LBM: Script

Day 2:

The second LBM lesson began with watching multiple short films, ranging from about 30 minutes to 20 seconds. The first film we watched was called 'The Fridge', we focused on how a film was put together; through light, sound, location. We learnt that every sound in a film is artificially added, after the film has been shot, everything except the speech. Everything visual on the screen was purposefully placed in the frame, for the audience to see and get a vision of what kind of place they're being introduced to.
All of these aspects put together create a scene which helps us feel the emotion the directors want us to feel. The situations the characters are placed in, along with what's previously mentioned, it created the feeling of empathy and gets us to emotionally connect with the characters and situation.

Following this, we watched a 20 second long film of a little boy running home after getting something from the shop. We were told about the 3 main stages of a film; the beginning, middle and end. There must be a problem that needs to be solved to create a film.

Taking all that knowledge on board, we began our first task of the day was to get into groups of 4, around an A1 piece of paper. We were introduced to the idea of story boarding and how they start. To begin with, we were given a few minutes to draw up 6 interesting people we've met in life as characters.
Our characters were based of instructions like: 'someone you wouldn't want to be in the future', 'someone who's inspired us'.
Our characters were based of instructions like: 'a place you'd consider peaceful', 'a place where you'd like to live'.
This went on for a while, with different instructions coming from Tom until we ended up with many characters and scenes. This was repeated 4 times on the piece of paper, since everyone in the group had to doodle across one piece of paper.

After the instructions had stopped coming and there was no more space on the paper, we began picking characters and giving them basic and short story lines and making them come to life. Some examples are:

• The jolly bus driver goes home to a rather gothic room and smokes shisha.
• Snake boy has a really great house wife.
• Smyrna met her girlfriend Barbie in Stanmore.
• Hannah lies in a field of flowers that has a spot for her boobs to fit in perfectly when she lays belly flat.
• Hairspray person lives under the bed sheets because the atmosphere is best for the hairspray to set in.

Following this, we gave daily routines to a handful of our characters, added existing problems in their lives, make situations get worse and a resolution. Therefore we didn't have to be very detailed, however my group and I got carried away and ended up making a whole story that we envisioned as a feature film or even animation. We didn't stray very far from the task as we had still completed all our work and really got attached to the characters- something we were taught to do, if we wanted the audience to connect with them.

Finally, we gathered up all the information created and made a 6 pictured storyboard of a little prompt relating to a chosen character. This had to be repeated 3 times, for 3 different characters.
We followed the detailed story line we had created and used the central characters to draw storyboards for. Shorts seemed like the most convenient and less confusing option, therefore we created small stories, following the facing problem rule. The three characters we'd chosen were: Snake boy, Siobhan the housewife and Morticia Addams, and an example of a story was: Housewife Siobhan woke up to make breakfast for her husband. She'd forgotten about the pancake in the pan and found it to be burnt when he remembered. She immediately began making more batter, only to find she'd run out of eggs. In a hurry she fled to the corner store in search for eggs. However! All the free ranged eggs had run out. She knew her husband only ate free ranged eggs, but she also knew that he only ever had pancakes for breakfast. It was this or nothing so she had no choice but to buy the regular eggs.
She sprinted home to find her husband not downstairs yet. Swiftly she made the new pancakes and just in time too, as her husband had sat down at the dinner table. Nervousness coursing through her veins as she stood behind her husband who began eating his breakfast. As soon as he took the first bite; the regular, loving face of her husband, turned sour and crooked. He turned to face her and recited "these don't taste like freedom."
And the story ends.

 

I really enjoyed this lesson and it's really gone high up on my list of favourite lessons and the LBM rotation just seemed to have gotten 200% better, as I'm a person who really enjoys character design, scripting and story boarding. From this lesson, I gained a lot of skills and knowledge on how the film industry behind it's research and I've gotten a lot of insight of the industry. One thing that will definitely stick in my mind, in regard of story boarding, is the 'what the fuck' factor, which is essential in a film to keep the audience captivated. That made me laugh because thinking back on the story we made today, the audience will have hardly any other reactions but 'what the fuck', considering us- as the makers- recited that phrase countless times in the process of writing.