Day 1: Assignment 2 – What I learned …

[Wilton Blake]

What I learned while rethinking my main character is that he/she must have a kick-ass soliloquy that tears someone down. I’m not joking. The first two clips we watched were powerful presentations of characterization.

Also, it’s okay to show your character as bold and heroic when necessary. Will goes in hard but makes it so that the conflict doesn’t turn into a fight, even though he invited the fight.

[Robert Kerr]

What I learned rewriting my scene/character is the need to create more dynamic setups and payoffs and not just pedestrian dialogue. There is a future my characters are living into and I must expand the journey through both dialogue and actions. As I look at my script, there are several places where I could utilize this technique to achieve more tension and more drama.

Insights:

The setup of the radio announcement describing a 5 county manhunt for Sarah and Kyle. Combined with the Terminator’s hunting them, they are strangers in a strange land on the run with no allies and no equipment.

Breakthrough:

The message Kyle shared for Sarah from her son John sets the stage for decisions to be made. The future is not determined and what Sarah & Kyle do will be what makes this journey survivable.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by  Robert Kerr.

[Joan Butler]

–The questions that Hal asks for specific scenes are a useful guide for any scene and they act as a prime to my brainstorming pump. I value this because, previously, I have found it difficult to brainstorm by myself.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by  Joan Butler. Reason: I put my info in the wrong day. I will change it to Day 2
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by  Joan Butler.

[Ann Marie]

What I learned is that when I first identify the primary traits of my main characters, I can then create dramatic scenes that gives my characters the opportunity to show these traits in trigger/deliver scenarios. This was quite revelatory to me – when writing scenes as I had only thought of writing scenes in terms of plot tactics, rather than character reveals.

Trigger/deliver actions gives more purpose to each scene and I found it absolutely brilliant. I created an opening scene where my main character’s dialogue and actions were purely driven by her character traits.

[Mi Lock]

What I learned rewriting my scene/character is that having an underdog character win has a stronger impact on the reader/ audience and therefore a stronger message.

[Lynn Vincentnathan]

WHAT I LEARNED FROM REWRITING MY SCENE/CHARACTER

Later on I got this additional breakthrough/insight from the video scene: the setting was a set-up for conflict and character reveal. The pub was Harvard student territory. Clark was not so much protecting the coed, but the territory, as in “you don’t belong here.” Will and the boys had purposely gone there, even though they knew it was not their territory. Seems not only to pick up girls, but as a joke.

I had Scene 2 in my Rom-Com screenplay in what I considered a very boring setting, a 30-seat college classroom. I had been worrying about that for many weeks. The purpose of that scene was to show heroine Ellie as ineffective in getting people into eco-concerns & people not really into eco-concerns. I think the dialogue was fine — they attacked her; it was not her course, but the hero had invited her to come there to present about the environmental club and an upcoming trip.

My problem was I didn’t want to make her out to be an extreme, unrelatable, unlikeable weakling, but just give her a journey. Solution: make the setting much more intimidating, even against her. So I changed it to a 100-seat auditorium classroom, the gallery with attacking students dark, the stage with a huge screen behind Ellie (all the way up to the high ceiling with unrelated huge letter E S G) bright, lights nearly blinding Ellie so she could hardly see the students or who was attacking her. That way she became even more out of her element, like Will and boys, like Andy in Miranda’s territory, with the setting sort of attacking her. Reminded me of Thurber’s man coming home to his 2-storey house that had morphed into his devouring wife.

[Caroline Fritz]

What I learned: Sometimes, a cliché, like poor kids vs. rich kids, works by twisting the traits. The trope is that the poor kids aren’t very smart or lucky, but here, the poor kids are “wicked smart,” and they win respect.

In my script, I used this to add a breaking point that the antagonist crossed, breaking the spell he had over my main character, and she finally realizes he is a bad guy. The cliche was that she was a weak woman who would do anything to keep her man. This was a breakthrough for me.

[Eugene Mandelcorn]

What I learned in viewing the Prado and Will Hunting character scenes is that my four characters have very different personalities and view points on life that must be deftly revealed in the opening scenes of my script.

[Judith Watson]

“What I learned rewriting my scene/character is that giving a character a future sets the audience up with expectations of will the character survive the road ahead.

[Orit Mazor]

What I have learned in the two lessones we had so far Is that I need to watch qupelll of times to really ynderstened deeply what happen in scene.

And specip about my work I sharpen and focused my look at the traits of my characters. Little bit more than regular.

And notice and feel the future characters in the terminerter movie, Mainly the gap beetween what they know and what….

[Liz Janzen]

What I learned rewriting my character, who has a preternatural gift she is reluctant to use, is that she could be persuaded to go on her mission by another character who inadvertently supplies her with information that pushes her over the top into deciding she must use the gift. This will be more interesting than just having her come to the conclusion on her own that she must use it and will also amp up the dynamic between the two characters.