Sunday 31 January 2016

@Phil - From Script to Screen: Rough Script

2 comments:

  1. Hi Eleanor: I think you're missing some information in your script - at least your audience will be: while you and I intellectually understand that, by saving one life, the Seer has brought calamity to other people (hence the machines going red), this fact isn't 'shown' in your film; the relationship between the Seer's actions and the other machines is shown, but it could simply be some kind of malfunction. Remember in some earlier feedback I suggested that the Seer might have inadvertently saved the life of a famous human monster - like Hitler - if you did this, it would make your idea of causality clear and why all the other machines go red; so, for example, the Seer sees the baby in the ball; the seer sees the baby taking it's first steps etc. Then the seer intervenes when she's shown that her chosen one is due to die - she saves him. Then, when all the other machines start to go read, and the other seers apprehend her, if they were to show her the ball - and we saw inside the ball an image of Hitler - everyone would understand the relationship between her sparing his life, and the awful consequences for everyone else. Without this quick visual cue for your audience - i.e. using a historical character whose crimes are so well known that they don't need explaining - I think your audience is going to struggle to truly understand why the seers are so angry, why so many of the machines are red, and what the dreadful consequences might be if you could interfere in fate.

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    1. Thanks for the feedback Phil. I haven't written it into the script, but at various points I was going to include shots of a large sign in the factory that reads "WE MUST NOT INTERFERE". I'm not sure if this would make it make more sense to the audience or not, but I would prefer to keep the person the Seer sees within the crystal innocent. I'm not comfortable with using a real person who was responsible for the deaths of millions in my story, it seems a little insensitive to me. The idea was that because this person didn't die, someone else must die in his place, causing grief for other people (hence the lights turning red) and more death. The other Seers are angry with her for going against their one rule - no interference - and are destroying the crystal in order to fix what she has done.

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