Wednesday, August 15, 2007

POV

In an exercise designed to solve issues pointed up by recent notes and feedback, I've been working on an extended monologue that tells the film story from the main character's point of view. Thanks to a little blogchat first with Pot I didn't rush into scripting.

The monologue is providing background and family stuff which won't even make the script eventually - but paints in the social backdrop (AIDS/crime). The character is complex and needs to be very engaging, self justifying and persuasive otherwise the audience might not buy into his worldview or morality. Every now and then (in the monologue) he launches into a long rant on some aspect of society. So his emotions and everything are laid bare through a bleak humour.

Being a monologue it is fairly organic - zapping easily back and forth between disparate places, people and incidents over time in a way a script could never do. In my mind I'm already highlighting what's going 'in' and what's 'out'.

Anyway around 9 pages of prose so far and still a long way to go. Think it will end up around 18 pages. Progress has been a bit stymied with my daughter off sick from school this week.


Later

5 comments:

Andy Phillips said...

So will this purely inform your writing, or will you show a form of it to someone as a treatment?

Near by said...

just to inform the script -not to show anyone

potdoll said...

i enjoyed that chat.

martin said...

Sounds like a good way to get to know yr character, t'other far away.

Have you considered using it as voice over/ straight to camera address in the final script? If the character is unsympathetic and needs to justify themselves then vo is a great devise for drawing the audience into thier world

hope yr daughter gets well soon

Anonymous said...

Hi 'other far away'.

No I definitely don't want a VO delivered into camera!

Yes - I don't find the character unsympathetic at all - but have realised the audience probably will (!) - so the hard bit is steering the script to make the audience feel more benevolent towards him.. I think