As I finally sat myself down to force my way through my assigned reading, that of A Boy’s Life and the other minutia, a slow horror crept up my spine. A Boy’s Life was looking more and more like a film I had seen too many times in elementary school. It was, in fact, on page seven that my fears have never been more correct. I was reading E.T.
I powered on.
Melissa’s diction was easy to swim through. Her very presumptuous camera angles inserted every third scene were not. I somehow managed to overcome these (I believe through pretending they ceased to exist). But as I established a rhythm to the rise, fall, and rise of our hero, I could not but help to see the film in my mind’s eye.
It was a quick read, only taking about a little over an hour of dedicated focus.
Screenplays can easily be read by non-professionals, especially if the reader is dedicated enough to not get scared away from BIG CAPITALIZED PRODUCTION NOTES. The dialogue is all there, as well as some scene setting.
Despite my initial ennui, the character of E.T. is endearing enough for me to be happy enough for reading A Boy’s Life.
1.) In reading A Boy’s Life, did one find one’s self skipping over the scene-setting and camera direction to keep the narrative at a steady pace? Why or Why not? Hmmm?
2.) A lot of the terms found in the McKee reading can be easily applied to A Boy’s Life, such as CLASSICAL DESIGN, OPEN ENDING, ACTIVE PROTAGONIST(S), and LINEAR TIME. Do this.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
At first I had to force myself to read the scene-setting and camera directions. I don't know why, but they just seemed like they should be skipped over. After I got used to reading them, I found that they actually helped me see the film without thinking back to what I remember seeing in E.T. However, I think that the camera directions in the screenplay would irritate me if I was actually working on this film.
"Do this."
Ha. Discussion questions, not essay questions! But good that you're relating the two readings.
I skipped over almost all of the camera movements and some scene-setting stuff and it didn't take away from the narrative at all. I did it mostly because I'm really not interested in that sort of thing, so to prevent boredom and frustration I just skipped over them.
I think as you read more and more scripts it will become much easier integrate them into the narrative. The only real difference(other than formatting) between a screenplay and novel is how things are described. Instead of "John walks into his bedroom" it would read as "INT. JOHNS BEDROOM."
I actually read all the scene-settings and camera directions. I found reading them helped picture the whole screenplay as a film in my head. I could just picture all the angles of the shots. I know that these days they advise the scriptwriters not to put that many specific shots in the screen play, but I was kind of disappointed when they were not there. Then I would have to stop and think about how to picture the scene.
Post a Comment