Week 3 Day 3: Take it to an Extreme – BRIDESMAIDS

[Vincent Ovalle]

Week 3 Day 3: Take it to an Extreme – BRIDESMAIDS

The scene takes place in a bridal dress shop.The situation the ladies are going to pick the best dress for the wedding and bridesmaids.Eveything is normal as they entered the spacious shop,and greeted the shop owner.Except one of the girls expressed some body discomfort with a burp.They saw the first dress they all liked,but kept looking at others when they saw the price tag of eight hundred dollars.When they saw the second dress they described as pretty and sweet they became conscious of the heat.As the character first tried to carry the heavy sofa she then dropped down in exhaustion. Moment later she joined the others and disrupted the conversation with a series of violent vomit noises.The others looked on with concerned.She tried to explain by saying her stomach hurts.This is the main cause and effect chain reaction to the climax.On reflection one of the girls deduced it’s food poisoning from the chicken they ate..She denied it but released a loud fart .The shop owner freaked out and said everyone off the carpet.The first two made a mad dash to bathroom where one launched vomit directly in the toilet as the other climbed on the sink and relieved herself on the sink.Soon after another girl made a urgent trip to the bathroom and launched above the first girl who was face down on the toilet.The climax of the scene that introduced danger was the girl who had on a white dress and walked outside just as she could’nt control herself any longer, and gently laid down in the middle of the street and went to the bathroom as cars beeped.

What made this scene great was it was funny and had the structure of cause and effect in the main conflict .The escalation from normal to the extreme was when they introduced danger.Although they did’nt realize it at the moment they were all about to lose body function as they picked wedding dresses.How they expressed character on the edge was their inhibition to relieve themselves everywhere even with the threat of danger.

[Susan Willard]

Week 3 Day 3: Take it to the Extreme – BRIDESMAIDS

Bridesmaids Food Poisoning Scene

Basic Scene Components:

· Scene Arc:

The scene builds on a carefree day of bridesmaids’ dress hunting to the extreme calamity of food poison, as each bridesmaid becomes to get sick to the extreme of nowhere to go to relieve their sickness: From standing wearing bridesmaids dresses to running to the nearest bathroom or trashcan. Places used to remedy the outpouring of sickness – toilets, sinks, others’ heads, floors, walls, and even the middle of the road – truly extreme sickness leads to extreme relief.

· Situation:

Two competing bridesmaids go to the extreme to show their friendship with Lillian, the bride. The bride’s long-time friend, Annie, takes the group to a small-hole-in-the-wall place for lunch to extremely contrast to the extremely high-end bridal shop to shop for dress, as arranged by the fashionable friend of Lillian. The fact that the two events explode together to give the film the ultimate female gross-out scene is the result.

· Conflict:

One major conflict of the film is that of the bride’s two friends, as they both compete for Lillian’s best favor.

The conflict of lifestyles when the result of eating as a small out of the way lunch place meets the expensive dress shop in town. We see the conflict in full action.

· Moving the Story Forward:

Each person’s experience, as seen in action, pushes the story forward.

· Entertainment Value:

Entertainment comes in assorted styles. People can enjoy the all-out gross fest. Different people can enjoy the bridesmaid’s rivalry gone extreme. Still, other people can enjoy the scene’s honesty of what has happened before.

What makes this scene great?

o The uniqueness of the circumstances, food poisoning in a bridal shop make this an interesting scene.

o The way the individual characters deal with their individual sickness makes a great character learning scene.

o The depths of the extremes in the scene make this a great scene.

The escalation on a gradient from “normal to extreme.”

The sequence of events and how each individual character deals with their individual sickness escalated the change gradient from normal to extreme.

Each step takes us further outside the norm.

Yes, it does.

Express character on the edge.

o When a bridesmaid gets sick on another bridesmaid.

o When a bridesmaid get sick on the walls and floor.

o When a bridesmaid uses a marble sink as a toilet.

o When the bride “goes” in the middle of the street, wearing the most expensive wedding dress in the store, and cars driving past.

Interesting Action and Dialogue.

Unique Dialogue:

o “It’s coming out of me like lava.”

o “Not the bathroom. Go outside. There’s a bathroom across the street.”

o “I think you’d feel better if you just threw up.”

o “Don’t you dare ruin that dress.”

o “You’re really doing it, aren’t you? You’re shitting in the street.”

o “We’ll just take five of the French Burnies,’ Brittaney. They really look better.”

· Unique Action with bridesmaids’ dresses on:

o All aspects of getting sick.

o All aspects of trying to find a place to get sick and not finding a place.

o All aspects of disrespect, usually not found in a high-end dress shop.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  Susan Willard.

[Anis Taylor]

Their couldn’t have been a better example of going to the extreme in a gross way. Watching the scene one time was enough to make the point of extreme, and I guess that’s when you do a good job.

The bridesmaid enter a beautiful pristine wedding dress store. The set up of a beautiful place that has no business being destroyed was a great way to start normal. From the normality, we enter our conflict. Two bridesmaid competing for the brides favor. This scene moves the story forward by creating conflict in a way that escalates to the extreme.

The extreme can be written in many ways, from gruesome blood and killing, to throwing up and shitting in a bridesmaid dress, to shitting in the street in a wedding dress.

I learned by using your environment to set up the impact of the extreme. So if it’s a clean room, we know we can get messy.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  Anis Taylor.

[Rice Rice]

The greatness of the Bridesmaids Food Poisoning Scene is that it begins with a setting that is common and easily identifiable by the audience, one that gives viewers a sense of comfort, secure in the knowledge that they know what’s going to transpire as they watch a group of well-off women on the hunt for suitable wedding attire.

The escalation from normal to the extreme is gradual and starts with the unexpected injection of the women beginning to suffer from food poisoning that takes viewers by surprise, since they showed no sign of being ill when they entered the showroom.

The normal unavailability of sufficient facilities to accommodate a large number of people gripped with the immediate need to throw up or respond to being poisoned by defecating adds to putting the characters on edge.

Watching each character’s creative actions to deal with her immediate needs provides entertainment value.

The dialogue of the characters, coupled with their actions, adds to the sense of urgency and distress that viewers are witnessing, including the jaw-dropping situation where the bride ends up crapping in the middle of the street in a replica of her wedding dress.

[Randy Hines]

a simple, bold concept in the tradition of gross-out comedies. each character’s pov is represented here as it was earlier in the story but moved to an incident with food poisoning at the worst possible moment. the fart gags, vomit gags, poop gags and the thing with the almonds and sweat dripping down her hair are hilarious in context. in writing, there’s the concept of taking a moment to the fifth option or the tenth option. I think they did that here. The first option might have been a burp, some sweat and a mad dash to the bathroom, unseen – not so here. Capped off with pooping in an all-white wedding dress in the traffic is the definition of tenth option.

[Courtney Hill]

This scene went from a normal bridesmaid shopping event to an extreme food poisoning reaction. It was extreme but somewhat realistic. It wasn’t random that they were all sick, it was a believable cause of eating some shady food, that led to all of the women getting sick. It’s also believable that there is only one bathroom available and everyone is on the struggle-bus to find somewhere to relieve themselves. I learned that even thought the actions of running into the street or using the sick is extreme, it is still believable.

[Anna Burroughs-Merrill]

Watch 1st time for basic scene components:

• Scene arc – the bridesmaids move from picking the perfect dress; to the bride announcing the nemesis has upstaged the maid of honor / BFF (again) by a wedding dress connection in France; to everybody getting sick from food poisoning and puking/pooping all over the place (including the bride poops in the street).

• Situation – a bridal dress-picking gathering

• Conflict – the maid of honor and newcomer BFF-wannabe are secretly in conflict to upstage one another and win the bride’s affection.

• Moving the story forward – this is a win for the usurper, who is the only one who doesn’t get sick

• Entertainment value – this scene is hilarious

• Setups/payoffs –

o Setup (earlier) – the maid of honor brought them to a shady hole-in-the-wall for lunch before they ended up here.

— Payoff – Food poisoning!

o Setup – the maid of honor can’t afford the dresses and attempts to steer other bridesmaids towards something scaled down.

— Payoff – while the rest of the bridesmaids are sick, the usurper orders 5 copies of the dress she prefers … she wins.

o Setup – Melissa McCarthy’s character is the first to have her stomach rumble when she flops onto the white leather couch.

— Payoff – projectile vomiting and “lava like” diarrhea!

o Setup –the maid of honor insists (despite looking awful) that she isn’t sick;

— Payoff – the usurper calls her on it by forcing her to eat some candied almonds.

o Setup – the bride announces that, thanks to a connection made by the usurper, she has sent her measurements to France to have her dream dress custom-made;

— Payoff – when the store owner loans her a dress by that designer so the other bridesmaids can see what it will look like, the bride humiliates herself by having explosive diarrhea in that dress in the middle of a busy street.

Watch 2nd time for:

• What makes this scene great? This takes a normal bridal fitting, which already often has competing personalities, body-types and budgets, and takes it to a hilarious extreme.

• The escalation on a gradient from “normal to extreme.” – definitely extreme!

• Each step takes us further outside the norm. – Yup…

• Express character on the edge. – the maid of honor is thoroughly humiliated and usurped by the usurper for her friend’s affections.

• Interesting Action and Dialogue – the scene where the maid of honor is too proud to admit she is sick (especially since she picked the restaurant), and the usurper calls her on it by forcing her to eat candied almonds, summarizes the ongoing power struggle between two characters who dislike one another.

MY SCENE TO ESCALATE: SOTG-Archangel

When Pareesa is thrown into the harem, the audacious young warrior clashes with the other

“ladies” when she assumes, because she’s such a badass with a sword, that she can do everything better than they can (and fails). It only shows how badly her “domestic education” suffered compared to other women in her culture as a result of her focus on waging war.

[Zev Ledman]

Week 3 Day 3: Take it to an Extreme – BRIDESMAIDS

1. Please watch this scene and provide your insights into what makes this scene great from a writing perspective. I thought the beginning was interesting up to the point where everyone got sick or had diarrhea. This is supposed to be a comedy. The bathroom scene & the shitting in the street was gratuitous at best. I didn’t think it was humorous at all. I get the competing for any drain to empty the bowels or stomach. Yes, it was making a scene extreme. But, added little to the comic relief. The end of the scene when the Upstart friend approached the BFF of the bride to ask her if the uncomfortable, sweating young woman was sick from eating at the dive and then offering her candied almonds added to the scene’s tension as she didn’t want to admit to food poisoning from the cheap diner she had recommended, due to her tight budget.

2. Read the other writer’s insights and make notes of how you will take a scene to an extreme.

3. Rethink or create a scene that goes to an extreme using your new insights and rewrite the scene. Then post the answer to the question, “What I learned rewriting my scene…?” and post it in the forums.

Objective: To create a scene that escalates on a gradient from “normal to extreme.

“Watch 1st time for:· Basic scene components — Scene arc, situation, conflict, moving the story forward, entertainment value, and setups/payoffs.

Watch 2nd time for:·

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