Wednesday 23 January 2013

Unit3: From Script to Screen- OGR

2 comments:

  1. OGR 24/01/2013

    Hey Anass,

    Your story needs more work; it's lacking a bit of poetry, and structurally it gives too much information too soon. This story feels like an exercise in mis-direction - rather like Psycho; i.e., you need to push your audiences sympathies in different directions.

    Okay - so let's imagine that you're telling a story about a man undergoing a terrible haunting. He's alone in his sparse attic and as soon the story starts he is afraid; we hear noises in the darkness; his candle blows out; and then each time he tries to re-light it, the flaring match shows him (and us) some kind of flashback-some-tableau of horrible events; by the end of his night, he's scared to death... and we feel sorry for him, and he hate the ghosts, but then by the light of the day his occupation is revealed to the audience somehow - and suddenly our sympathies are challenged.

    You know, it might useful if you're a bit more specific about his executioner duties; I see from your concept art that you're imagining him in a sort of fantasy style - but let's imagine for a moment that your character was one of the men who turned on the gas in the gas chambers at Auschwitz:

    http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/2005Photos/GasChamberBackWall.jpg

    perhaps the things he sees in those stark flares of light in his dark attic are images from the death camps...

    http://www.saveyourheritage.com/images/WomenLiberatedAUSCH.jpg

    http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/files/2010/01/Auschwitz-039-940x705.jpg

    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/07/24/article-0-03334B890000044D-654_468x594.jpg

    http://www.auschwitz.dk/bodies4.jpg

    What happens if your character is an old man who, as a young man, was in charge of the gas chambers in one of Hitler's death camps - so your plot is 'old man gets scared to death by his night terrors' but your story is 'war criminal is confronted by the victims of his crimes'.

    To me, your story feels like a black and white world of light and shadow, with the matches used to create flashbacks and snatches of imagery.

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  2. ... I think it's decisions around your Act 3 'reveal' that you need to think about; so Act 1, introduce your character suddenly awake; noises in the night, crying, wimpering etc. He lights a candle; Act 2, candle gets blown out, character panics strikes matches, each time the light flares, he sees something horrifying in the dark - like a camera flash revealing something in the dark - a face, bodies, a crowd of starving ghouls; Act 3 - morning, old man is dead, his face a frozen mask of fear, the floor is covered in burned, blackened matches, and then the camera pans toward his open wardrobe, in which we see a glimpse of his nazi uniform, or pans across to a photograph of him in his nazi uniform, or... anyway, you get the point. I just think that giving this executioner character a back-story that exists historically, you will need to do much less in order to communicate his backstory to your audience. (Indeed, if it's his actual uniform we're shown, your character can still be young - i.e. he IS a nazi commandant now).

    Give it some thought, Anass - and think a bit more theatrically and expressionistically about the visual language of your story. This could be a haunting, devastating and powerful piece of work...

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