Noam Kroll Backlot 2023 Film Incubator - Week 5

This week I spent most of my time creating scene-by-scene breakdowns of how each scene is meant to function to reinforce my theme. Beyond that, I refined my theme some. I originally had supposed that my concept would center on the different types of “battle” and “fighting” that one must engage in throughout life. As I considered the main story, this theme seemed more like it belonged in subtext. The story’s core was interruption and inconvenience and their role in our lives.

This meant that the poem I wanted to open the movie with needed to be given to one of my characters instead. This gave one of my characters a little more depth or, at the very least, satisfied Blake Snyder’s advice:

“Make sure every character has ’ Limp and an Eyepatch.’

Every character has to have a unique way of speaking, but also something memorable that will stick him in the reader’s mind. The reader has to have a visual clue, often a running visual reminder, which makes remembering a character easier. A Limp and an Eyepatch may seem like a silly way to think about how to attach traits to characters to make sure we remember them, but it works — if you remember to do it.”

I also found quite a bit of help in visualizing the scenes in my mind by asking a set of questions I was prompted to think about by The Musicbed Podcast interview with Cinematographer Natalie Kingston.

In the interview, she discussed a document that asks questions that help her to zero in on the purpose of each scene, which in turn determines the best visuals to accomplish this purpose:

“Scene-by-scene asking the questions of, you know, what’s going on emotionally with these characters? What’s the subtext of the scene? What’s the purpose of the scene? What’s the function; why does it exist? That’s such a huge question. Whose perspective are we in at this given moment? You know, perspective, like, in terms of emotional perspective. Whose scene is it? Stuff like that, you know, really just getting down and dirty with the ‘Why?’”

These questions gave me the perfect springboard for examining each of my scenes and working out visual motifs and lighting considerations for each scene in my mind. These visuals will (hopefully) aid in creating that “visual” dimension when writing the screenplay.

Now, on to the first draft…