Writing Vol 2.

Apologies for the delay, but I've complete a draft of the script that I like. So after the last blog post I mostly worked on developing the 4th and 5th scenes of the film. Both had their respective challenges that again were different from the first few scenes.

LINK TO DRAFT 1

So for scene four, I knew I wanted the altercation to take place after Eric buys his new remote. My inital thoughts were to have the scene take place outside a Best Buy's, so I began to think up ways that would force people to interact and/or possibly react in a negative way. As a driver in Florida, I thought I'd have Eric accidently back up into a car as he's trying to back out; nothing huge or crazy, but definitely something someone can easily get angered about.

I wanted Eric to continue the pattern to repeating lines from Trent, but I knew that scene 3 didn't have him speaking much. I decided to just write Eric's responses as unconcerned and comedic (like how a talk shot host would talk) and then I'd go back to scene 3 to update Trent's dialogue for it to serve as a set-up. In writing Eric's lines I thought I'd shift the anger of the driver of the other car from the fender bender to Eric's lack of apparent seriousness. The point of this scene to me is for someone to put Eric in a spot where he's uncomfortable, and has to rashly look for ways to response. By the end of the scene while, the dialogue Eric delivers isn't necessarily showing of stress on a surface level, it's the manner in which he searches for what to say that would convey his stress. In this particular moment, Eric goes on auto-pilot and starts to spew out random lines from earlier in the script, and is only stopped when the driver subdues him. 

The way I felt Eric behaves, reminded me of this quote from the director of
Green Room, where the protagonist is in over their head and scrambling to survive 

When I got to the 5th scene, I knew I had to be thoughtful about it since it's the final scene and is suppose to take a thematic turn in tone ands has to develop Trent Marley beyond just a TV personality. Having an actor in mind I felt definitely helped since as I wrote I'd imagine Connor saying the lines. I thought I'd start the scene similar to the 3rd scene where Eric expresses his confusion for why reality doesn't play out like it does on TV. I also decided to make use of a previous scrapped section of script I wrote about Marley's show getting green lit for another season. I initial wrote it as a way to open the film and serve as a bookend of sorts, but I decided to establish the personality first before going into how he feels of the show.

And similar to the first scene, this 5th scene had 1 main uncut monologue that is completely directed at Eric only. This scene shows how Eric's goal of mimicry ends poorly for him, and show how these habits of overconsumption can also negatively affect those involved in the media itself. Both eventually succeed in what they wanted to accomplish, but the ways they reach that goal or effects of achieving those goals show the negatives of this behavior

Like the link above says this is still a draft, I just wanted to finish a verison of something just so that I can share it with others and get some feedback from there before filming. I also plan to meet with my instructor about the estimated runtime of the film. The Cambridge guidelines say the film should be around 5 minutes, but the script at it's current length hangs around 6 and a half minutes (based off 1 page of script ~ 1 minute of screentime), and I want a bit a guidence as to what I should do in terms of runtime.