Lucy+Guo+Journal

My group’s idea is about a guy named Ben with agoraphobia (the fear of going outside/the outside world). We’re planning to show his internal struggles from the vision of his childhood bully that constantly appears and stops him from going outside. Our original idea was for Jess to be the new neighbor moving in, but we realized that the whole conflict would have no sense of urgency to it if Jess wasn’t about to leave or if something dangerous was going to happen to her, so we changed our whole concept to the idea of Jess having been there for quite a long time, and suddenly, she’s moving away, and Ben’s faced with the conflict of either confronting his fear or taking the chance to never see Jess again. Our new idea’s premise is that, every day, Ben has his alarm set to his neighbor’s daily routine (e.g. her going to get groceries, exercising). Whenever his alarm goes off, he stops whatever he’s doing and he looks out the window (at Jess’s actions) in awe. He constantly wants to express his pent up feelings towards her, but there’s always his agoraphobia keeping him away from her, away from the outside world. As a screenwriter, I want to use dialogue to show Ben as someone who is extremely curious and intrigued by his neighbor, Jess, and the outside world. I want to show him as a person who is quite knowledgeable, but doesn’t know how to act in front of others and I also imagined Ben as someone who has a slightly more immature personality, acting slightly younger than he really is.
 * Journal 1**

//BEN// //Look look look! She's coming out again.//

One day, when Jess doesn’t follow the daily routine she’s kept for months, Ben gets extremely worried and he starts wondering what happened to her.

//BEN// //Isn't she supposed to be out right about now? What if... No, I'm sure everything's fine. I'm sure she just... accidentally slept in today! (pause) But she's always on schedule! ... What if she slipped down the stairs?! (pause) You're right, something has to be wrong. I gotta check up on her.//

One of the key things I want to convey with the dialogue is the fact that Ben wants to help her. Our group decided to add in a teddy bear, Ben’s best friend. The teddy bear symbolizes home and safety, and every time Ben’s attempts to go outside fails, he comes back and stabilizes himself by talking to his teddy bear, while gaining his confidence back.

**Journal 2** While looking for ideas and ways to improve Ben’s world inside of my script, I found a book that was extremely helpful, called “Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, by Robert McKee. From, this book, I took out many interesting ideas that will help make my story more captivating.

//“A beat is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.”//

I realized that my story may have beats, but the beats aren’t as obvious and defined. I want to make each beat of the story obvious, so that the audience will be able to realize how Ben’s perspective of his own problem is shown more and more from his reactions to Jess’s actions.

//“By cleverly delaying the lovers’ meeting to climax, these films avoid the prickly issues of modern love by replacing the difficulty of love with the difficulty of meeting.”//

I learned that many past love stories had many problems that not many people faced today (e.g. the issue in Romeo and Juliet was that their familial respect was too much to abandon for love), so I made sure to stress on the fact that Ben’s main conflict in this story is an internal conflict that isn’t looked down upon by the audience. I wanted our conflict to not be similar to modern problems that people in love deal with (having other lovers, parents refusing to accept their relationship). By making our main conflict about agoraphobia, I made sure that the audience can sympathize with the main character, but not know too much about overcoming a problem like this, or they may get bored halfway through the film.

//“The dilemma confronts the protagonist who, when face-to-face with the most powerful and focused forces of antagonism in his life, must make a decision to take one action or another in a last effort to achieve his Object of Desire.”//

At first, our idea was to have Jess as the new neighbor moving in, but then we realized that if Jess just moved in recently, there would no be a final powerful force of antagonism that makes Ben face his fears, as there’s no rush. This is how we decided to have Jess as a neighbor who has been there for a long time, and the fact that she’s moving makes Ben face is fear and now he has to make a decision within this small time period.

**Journal 3** While researching ways to improve my screenwriting, I found many different screenwriters that I’m planning to learn from, including Quentin Tarantino and Paul Schrader.

In an interview with Quentin Tarantino, he stated that you should let the characters talk, instead of forcing words into their mouths, as though “... [the characters] just started talking and I jotted it down... To me, it’s very connected to actors’ improv with me playing all the characters.” When our actor for Ben, Marcello, reads the script and takes on the role, he will have a completely different view of what type of person Ben is, and his personal opinion and thoughts of Ben will change the way he portrays the character, and it might be completely different than I imagined it in my head. After viewing the characters in our story acting, I’m planning to make a few changes to the dialogue, writing the dialogue to fit the actors, instead of fitting the image of them I have in my head.

In another article, a writer states that you should create a main theme for your character to speak from, to create subtext. Using their method of identifying my character’s main emotions with different synonyms, I got the following synonyms: shy, apprehensive, timid, hesitant, guileless, determined, stubborn, and steadfast. The next step that the writer explains is boiling all these themed adjectives that your character’s defined by, down to only a few words. When writing, you should focus on one adjective that defines each line, and lets the actor decide how to portray this emotion that you added in with subtext. After reading their article, I’m planning to change the dialogue within my script so that only the really relevant dialogue is kept. I’m going to simplify long speeches that convey my themes, as I just realized that my characters tend to speak in a very straightforward manner.

After re-reading my script, I felt that my story was starting to become kind of cliche, so I tried to brainstorm ways of making more conflicts for the protagonist. Another fear I had was that our story wouldn’t be enough to fill up the 7 minutes limit (for IB films), so I realized I have to create more conflicts. I was researching the different film festivals and the participating writers’ tips, and I found an article from the Rain Dance Festival that discussed the issues that I had. One of the most important questions that I learned is to ask myself: “//What development would test the protagonist? That could be on the physical level, the emotional level, the moral level, the spiritual level.//” We decided to change our idea to Jess about to move out just to prove this point.

After viewing the research that fellow screenwriter's have created, I've found some specific screenwriting actions to avoid at all costs, and one important thing to avoid is putting in forced exposition. Some scripts have clearly forced exposition, where the main characters clearly state their goals and needs in the first page of the whole script, and the rest of the script is simply supporting the key facts. At the beginning, I realized that I had put in forced exposition in my script. I would have Ben talking to the bear at the very beginning of the film, saying obvious things, such as, "I wish I could go outside to talk to my neighbor".
 * Journal 4 **

Metropolis (1927) Marxist Film Theory: this theory of film is shown in Metropolis (mise-en-scene) because of its clear distinction between the rich and the poor. In this film, Fritz Lang separates the rich and the poor, and there's a huge wall separating them, the rich on the top of the wall and the poor working to create and manage the electricity that the rich people above use. This film theory is shown especially when the rich are shown above with their meaningless material luxuries, while the poor people below are fainting and being overworked everyday, and not getting the reward that they deserve after working so hard. When the bottom half of this city is about to be drowned, the poor are left to survive on their own, while the rich sit by watching and not trying to do anything to help. Feminist Film Theory: Fritz Lang also uses mise-en-scene in this movie to depict the "role of women" back then. The robot Maria is shown as a woman who has no feelings and uses all her time to lure and tempt the rich men. The feminist film theory is shown through how unequal Fritz Lang decided to portray women in this film. For example, only two sides of women are shown (both from Maria). One side is of her being caring to the poor children, and the other is of her shown only as a desire to men, and nothing else. This may insinuate that women either have to be mothers and take care of others, and if women aren't caring like the real Maria, women are temptresses. Culture Studies Film Theory: the time period that Fritz Lang directed this movie in was right after the first world war. That time, people were scared and many of them had just lost most important things in their lives. Looking for someone to blame, Germany started blaming their own government. Using mise-en-scene, Fritz Lang decided to make one of the central themes in this film revolve around the separation between the rich and the poor, as if insinuating that the government is wasteful with its money. At first, this may look like a plain movie about the distinction between rich and poor, but if you watched this movies in the eyes of a German back then, this movie would prompt feelings of vengeance towards the government.
 * Journal 5 **

One of the main directors that have inspired me greatly is Woody Allen. His use of dialogue is extremely interesting and sometimes very non-naturalistic (e.g. “May I tell you where I come from they measure out their lives in coke spoons.”). One of the main problems that our group has had during production is our main actor would frequently fail to arrive on time, setting our progress back. At times like these, I would determinedly reread the parts of the script that were being filmed that day, and try to envision how our main actor would portray the character in those scenes. I tried to embed Woody Allen’s style of dialogue into my own writing. I would change the dialogue, imagining how our actor portrays the various characteristics and personality traits of the main character, improving the dialogue to fit the image created in my head about the main actor, as the actor may bring in their own experiences on acting. One of the major changes that I’ve made is to the beginning of the film, where there are establishing shots surrounded by silence. I realized that this is the first impression of our main character’s life that the audience gets to view, and I wanted to add dialogue to give the audiences a brief insight into the character’s life.
 * Journal 6**

// BEN // // Remember those pictures of Europe we saw? Yeah, they were super amazing weren't they? A really nice view... BUT I don't think I'd fit in there! //

// BEN // // Hey, remember that ad we saw on the TV a few days ago? Yeah, that one with the pretty lady and the skis! Hm, it’s been stuck in my head, maybe we should buy a skiing game, wouldn’t that be nice? //

// BEN // // This famous author’s visiting town next week. Have you ever read any of his works? Well, I’m excited he’s coming, I’m definitely planning to watch his live interview when he comes on. //

By adding this to the beginning of the film, I started hinting at the character’s conflict (agoraphobia). I showed how Ben has many different ideas and aspirations, but he always backs out in fear before any actual planning can begin.