Day 7 Assignments

[Julia Bucci]

Julia’s Connection with Audience

What I learned: “You want us to feel that these characters are us, but you don’t want to bore us. So the key is to give us something in common with the character in an interesting way.” I hadn’t thought about deliberately building in these common experiences AND doing it in an interesting way. Very illuminating!

What I have here is a start, but it’s just OK and not very entertaining. Doing this assignment shows me that I need to improve the “interesting way” that I form connections with the audience for all of these characters.

1. Tell us which characters you are going to INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience.

Mia

Ruth

Boomer

Mike

2. With each character, tell us how you’ll use each of the four ways of connecting with the audience in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Mia (protag,TC)

A. Relatability – hot flash/loses her temper in a Target parking lot
B. Intrigue – why was she vacationing alone in this town? Why does she choose to stay and get the community service hours over now?
C. Empathy – stuck doing community service hours
D. Likability – unexpectedly entertaining as a teacher

Ruth (main character, TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – loses temper (fights with Mia) in Target parking lot
B. Intrigue – then why does she sign up for Mia’s writing class?
C. Empathy – Mia fights with her at Target, then isn’t nice to her in class, even when she starts showing her vulnerability
D. Likability – Mike has a thing for Ruth, from way back when

Boomer (main character, TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – outsider

B. Intrigue – ?
C. Empathy –scarred by small-town homophobia + starts having feelings for Mia
D. Likability – looks out for seniors as camp chaperone

Mike (supporting character, low key TC AND Change Agent)

A. Relatability – terrible student and writer, no attention span, just taking the class because Ruth’s in it
B. Intrigue – what happened with Mike and Ruth way back when?
C. Empathy – Ruth rebuffs him every time he tries to connect with her
D. Likability – going after Ruth, trying to save camp from developers

[Julia Keefer]

What I learned from this exercise is that I need to develop my antagonists and to craft better endings.

JAKE:

Relatability: Jake gets stuck in situations related to COVID, neurological diseases, death of friends and family, and floods that any human can relate to.

Intrigue: What will he do next? How can he solve this problem? What good is fitness when everyone is dying? What will happen to him when he gets Parkinson’s?

Empathy: Although Jake tries to hide some of his negative feelings, when he cries, the audience feels for him. They also feel joy with the birth of his baby Jesse and other up events.

Likability: Jake has always been likable because he is charismatic, funny, attractive, strong, and increasingly helpful to others.

LITONYA:

Relatability: Litonya has just got off a seven year prison term because of COVID at the beginning of this story. Then she triumphs with her dissertation defense in geology at Columbia. Although she isn’t as expressive as Jake, she confronts the same kind of threatening.

Intrigue: A scene with Ibrahim makes the audience wonder how much she knows about the high concept plot related to COVID, fossil fuels, and the sick and elderly. When she marries Jake so quickly, the audience wonders if it will work out, same with her pregnancy.

Empathy: Litonya is not as expressive as Jake so it is hard to cry and laugh with her. That is part of her foil. But she is one of the mentors for Jake, teaching him how to love and serve her and work for a better environment.

Likability: While she is physically stunning in terms of vigor and strength, she doesn’t care about fashion, conventional social life, “manners,” and other ways of manipulating power. She is a straight shooter, one reason she got into so much trouble legally in the first two novels. The audience may like her mission to save the earth but might prefer to be with other characters.

IBRAHIM:
Relatability: Most of us do not have Ibrahim’s fortune but we might like to fantasize what we do with millions of dollars. His power is fascinating. Yet he is mortal and as he ages and gets sick, despite his money, the audience could relate to his predicaments.

Intrigue: It is obvious that Ibrahim is a major player in the high concept plot but he won’t reveal its secrets. This creates intrigue similar to the questions surrounding the origins of COVID and the potential cures for deadly diseases.

Empathy: It is challenging to feel immediate empathy for millionaires because we often feel they are so privileged that they can take care of themselves. This fallacy is gradually unpeeled as Ibrahim is exposed in his human nakedness and vulnerability. Normally Ibrahim doesn’t express his emotions but when something makes him cry, he stands out.

BOAT BOB or LEO CURTIS:

Relatability: Superficially, the audience might relate to a homeless senior thrown out of his hotel as COVID winds down. When he indirectly kills his son Joe in the antique car fire, the audience might relate to his loss.

Intrigue: Because MM as the tandem competitive narrator tells the audience about BB’s past as a serial killer/rapist/arsonist, especially in the first novel, this creates suspense that the other characters do not know. What will BB do next? He is responsible for the car fire. It seems like declining hormones like testosterone and dopamine due to age are curbing the fuel of sexual crimes, but he had this kind of unexpected eruption in the second novel when he attempted to rape MC. The audience wonders how he is connected to Ibrahim who seems to be using him for some kind of dirty work. How much does BB know about the high concept plot?

Likability: As a human, BB is detestable, like many serial killers. But to cover his tracks, and hide his antisocial personality disorder, he adopts a superficial personality–a senior who is cleaner and harder-working than other homeless men, a man who listens carefully, remembers details, unlike other seniors, and who has some know-how and practical experience to help the kids with their boats and clean up messes. BB knows how to be invisible so his crimes are never discovered. It is incredible that he was never caught for multiple murder/rapes in the first novel. When his mask is finally taken off near the end, the audience likes Jake even more in order to really hate BB. But hate is a great emotion too!

[Julia Keefer]

Sorry–forgot what makes Ibrahim al Harbi likable. He is polite, well-mannered and well-groomed, and generous. He listens carefully in a different way from BB but also with his own self-interest disguised. He sees the vulnerability in someone and the gap that he can fill in with his money and contacts. His objective is power but on a superficial level, he is likable. He is also likable because he is a family man with an attractive family and the audience knows his limitations because his kids are genetically Jake’s and his wives because he was sterile. He is well-educated and can talk intelligently about a plethora of topics.

[Heather Hood]

Oh thank God! I thought I was the only one having problems with the server!

What I learned doing this assignment is… We can connect to our characters on more than one level. So can the audience.

They may be a likeable character we can empathize with because we have gone through similar experiences in our life. Perhaps we are grieving and the character is grieving, yet they are shy or confused or going through an experience we have lived through. All of these choices could relate to our characters. But for clarities sake, I can see how we would want our audience to attach to them in just one way.

The characters I have chosen are Andrew, Jordan, Xhuuya and Jian Min.

Andrew:

(Empathy) is 74, (relatability)- going for the older vote here- looking forward to a retirement with his family. In 1886, Ireland, the ghost of the famine was still running around and people were leaving for America in the hopes of finding a better life only to find ‘No Irish need apply’. Canada was supposed to be a land of opportunity. Sorry. That was just a story. We said, “come here” and made all those freed slaves live in segregated towns, and charged the Chinese an outrageous head tax to come, work on the railroad and die for the privilege.

I think now is the time to tell his story. Other people are finding this is not the place they thought it would be. Yet Andrew meets everything Canada throws at him, even when it almost robs him of his faith in God, when it drags him down to the dregs of his strength. He is 74! Meeting stuff young people would find a challenge.

(Intrigue) He has a complicated backstory I’m hoping the audience can figure out through subtext without having to be told through ‘giveaways’ like flashbacks. He’s retiring, not because he wants to, but because his wife killed herself, leaving his daughter and grandchildren with no way to provide for themselves.

I have a particular 1^st hand view because I have a box of letters from my great grandfather from 1880 who told this story – his story – in meticulous detail. -OK it has been embellished now with some tales from the Pacific Northwest, but his core journey is still there.

(Likeability) He collects stray young people and takes care of them. His sense of humor is wicked as well.

When you lose everything, you still have integrity.

Our first nations are proof of that:

Xhuuya 25, embodies this with his quiet dignity and the bridge he becomes between the old and the new ways. He shows how our First Nations people see others, not for what they possess, but for what they bring to the community and how they treat each other. He stands for what people need to See: Not the parody of the drunken Indian. (Relatability, Empathy, Likability) he’s what we all think we are deep down inside. And has some serious Medicine skills as well (intrigue)

Jian Min, 65,(likeable) the peace maker: NOT another martial artist. Yes he has skills, but he uses them reluctantly, to teach Andrew how to put his past behind him and see life has value and honor.( Empathetic) He is the loving father, moving heaven and earth to find his daughter.(Relatable) He is the wise old master with many skills. (Intrigue)

Jordan 25-30 is a young
black woman who has been so traumatized by slavery she refuses to let anyone
see she’s female. (Intrigue) She dresses like a man, walks like a man, acts
like a man, and talks like a man. (Relatable – if you are a woman) Only Andrew
sees through her. They share the scars of slavery. In the end, she is the only
person he entrusts with his daughter’s care. ( Empathetic) Can probably run the
ship all by herself and do just about anything she puts her mind to. (Likeable)

[Christopher Carlson]

Subject line: Christopher Carlson’s Connection with Audience

What I learned doing this assignment is that I should find as many ways as possible to connect the audience with my characters, that in a drama such as mine there really is no need to present ‘villains,’ characters the audience would automatically dislike. The strongest position for me is to find ways that my audience can care about all my characters.

1. Tell us which characters you are going to INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience.

Helen, Transformable Character

Peter, Change Agent/Betrayal Character

Teacher, Opponent

Kate Keller, Opponent

2. With each character, tell us how you’ll use each of the four ways of connecting with the audience in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

A. Relatability
B. Intrigue
C. Empathy
D. Likability

Helen (Transformable Character):

Relatability: see that Helen is excluded from participating in the sensuous, sexual world – at some point in our lives we’ve all felt on the outside looking in, that loving relationships are destined for other people, not us; people criticize Helen’s lack of ‘adventure and romance’ in her life – we’ve all felt the pain when others were critical of our lives and/or our accomplishments

Intrigue: learn how a deaf and blind woman communicates

Empathy: feeling for Helen that she is excluded from profound and significant aspects of human life – for instance, a physical relationship with another human being — because of her handicaps

Likability: we see Helen has tremendous natural energy; she offers care and compassion to Teacher when she’s having problems in her marriage, and also when she’s ill; Helen has a natural beauty

Peter (Change Agent):

Relatability: Peter has a low-level job at a newspaper where he’s accustomed to taking orders; not satisfied by his station in life, wanting more
Intrigue: Does he have nefarious designs on a vulnerable woman? Not sure we can trust him. Is he interested in Helen only because of her fame and wealth? Does he want to take advantage of her?
Empathy: He’s doing his best to assist Helen as her secretary in a demanding environment where Teacher seems to have no patience with him; he’s somewhat ‘lost’ in life, not knowing what his purpose and goals are; because of Teacher’s illness, his once-in-a-lifetime job is aborted
Likability: He’s a handsome, dashing young man; well-mannered; seems sincere, at least at first glance

Teacher (Opponent):

Relatability: She’s a fish out of water in Hollywood and getting pushed around by the powers-that-be, the producer and director; she’s always second fiddle to Helen, not getting the full respect she deserves.

Intrigue: What exactly is her relationship with Helen, after 25 years of service? At this point, is Teacher exploiting Helen as a means to make a living?
Empathy: She’s beset with physical problems (near blind herself); marital problems (separating from husband); emotional problems (depressed); she supports Helen, who is absolutely and completely dependent on her
Likability: She’s the primary caretaker and defender of a handicapped person

Kate Keller (Opponent):

Relatability: She’s a mother naturally concerned for her vulnerable daughter
Intrigue: Why is she so suspicious of Peter? Why is she so set against the idea of Helen being in a relationship? Does she possess abusive power in the mother/daughter relationship? Is her degree of power damaging both to Helen and to herself?
Empathy: Kate’s attitudes are somewhat determined by her background growing up in the south and as a person brought up in the 19^th century with its Victorian standards; this is the first time her daughter is being courted, something she’s never before experienced, not to mention being courted by someone who’s a stranger to her
Likability: She’s a loving and supportive mother, doing her best to protect her vulnerable daughter

[Cara Rogers]

Cara Rogers’ Connection with the Audience

1. What I learned doing this assignment is to attempt to include 4 areas to create a connection with the audience within the first 30 minutes.

2. Characters that INTENTIONALLY create a connection with the audience.

Shoe – transformable character

Samuel – change agent

3. How I’ll use each of the four ways of connecting with the audience in the first 30 minutes of the movie.

Relatability – Shoe is powerless against authority. Samuel can’t get help he needs for the good of all.

Intrigue – Dustbowl conditions for all characters (devastated ranch, starving animals, storms, etc.)

Empathy – Shoe tries his best but just can’t seem to succeed. Samuel is a harsh but loving leader.

Likability – Shoe’s flights of fantasy are enjoyable/comical. Samuel flirts with his wife.