Adaptation Update
I finished the outline. It's a little too detailed to be called a treatment at the moment but it serves to remind me what's going to go into each scene. Then I sat at my desk with a stopwatch application and acted it out (roughly). The timings are dubious to say the least and I think it's turned out somewhat shorter than I expected. Now on to the script stage and we shall see what we shall see...
Adaptation Outline
After much worrying and general anxiousness about the whole thing I finally finished the outline for my adaptation last night. I've managed to make a bunch of notes as things have progressed so I'll have something to talk about in my commentary. It's immediately obvious that act three is very busy compared to the two previous sections. There are a few sections I can probably cut (I'm still working towards a 20 minute script) but I'm going to see if some scenes could be moved further forward in the story. I'm working from a very "matter of fact" piece so I'm going to see if I can move the more shocking/less pleasant parts further along so I can have more a building sensation throughout. I need to go through the notes I made during Michael Eaton's lecture. I need to make sure I'm demonstrating enough of the skills he thinks are required.
Now I've made some progress I'm happier and am feeling less anxious as whole. Good stuff.
Adaptation
My adaptation project is due in on the 7th April. That's less than three weeks. I started it this weekend. More time would probably have been useful but I had script stuff to work on and, before that, my anthology submission. I shouldn't really have spent so much time on the anthology piece, since there's no marks in it, but it was important to me.
Anyway. My adaptation has now been started. I'm taking a short story from Christopher Coakes excellent We're In Trouble and turning it into a screenplay. I read the story again last night. It's amazing what a difference intent makes. Since beginning the MA, I've become more aware of how things need to be represented on script and on the screen. As I read there's another layer of thought on top of the one that's just reading. It's more active. It sits there examining each sentence, scene and event and imagines how they could be shown on screen (or perhaps re-ordered). So on the one hand you have my worry that I can't possibly do such a great story justice, but at the same time there's this great sense of fun and playfulness. I think it comes from the story and characters already having been written...
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Script – Draft One
I just finished the first draft of the script. The outline was very useful and should compress down into a treatment without too much trouble. The script itself is currently thirteen and a half pages. I've got a fair few scenes so I'm thinking more action and description is needed to try and pad it out to my fifteen page target. When I acted out the outline the timings were pretty much spot on. That can be a job for tomorrow. I also need to go through a bunch of notes I made during training today, read through Michael Eaton's class notes again and go through and make sure the whole thing reads well.
I've learned a lot about script formatting while doing this. I'm not confident I've got it entirely right but I don't think it's going to get me marked down much. Scrivener has been an awesome help in getting it looking right as has my script tutor, the examples he sent and the myriad of helpful stuff found online. The other thing I need to do is make sure all the action is written in a consistent voice and that I refer to the characters in a consistent manner (eg. he, Danny, it, stuff, thing etc). Again, those are jobs for tomorrow.
Right now, I'm going to give the script a break and edit Derek some more. I'm sending it off again! You know... Because I like polite rejection letters...