Screenwriting

YAH... Richards back! *do Adas welcome back dance... as some of us grateful people (including Adam) got to witness!*

So i was looking forward to this since.. well since he left, as i do really like Richards class.
On the first day, we got started by doing the statue game - where we had to make stories out of posistions our class mates were in. We realised since Richards departure, we have no idea what a theme was and definetly had to do some work on that. And also Richards suttle way of saying no it isnt, is "is it??", which we got a lot of during the day!!
After the break we then played a more advanced game of consequences. We had to each write on a piece of paper the character description, then hand it to the next person, then you had to do the characters internal flaw and hand it round.. this kept going on and on, until you had a complete story with a basic 3 act structure in it. Well, i have to say, our stories never went to plan, even though we were all serious and concentrated while doing it, once the stories started getting read we couldnt stop laughing. We had such stories with a clohstraphobic submarine worker, and a man who stole someone elses petrol to get to the hospital in time... just to name a few!! So after that disaster of an activity, we decided to focus more on theme - and by the end of the day we had cracked it!
So Richard gave us a task for the night - and we all had to make up 2 premises for an idea for a short film, with a theme in mind and the characters goal.
We all came in the next morning raring to go again, and went round the class saying our ideas and what ones we liked. We then picked a handfull of them and discussed them. In the end we decided on two, and then discussed them further.
We started to speak about the first idea - a party having to get tidyed up - we realised the idea was too basic, and we were untidying the mess, rather than making more mess - so the excitment was decreasing through the film. So we went on to our second idea and discussed that - a lilo, a blow up doll and a man - we discussed the basic idea, but came up with 2 story lines. So we have to go away now and make an outline for one of our ideas. I am really excited to do this, and after Richards lessons this week, i am much more prepared to start writing this second script.
For our homework of the night, we had to go home and write three things we hate about ourselves, and would like to change.
We came in the morning looking tired from the past 2 days of intensive writing. I never felt scared at all to share my hates with the group as I know i can trust everyone, and i am glad i have opened up. After our hour of sharing we got to eat cookies and chocolate before we got on to the rest of our lesson. We watched a few short clips and discussed the theme and what happened in the film - just breaking down the clip to its basic goals etc. I really enjoyed doing this as it has made me look into structure a lot more when i am watching a film - and even found my self pointing out in the cinema what the inciting incedent was etc etc.
We then learnt about how much you can know about a character even before you describe them to the audience - and we did this by looking at photos of people and describing what kind of job they did, what was in their fridge etc. I found this really interesting, as i didnt think how much you knew about a character before you even knew anything about them. This has made me describe my characters more now in my scripts i will write - so that the reader can get a feel of what the person is really like.
To round off the three days, we had an individual tutorial about our scripts and just went through it saying what the flaws were.
Even before going into the tutorial i knew exactly what was wrong with my script after having the three days with Richard - which means i did learn something, and i pleased to say the classes will defo change the way i write my next script, and hopefully it will be even better next time.