Hello, my fellow artists! I am recapping my weekly experiences of the writing course I’m taking at the Sundance Collab. These recaps are a cool insight into the creative process and personal journey of building something from scratch. In this case, a feature film treatment.
Recap: Week 7. We are almost nearing the end of the journey. Two more weeks to go! And once this course is over, I’ll be blogging about my acting endeavors, plus my 2nd & 3rd quarter wins! Keep reading below 🙂
Week 7 was all about taking our expanded beat sheet from last week and moving it towards an outline. An outline is where we start expanding upon the one-liner sentences from our beat sheet. We add details as we march towards the final goal of creating a feature film treatment. One way to add details is to think about the visuals of the film. Film is a visual medium. How can we utilize visuals to tell our story and reveal the emotional inner life of our characters? There’s that famous expression that goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So that as you read my treatment, and eventually, my screenplay, you can SEE the movie in your mind. You can see and FEEL what’s happening from one page to the next. Keep reading below 🙂
It was great to comb through my expanded beat sheet and think about how to infuse visuals into my scenes. I used a blue font to add the visual components. And from using the blue font, I could see (pun intended) how my scenes expanded. Keep reading below 🙂
Once I added visuals, the next step was to go through the beat sheet again to continue adding more details about what is happening from scene to scene. This beat sheet, now called an outline, could be expanded up to 8 pages. I got to 7 1/2 pages and submitted it to my course advisor. Overall, she thinks I’m off to a great start and that I have a great idea for my feature film. She provided wonderful comments and questions throughout my outline to help me take my story to the next level. She asked the next question and came from a place of support. I let her feedback sit with me for a few days because I wanted to give myself time to let the answers come to me. And then, I received the weekly email from my Thursday scene study class that contained the inspirational quote of the week. That quote unlocked something within me! An “a-ha” moment! I sat down at my computer and answered all but two of her questions. Now, I have to implement these answers into my outline and keep carving them out. Keep reading below 🙂
Fun fact: I am writing a feature film with a friend and colleague of mine for our Professional Development Program 3.0 class, and I could see how week 7 immediately influenced the scenes I recently wrote. Keep reading below 🙂
Until next week!
Chasing The George 