Storytelling Unit - Week 3 Day 1

Today, we are learning about the 2 act structure that we are using for the project.

Simon explained the two acts by relating them to the short film 'Soft' which helped me understand how it all related into it. Basically, the two acts have the following fields in them:

Act 1 - 
The hook 
Problem 
Cliff hanger 

Act 2 -
Tension raises 
Moment of truth
Climax 
Resolution

Adding the context of 'Soft' to these fields it shows how all these fields were implemented:
'Soft' Short Film

Act 1 - 
The hook - boy beaten up
Problem - dad beaten up
Cliff hanger - hoodies outside house

Act 2 -
Tension raises - self explanatory
Moment of truth- boy looks at dad for help
Climax - boy comes out fighting
Resolution- boy leaves dad and walks off

Now implementing this into my story, this is how my story fills these fields:

Act 1 - 
The hook - a scene that has a cryptic man torturing a women and the screen cutting out
Problem - the two uni students finding this 'body'
Cliff hanger - the body is still 'alive'

Act 2 -
Tension raises - billy wants to do something, but jimmy says no and tries to take charge of a situation he can't control, a role-reversal from earlier in the story.
Moment of truth - billy carries it out himself
Climax - they take the woman out and phone the police and an ambulance
Resolution - jimmy respects billy more as a person and vows he'll never underestimate him 

Storytelling Unit - Week 2 Day 2

On this day, we learnt about the original 3 act structure that a screen writer should follow when writing a screenplay.

As I said, there are three acts - 

Act 1 - Set up (25%)

This is where the characters would be introduced and locations and such, pretty much setting the scene for what is to come later in the story. Also introduced are - 

-Theme of the story

-Time scale

-Goals

-Problem

-Tension

Act 2 - Development (50%)

This is where one would develop the characters further and the plot will start to unravel. 

Act 3- Resolution (25%) 

This is where most of the loose ends will be tied up and the overall conclusion of the story will take place. It is also important to give breathing space to the characters. The protagonist faces their biggest challenge and overcome whether won or lost.

As we are making a short film, the original 3 act structure doesn't apply, we will be learning the short structure next week, which in essence is a shortened version of this structure. 

We then watched a film called Witness with Harrison Ford and we then broke it down following the acts and showing how this film follows it. I think this segment of the day was a good learning curve and shall help with my story. 

Storytelling Unit - Pre-Writing

So, the three characters are as follows, I'm going to go into depth into the different characters into what I understand about them at these early stages of Pre-writing.

The Pitch

How wil two best friends act when they are met in a situation that could re-define their friendship?

Jimmy 

Jimmy is the older of the two uni students that will be featured in this screenplay. Because of his age compared to Billy, in the friendship he is seen as the more 'older brother' type as he takes a lot more responsibility than Billy and this will show in the film. He sees Billy almost as the little brother and therefore thinks Billy is a bit of a loser, so kind of does everything for him like. Besides that in terms of a house, they feel they can share the finances if they both share a house, hence why they contact this house.

Billy

Billy is the younger (as mentioned) and relies on the older brother to 'carry him' in a sense (not physically) through life. Billy always wants to prove himself but he feels that Jimmy overshadows him too much. This makes sense later in the story which then forms the climax of the story and the eventual tie up at the end. Billy and Jimmy get on because they have always been in contact with each other and they are on the next course, so they are both getting ready for the year ahead. This is where the two actually form the plot of The meeting as they are looking for a house they could be renting out.

The Location

The location that I'm using is a vacant house. This is to do with the two characters renting out a house and therefore 'the meeting' taking place. The house is owned by a 'mysterious unnamed person' that is torturing a woman when one of the two boys are ringing to find out about the property. This si where the boys get left with the body, which turns out to be alive in a shocking plot twist.

Storytelling Unit - Week 2 Day 1

This day is consisted of expanding on current ideas based on what I wrote about in the blog post 'Week 1 Day 1' when speaking about the potential project brief. If you are unaware, here's a quick recap:

"-I've chosen thriller, something about the connection between thriller and meeting switches on a light in my head.
- Two uni brothers meet at an empty property looking to invest and get themselves onto the property ladder, so they have made an appointment with a local agency to set up a showing of the house
-when they get to the house, it is empty, the door is slightly open, after knocking for a certain amount of time, they enter the house
-inside the house's front room is a dead body with a sack over the head tied to a chair.
-one of the brothers immediately freaks out and checks for a pulse, when nothing comes back, the brother starts shaking the chair in hope that the person wakes up.
-the person drops a phone, with a play button on the screen
-a silhouette of a character tells the two boys 'sorry about this, just at the wrong place at the wrong time' followed by a random countdown, also police sirens are heard.
-unknown to the brothers at this point, fingerprints are all over the victim, but they leave anyway."

We are put into groups to therefore expand on the ideas and to help others, I think I gained a lot of information that I could used in my short.


-I think overall I need to formulate an ending that makes sense, after sharing the story with Simon, he said it was more of a setup rather than a full story, which makes sense.