Journey to Less Shittiness (week 38)
Every week, I log my progress of going from a shitty screenwriter to…hopefully a less shitty one.
I’ve been doing some traveling this week (on LA time, so I still made it this week!), so while I didn’t get my pages done, I got a bunch of work done with my writing/producing partner on a short film we’re working on. And I also got my script read, plus watched a couple movies, so I feel pretty good about this past week.
Work Log
1 script: SUFFRAGETTE (screenplay by Abi Morgan) As mentioned last week, this was a read to help me out with the language and times of the early 1900’s. I don’t know if it helped with a whole lot with dialogue or story construction, but it was an interesting and educational script to read, having little knowledge of the suffragette movement outside of Mary Poppins. Given my biopic’s protagonist is a female, this was especially relevant. To get a good sense of how hard and terrible it was for women who were just trying to get the right to vote, an unthinkably basic thing for women citizens these days, was the most valuable thing I think I took away from this.
Though the dialogue didn’t feel extremely “of the times,” there were enough little hints in the dialogue and the locations to give the sense of the times. There was also plenty of date references in the script scene descriptions. Assuming those are for the production design, I realized that writing a period piece may not need as much description or dialogue of the times as I initially thought. If you simply have the description of the time in the script and get the dialogue and settings close enough to the times, the responsibility of making it appear to be from the time period the script says it is is mostly up to the production designer. So that was another helpful realization.
2 movies:
THOR: RAGNAROK (screenplay by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost) Caught this one on Netflix. Surpisingly, way more fun than I expected it to be. I was told I had to see this before watching AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, but I really didn’t feel like much of the context here was necessary to enjoy INFINITY WAR. The same comedy from INFINITY WAR was used heavily in RAGNAROK, so in that sense, there was much you could take from RAGNAROK that could inform INFINITY WAR. But RAGNAROK was uniquely lighthearted. Even with the lightness of the other Marvel movies, with a GUARDIANS movie here and a SPIDER-MAN reboot there, this was still on the funnier side of the whole MCU. I don’t know how many relevant story lessons were here, maybe something about the homecoming hero myth, so there’s not a lot of uniqueness to it. But some good lessons on dialogue and jokes here, so I may try to give it a read if I can find the script.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke) This was one I’ve seen in my teenage years, likely on a laptop or a regular TV screen, but I was lucky enough to catch a 70mm print of this at the Cinerama Dome in LA. This was a real treat. There was so much here on the rewatching that I didn’t notice initially, most having to do with the imagery and symbolism of the story. There were a few scenes that really struck me on this viewing, particularly realizing the brilliance of editing scenes together that have no emotional impact simply as images. Only when these images are cut together, like an image of HAL, then an image of flatlined vital signs, then a shot of the astronauts, now dead in their chambers that were previously keeping them in hibernation, do they become disturbingly significant. And the sound! Shit, I don’t think there’s a more anxiety-inducing soundtrack out there. The vocalizations, the timing, and the intensity of the soundtrack and the sound effects are haunting. If it’s been a while since you’ve watched this, do yourself a favor and give it another watch.
7 pages: Unfotunately didn’t get any of these done this week, but this week, I should have some short film work to do that should get these covered.
14 pomodoros: got thirteen of these done, mostly from working on the short film I’m trying to shoot in August. My writing partner and I finally, after an hour or so of talking and debating the story, figured out a great option and are now both excited to move forward. Next up, we need to rewrite the script and get the story to align with where we want it to go, then we’ll keep moving forward on pre-production tasks. I’m anticipating a lot of this time going towards the short moving forward in the next few weeks.
NEXT WEEK: May try to see INCREDIBLES 2 this week. For reading, I’m going to read THOR: RAGNAROK, as I mentioned!
— 💩
