I hope my work provides a lens into the possibilities of potential within Australian cinema. Film students and lovers of film are so often frequenting areas of Melbourne’s inner-city suburbs not just to go to the theatre, but to go out and have a drink. As a resident of Melbourne, and an appreciator of film, I wanted to tell a story that may have been inspired by Hollywood comedies usually set in New York or Los Angeles, but bring it right into the heart of the Melbourne suburbs. After all, I’m sure there is a comedy community out there that intertwines with musical artists and actors who would at numerous points of times find themselves at the same house party. When it came to creating twists or causing drama, the ‘intersection between two independent causal chains’ (Ryan, 2009) is something I wanted to home in on, although a comedy, I needed to create some sort of coincidental drama to keep a potential audience engaged and guessing.

It’s great that I can now come away from this course with an idea that has been expanded into a full-length story. When writing my treatment, I often got caught in the trap of wanting my characters to speak directly to the screen. Now I feel I can investigate developing some scenes into screenplay form and inject real-life experiences into the narrative structure. Eventually I would like to return to this treatment and polish it off as an official industry ready passion piece.

I really enjoyed my time coming into class and being with likeminded creatively driven people. The environment created was one that encouraged idea sharing as well as feedback. Before my treatment workshop I was really stuck at three pages in. It was great to get some technical feedback from my peers on how to expand on my ideas by following the treatment guidelines, into a 10-page piece. It’s also good to get our work out of the confined spaces of our own heads during collaboration. We spend so much time creating and editing and re-writing our own ideas that they are going to make sense regardless. Its not until we let someone else read it and offer feedback that we realise may have been missing a pivotal plot point or certain information of a character’s arc. Even though I am just a student at this point and will take all help and tips offered, it seems a necessary exercise even for professionals,  ‘readers and development executives ask the same questions you probably would, if you were in their shoes’ (Batty, Taylor, Sawtell, Conor 2017), even if we are protective of our own ideas, an alternative lens can always be helpful. That is until the studios get a hold of it and change the ending!

References

Ryan, M (2009). ‘Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design’, Narrative, 17 (1), 56-75

Batty C, Taylor S, Sawtell L, & Conor B (2017). Script development: Defining the field. Journal of Screenwriting, 8(3), 225–247. https://doi.org/10.1386/josc.8.3.225_1