Post #3: A Day in Projectville

We had two more productive group meetings today. It seems like every meeting we manage to solidify the project further, and we are leaping forward in the initial plans far faster than I had ever anticipated. By this afternoon, the project had moved forward from a simple concept to a more structured framework that we all seem to be happy with. Of course, there still remains not so much a mountain as a mountain range of work left to do, and as we get farther into the writing the project is becoming increasingly more complicated. I think I'm beginning to realize that this final semester (which at first seemed to be quite a comfortable time interval for a short film) is going to be turning into more of a hectic scramble to the finish line. However, I think we've agreed that in order to make this a true 'final project' it really needs to be this ambitious. We'd only be doing ourselves a disservice by holding back in the conception stage, so we're going to gather all of the proverbial caution out of the wind and drown it in the nearest large body of water. It's past time to jump in head first and get messy.

That said, we did decide that in order to pull off such a complicated production (don't worry, the new details are coming right up) we will need to expedite our writing process and get to production much sooner. One of the keys to this project will definitely be to have a very strong script, so we aren't planning on rushing its development. Let's just say that if, for instance, we had been traveling comfortably through sunny script-land in fourth gear up until this point, we're now going to have to rocket into fifth gear and start barreling down the writing highway with the police scanner on.

Alright, time for the idea update. First of all, shout-out to Zac Weaver for his help brainstorming in class today. Thanks for sharing your ideas with us Zac, they were really helpful! Ok, so we're keeping the episodic structure idea that we had originally decided upon, but we have added some extra parameters to help focus the overall structure of the piece. Here's the thrilling tale:

Not so long ago, in a classroom not too far away, Grant, Adam, Zac, and Stephanie were discussing ideas for their senior seminar projects. After a somewhat abstract discussion of film-related topics, plot and segment pitches, etc. INSPIRATION stuck it's head into the middle of our group, reached forward with several elusive, invisible hands, and tweaked us all on the nose. "Ouch!" After the initial nose-tweaking shock, we were struck with the idea of structuring our project around the somewhat loose-concept of 'time.' We had already been playing with this concept in the two short episodes that we had been thinking of earlier (and, frankly, it's a concept that has always quite fascinated me, what with it's infinite potential in the film medium.) The idea was to limit the film's structure to a 24 hour time frame, a single day. Each segment will follow the next sequentially through a 24 hour period (although whether each segment comes from the SAME 24 hour period remains to be seen). In other words, the first short would be set in the morning, the next at noon, then afternoon, evening, night, etc. until we come full circle and end the film at dawn. Each segment of the day will be devoted to a single mini-episode with it's own protagonist in a type of 'network-narrative' with inventive transitions and unlikely coincidences. We have now begun outlines for two segments (morning and late afternoon) and will attempt to fill in the remaining time slots with plausible ideas by Friday. Then, once we've slain the structure dragon, we can finally begin seriously fleshing-out each mini-episode with dialogue, etc., in proper script formatting and get on with the quest, er, I mean the project. So, that's the progress in a nutshell. And it remains to be seen if they all lived happily ever after. (not) THE END.


Yes, we did have quite an adventure today. Now it's back to the racetrack for a mad-dash writing session before next class. Hopefully we won't hit any speed-bumps.

-Stephanie