Oh, those moments.
It’s interesting, when stuck in a rut, the kind of things you tend to come up with…
Today alone just felt sort of… uninspired. We had come to a snag in our story today and we weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders. Maybe it had something to do with staying up until 3 a.m. last night, fulfilling our social duties. Maybe it had to do with the weather. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I hadn’t eaten until about 2 in the afternoon. But whatever it was, we just couldn’t make anything work.
Our story just hit a wall. We were stuck at a moment where our main characters (our hostage takers) had just had their first tiff, creating a rift in the fabric of their mission. Trying to figure out where to go next just felt sort of… I don’t know… forced? I was worried we would slow the pace of the film down more, and worse yet, I was worried we’d spend a ridiculous amount of time on exposition, but without doing anything to advance the story simultaneously. A sort of talking heads situation that would really drag down the overall feel and tension of the movie.
Now, not trying to give anything away about the film itself, we decided to just sort of flesh out our characters and their motivations more.
For whatever reason, this seemed to work. We figured that with the right motivation, there had to be a reason one character would act… well… out of character. We needed to keep a sense of tension, but also keep the power in the hands of our hostage takers. The problem that we keep running into is that we seem to be walking a thin line between reality and pure, nonsensical bullshit fiction. We want to avoid that line.
But when we figured out the motivation, that seemed to put us right back on track. We figured out where the story would go, but soon we ran into another problem. Why, and even yet… what’s the point?
The purpose of this film is to be a statement piece. Luckily we had just watched V For Vendetta (yay the 5th of November!), so we were readily armed with satirical material. Couple that with watching clips from the movie Network (which, by the way, if you’ve never seen the film please, please, please do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s one of the most poignant and consistently truthful films ever made, even for being a film shot in 1976), and we had an arsenal of tonal material. So after much analysis, we figured that this would be the moment that we begin our statements.
Fueling the fire got us started, but making it work is still, and will probably always be the challenge. Luckily however, keeping notes seems to work.
I thought about this today, and realized that I quite enjoy figuring the story out as it builds up on itself. Meaning specifically that yes, we did plot out the film in detail, but the motivations and reasons for the actions taken place seem to come together as we move along in the story. Sure, we’ve got an idea about the statements we want to make, but it would be much more difficult to write this film if we had every intention of going from Point A to Point B simply because we had to. Instead, we’re letting this story and its secrets evolve and reveal themselves to us organically.
Much like acting, and in my opinion, everything most people do with their lives; things must occur naturally and organically for humans to feel at ease. I believe that this has been our strongest asset. Figuring out the secrets and motivations as we move along. It keeps us on our toes and ultimately keeps us from writing ourselves into a corner, which to me, is always a screenplay killer.
Hopefully after today, and after I make my adjustments and rewrites, we’ll revisit the script on Friday and reevaluate where we are and how the script is moving along. I think we’ll be much more fired up once we get past the halfway mark (5 pages to go on that), and we begin to embark on our third act.
Thus far though, I’m still pretty damn proud of this little baby. I can’t objectively look at it until it’s finished and I’ve had time away from it to analyze the screenplay, but my gut feeling tells me we’re right on track, and honestly, that’s all I really need.
Till next time folks!
-Jamie
