When we first got assigned this project my only thoughts were “What the hell are my teachers thinking?”
That sentiment hasn’t changed much. Over the course of this assignment, I came to realize one thing more than any other: my class does not work well as one big group. We are good a group work, but once the group exceeds about 5 people, everything goes out the table.
Our teachers wanted us to become a film crew. The problem with this is that we are not a film crew. We are seventeen year olds. Seventeen years olds who aren’t passionate about filmmaking, in most cases. And more than that, we are headstrong. All of us. Everybody has opinions, and nobody wants to give up on theirs, because theirs is obviously the best. This may serve us all well in the future.
Needless to say, it didn’t here. We had power struggles, scheduling issues, and creative differences. If you want to know how it went just go read my post about the Macbeth video from last year, and dial it from 11 to about a 9.
Our class doesn’t not work well in a large group.
This is why I’m glad that I was on script. I was the DRI (aka the boss) of script, and Matthew, Gabi, and Tom were working with me. In the beginning, it was kind of nerve wracking. We had to come up and start ASAP a script that would
- be realistic
- won’t piss off our class
- please the teachers
- could be written REALLY FAST
After about half a class and two spares of discussion, we decided that not pissing off our class didn’t matter as much as the other three, because we only had about two weeks to do this whole project and nobody could do anything until we had a script.
I think the hardest part about writing the script was that our teachers wanted us to use emojis. That and making sure all of our script made sense/would be possible for the class to film. Our locations, number of actors, costumes/props were all limited because our budget was approximately zero dollars.
Although none of these issues mattered, because we had a time crunch. Teva, the producer, wanted us to have 6 scenes done in 4 days.
We finished the whole script in 5. I’m actually proud of this part. The four of us worked really hard to get this done, and while the script is obviously not perfect, I think it’s okay.
Okay, I honestly think it’s better than the movie. I’m not blaming anyone for that, I just think the scene that makes the story
- make sense
- have a sense of horror
- MAKE SENSE
The movie’s production obviously involved our input as well, and I worked with the directors about rewrites a bit. Once production begun, I ended up stepping back a bit. This isn’t because I thought it was better for the movie (it wasn’t), but because I figured if I stepped back and let the directors do what they want, the movie would at least get finished. When the directors and producers told me they wanted “one at max” scriptwriter on set, I obliged because I know if we spent any time arguing whatsoever, it would eat into the filming time. And lord knows we didn’t have enough of it already. There were a few occasions where the scriptwriters on set got into arguments with the directors, but I just had to remind everyone and myself that once a scriptwriter hands a script over, the studio and directors can do whatever they want to it.
Even if it doesn’t make sense.
Not my problem anymore.
In all honestly, this could have gone better, but it could have gone worse as well. Personally I think if we had been able to film the teacher scene, which was the one thing I begged them to do that didn’t get finished, the movie would just be…..so much better.
So despite that failure, I think I did pretty okay.
For good measure, I’m taking that script on the end here.