Deciding on a Final Draft

         Hello! Today's blog post will likely be a shorter one, since most of what I have to report on for today pertains to a meeting I had with my media teacher, in which we discussed my story that I had at the time, and addressed the flaws in it. While this is a shorter post, the information and progress gleaned from this discussion was invaluable, and will greatly affect how I will continue working on this project.

Do We Need to Keep the Murder?

     The first detail we tackled in our meeting was in regards to the murder included in the opening. According to my first draft of the story, the opening would start with two friends making up stories for passerby, then show a montage of the duo spying on a particularly strange guy they jokingly accuse of being a murderer. The opening would end with the friends parting ways, only for the camera to approach a dingy alley, where the audience would witness a murder happen, and reveal the identity of the killer to be one of the two friends the opening introduced. 

    When we talked about the story, my professor pointed out this ending as something that stood out as flawed. I had shared these doubts on the need for a murder scene, but had ultimately left them in the draft because I was unsure how else to reveal the identity of the killer to the audience in the opening. We deliberated on how to replace / cover up this sequence in the opening since we agreed that it would be difficult to shoot and felt shoehorned into the opening, not quite fitting with the more comedic tones of the prior scenes (which was the point to an extent, I wanted to end the light-hearted opening with a darker, more dramatic scene to set up the conflict in the hypothetical rest of the film,) due to the scene feeling forced and sudden, rather than ominous, as I had intended it to be.

    At first, our solution was to replace the crime being committed. What if instead of being a serial killer, the culprit was actually responsible for a series of robberies that had been spreading throughout the neighborhood? This solution would've dealt with the difficulty of shooting a murder scene (which would've involved fast-paced editing, special effects, and
lighting issues since it takes place in an alley,) instead replacing the murder with a break-in, which would be easier to film since it'd be indoors, as well as not requiring an abundance of editing, which isn't particularly my strong suit. However, I scrapped this idea, since it strayed too far from the original idea for the story, and was much less exciting; the stakes were minimal in comparison to a loose serial killer. And so, the robbery solution failed to replace the murder.

Using the "aftermath" solution,
I can just dedicate time into
producing mise-en-scene, in a similar
fashion to this image.

    However, after more thinking, we came to the idea that maybe we didn't need this sequence at all. Instead of wasting time and resources on shooting a whole crime scene, I could just as easily skip the process of the crime, and jump straight into the aftermath of the crime. Using this solution, not only did it get rid of my need for a crime sequence, but it also cleanly allows me to focus on the other scenes and developing the story without having to explicitly state what's happening, fitting with the common film advice of "Show, don't tell". This solution was ultimately the best choice for the story, and is what I will implement into the final draft of the story.

Dealing with Time Limits

    Another pressing issue was the time limit of the opening. The entire film opening, including opening credits and all, should span the length of about two minutes. However, my first script was packed full of different ideas and scenes, including the car conversation, the spying montage, the murder scene, and the identity reveal of the killer. This felt like a lot was being compressed into a short 2 minute runtime, which would impact the quality of the overall product if each scene was pressed for time. By cutting out the murder scene, I had already recovered a bunch of time from the strained runtime, but I still wanted more time to play around with. 

    I discussed the inclusion of the spying montage with my teacher, and she brought up the question of why I wanted the montage to be included in the first place. I replied by explaining that I wanted to include a bunch of graphic match shots focused on hand sanitizer, but had no other way into working them into the plot without a montage. I wasn't very satisfied with including a montage in my opening, but had accepted it as a sort of compromise with myself to keep the graphic matches, which I was really passionate about. 

After some deliberation on how to work around the montage, once again we came to the decision to cut out the montage as a whole. Instead, the new story would revolve around the two friends' conversation, which starts from the car, following them to a gas station, and ends at a convenience store. I can utilize graphic matches of hand sanitizer to transition from each setting smoothly, while also providing some foreshadowing for the twist. This was once again the perfect solution to my problem, which had been fixed by simply cutting out what wouldn't work for the project. I had realized that my main issue had come from committing myself to a certain idea when in reality I could've chosen not to stick to it, which ended up being the right move.

All in all, it has been a productive day for the writing of the story, allowing for me to eliminate the hiccups in the opening while also cementing what will end up being the plot. After writing this blog, I'm going to reach out to my music producer to inform him on the story changes, since the music has to follow the flow of the script, which had just undergone massive changes. Hopefully, I should have the music done by the end of this week, if all goes to plan. Though this has been a shorter update, I hope I was able to translate my excitement for fixing the story through my writing, as I am really quite enthused to start work on the writing of the script, casting, and eventually the shooting of the film. Until then, however, I'll continue to plan ahead!