Lesson 3

[Kristina Zill]

KZ’s Elevated Emotion!

Vision: To master screenwriting so that I can win contests, and work with producers to get my movies made.

What I learned from doing this assignment is… how to intentionally increase emotional moments

Scene 2 Essence – Wendy learns negotiation techniques at a school

How intensified: Potential for violence, talking her way out of it. She fails, experiences violence.

We don’t realize until the next scene that the scene is a training simulation.

Scene 8 Essence – Wendy and Darwin fall in love over a game of strip poker

How intensified: Love received

They have found their soul mates and there seems to be nothing that will keep them apart.

Scene 13 Essence – While Darwin succeeds at the exercise, he has failed to prevent his own father’s suicide.

How intensified: Irony – Success mixed with tragedy

During a training exercise, Darwin tells Wendy that his father considered suicide the year before. At the end, he has to leave in haste because he just got word that his father did kill himself.

Scene 35 Essence – Myra leads a “loving kindness” meditation directed at one’s childhood self, and Wendy feels compassion for the little girl that she was.

How intensified: Character Experiencing Distress

As Wendy remembers her past during the guided meditation, we see images from her past and gain understanding for how she got the way she is.

Scene 44 Essence: The Warners’ biological daughter shows up and reveals where Wendy really stands with them.

How intensified: Humiliation

Wendy is like the guard dog who was chained in the backyard, and never allowed in the house. She is the Warners’ pit bull whom they have taught to win at all cost.

Scene 49 Essence – Darwin and Wendy face off in negotiation

How intensified: Humiliation

Both use opposition research on the other in order to prevail.

Scene 62 Essence – Darwin and Wendy finally trust one another and—thinking that they will not be able to escape Nirvana—make love.

How intensified: Love received plus Irony: They can only be honest and vulnerable when they think they’re going to die.

Scene 78 Essence – Darwin is finally released from his mother’s emotional blackmail

How intensified: Experiencing Distress

When Darwin and Wendy arrive at the house, he can’t find his mother, and is convinced—irrationally—that she has killed herself. This is aggravated when Wendy finds a note for him, and he can hardly read it through his tears, so certain that she has done herself in.

In fact, Mrs. Ghosh is informing Darwin that she and Gary are taking a cruise, that she put it on the credit card he gave her for emergencies, and that she’ll call him in a few days.

She tells him to have fun and to live his life.