Post 7 - Creating your own script

We have been doing a lot of script work in our media lessons which have benefited hugely in my understanding of scripts. Firstly we started one of our lesson with a simple but affective task that was not as easy as one might think. The class sat in a circle and we all had to talk to the class about what we did the night before with no planning or time to think and we had one minute to talk continuously about what we did. This gave the class a good basic idea of a script as we all found it more difficult than we thought.

In another lesson we watched a short film called signs which was a very different kind of film that any of us had seen before in such as it was a silent film when there was no talking what so ever. This gave myself and the rest of the class a lot to think about as it was unlike anything we had seen before. I feel that signs was a great example of a short film because it was like nothing we have seen before but yet it was very affective in how it got its points and emotions across to us even though there were no words involved.







In class we identified the key features that pretty much all short film have. we used signs as an example as we tried to identify all his needs and desires. firstly we had to distinguish these features. we came up with the following:

a world (the world in which he lives)

a character

a want

a need

a problem (preventing his need and wants)

and an obligation (something he needs to do to achieve his goal)

The character is obviously the man the short film revolves around. The impression we got of him was that he was living in a big city, he lives by himself and does not seem to have any social activity out side of the work place. He seems lonely and depressed. we discussed as a class that his want is friends and a need was a girlfriend. he clearly is looking for a female companion as he is always looking and smiling at other women trying to get a reaction. eventually at his work desk in a tall building he makes contact with this women across the road in another office building. They exchange messages through signs which is where the name comes from. His obligation is to meet this women face to face but we get the feeling he is nervous and afraid which we identified as being the problem, so he keeps on the sign messaging for days maybe weeks. he eventually confronts his problem and completes his obligation by meeting her and the film ends. this is a classic example of a want, need, problem and obligation scenario