‘Getting Started In Short Film Making’ – Script Layout Research

I wanted to find out some more about film making and script layout. So I decided to go to my local liberty and have a look if i could find any tips on how to make my short film better.

I found this book on film making and it reminded me of the books I found online. However, there was no way of reading them online as you had to pay for them.

Writing Advice

An interesting tip that these states are that ”write scenes that interest you”. This is clever because you should write the most interesting scenes first then once you have all the good ones then script a full scrip and other scenes around them. This is what makes good moves turn great. When planning my scenes and scrip i am going to start off with the funny action scenes then write the interview to cater to that. This will make my short film stand out from them all because ill working backwards, in a good way.

 

Mind Mapping

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Mind mapping is another thing mentioned in this book. This can help you when working around your interesting scenes. You can put them somewhere in the mind map and think of ideas to work with those scenes. The example shown is a boy meeting a girl, I could replace that with the interview and add scenes around that with some dialogue.

 

Step Outline

Creating a step outline will be beneficial to my story as it helps develop my script later on. It will be a lot easier to have his as a reference, instead of creating the script straight away.

This is an example of a step outline. It has the scene, or in my case shot, and it has a brief description of what is going to be on the screen. I am going to use this but change it from scenes to shots as i am creating a short film and not a full one. This method is mainly for big movies but i am still going to use it as it will help me organize things.

 

Character OverView

This is to help if you have a large list of character and you need to quickly refresh your memory on what the character’s personality is like and how they react to other characters. This will be useful for me when i show my Actors what character they are playing. This is because they will instantly know how that character feels and acts at all times.

Script

Here is a clear script that is structured really well so that none of my actors gets confused. I will refer back to this blog when i create my script as there is a lot of useful information here that i can use. I must not do another reflection on how my idea is developing.

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Ref:

Jones, T. and Patmore, C. (2012). Get started in short filmmaking. London: Apple.