a script, but rather as quite complex descriptive passages that, apart from a single shot subtitle, are not described in terms of what the camera is doing, or what specifically is happening.

    One of the big challenges of this project is about design; for example, if you have six children in your story, those six children need to be designed as individual assets, and by 'designed', we mean not simply 'drawn', but developed using the ideas of the 'visual concept' and also by applying some of the principles Justin has described to you during your classes. The same is true of everything else. While some of your brain surgeon designs are beginning to be of interest, I'm afraid everything else you're drawing is very generic.

    Your big challenge, Dinesh is DESIGN. You don't yet design things - you draw things, and they are not the same thing. Design is taking an idea and refining it until it is polished and executed perfectly. In terms of your storyboard, for example, you are very much stick with a mid-shot approach; i.e. everything happens within the confines of the frame; we're not getting a sense of your 'moving the camera' through your drawings, trying out different viewpoints (remember all the discussions re. the way Hitchcock uses his camera so imaginatively?).

    Dinesh - you need to demonstrate that you're taking in some of the techniques and ideas you've been presented with during the course of your various classes, and you need to show that can apply those techniques and ideas independently to the development of your work.

    In summary then: you need to develop your story further so that your audience understands why things are happening and why characters are behaving in the way that they are. You need to look again at the technical aspect of putting action into a script (I suggest you look at the examples of professional scripts on myUCA in the 'Script Writing Resources' folder). You need to look again at the 'Directing With A Pencil' presentation on myUCA, and apply some of the rules of drawing storyboards to your own work. You need to think about a visual concept or style for the whole look of your story, and that includes all characters and everything else. Can I suggest that you 'stop' drawing, Dinesh, because you're in the habit of drawing everything the same way for every project, no matter what the influence. Why not try working in Illustrator or Sketch Book Pro - so using different tools by which to explore the potential of character design?

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