COMING OF AGE

In genre studies, a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature and film that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood ("coming of age"). Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past.  In literature this is also called Bildungsroman

Why is it popular?                                            Why should WE study it?

Best coming of age movies:

Kings of Summer

The 400 Blows

The Way,Way Back

Boyhood

The Squid and the Whale

Big

Almost Famous

Breakfast Club

Rushmore

Rebel without a Cause

Stand By Me

Dazed and Confused

Female Protagonists

Blue is the Warmest Color

Beasts of the Southern Wild

An Education

Ghost World

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Virgin Suicides

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQqcnMHjxvQ an education

ON TV:

Freaks and Geeks

The Wonder Years

In Literature:

Catcher in The Rye

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Kite Runner

David Copperfield

What changes might the character experience?

Shame

Sexuality

Political Opinion

Rebellion

Disenchantment with parents, teachers

Acceptance of authority, maturity, wrongheadedness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENY1XvdF5VQ squid and the whale

Conventions & Icons

-          Young protagonist, often male and teenage.

-          Set in the past, narrated from the present.

-          Personal growth and change is an important characteristic of this genre, which relies on dialogue and emotional responses, rather than action. 

-          Conflict with family/authority: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/MRobinson/clips/welcome-to-the-dollhouse-dawns-family-dinner.wmv/view 

Character Types

-          The main idea here is the character going through a change.

-          A moment of reflection and learning about yourself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzY2pWrXB_0  almost famous

-          Intro – inciting event – rising action – climax/difficult choice – reflection on what we’ve learned

-          Films may focus on a single protagonist, or a small group as they each learn about themselves on a single day, season, year

Visual & Editing

-          POV, put us in the shoes of the protagonist.

-          High and Low angle shots to emphasize age, authority and juxtapose experience and innocence

-          Montage of youthful play, exuberance and energy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKE57A7U1XM kings of summer

-          The guilelessness and innocence of youth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCpmEQD0L4 Freaks and Geeks – Bill

-           

THEMES & STORIES:

Narrative Devices – flashback

Day in the life

Year/Season of growth

Jumping through time to key moments

Morality Tale

Just Be Yourself

Can’t trust anyone

People will let you down

The past was better

You’ll never have friends like that again

standing up to authority, stereotypes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTeYncx1xmI breakfast club

8 basic stories

There is a theory that in film (or literature) each story falls into one of 8 basic plots.

PLOT 1 - CINDERELLA

The protagonist’s true potential for happiness and fulfilment is at last realized after many ups and downs. The poor protagonist acquires things such as power, wealth, and a mate, before losing it all and gaining it back upon growing as a person.

Examples: Cinderella, Aladdin, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, David Copperfield

PLOT 2 - ACHILLES

Investigates the fatal flaw of the main character. The protagonist is a villain who falls from grace and whose death is a happy ending.

Examples: Macbeth, Bonnie and Clyde, Jules et Jim, Dillinger, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar.

PLOT 3 – THE QUEST

Everybody loves a quest where the hero goes on a journey to find something, which can be a Lost Ark, a body (Stand By Me), or even something unknown and unseen (Pulp Fiction). Sometimes the hero brings his entourage, too.

Examples: The Goonies. Lord of the Rings, Django Unchained

PLOT 4 –REBIRTH

Like a tragedy but where the hero realizes his error before it’s too late, like in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Examples: The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight Rises, The Wrestler

PLOT 5 –OVERCOMING THE MONSTER

The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force which threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist's homeland.

Examples: Dracula, War of the Worlds, The Guns of Navarone, Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven, James Bond, Star Wars: A New Hope

PLOT 6 - ROMEO AND JULIET

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again (put these in any order you like).

Examples: West Side Story, Grease, every Rom-Com ever

PLOT 7 - ORPHEUS

The gift that is taken away. The protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses to him/her, returns with nothing but experience.

Examples: Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Time Machine, Gone with the Wind, The Third Man.

PLOT 8 - THE INDOMITABLE HERO

The hero takes on all comers.

Examples: Rocky, Superman, Die Hard…

WHICH PLOT WILL YOUR FILM FOLLOW?

SCENE THEORY

·       A good scene has a beginning middle and end, just like the movie does – see graph

·       It should contain one key event that advances plot or character

·       The reason we are watching this scene is because it offers us a compelling event in the life of the character (otherwise why bother reading or watching)

·       It should be entertaining - something that the audience is engaged to follow

GOOD SCENES HAVE:

·       a sense of time and place

·       a meaningful conflict

·       plenty of action and dialogue

·       a goal where the hero or antagonist wants something

·       an ending that makes you want to watch the next scene

Ask yourself, can the movie live without this scene (moment)?

if the answer is yes - delete it

And REMEMBER:

This is a movie, so we need something to LOOK at and something to LISTEN to. As such, these details should be evident in your screenplay. If it is just two people talking, then it is a play - not a movie.

COMMON PROBLEMS

A scene needs

·       rising action

·       unity of time and place

·       differentiated characters

·       the turn, the twist, the inciting event

Good and Bad scenic direction:

BAD example: Dave is obviously very happy in his life

GOOD example: We see a montage of Dave enjoying his meal, his family and having a positive experience at work

BAD example: A dull gloomy dystopian society. People are clearly unhappy.

GOOD example: The camera pans across grey, decrepit buildings. It is raining. People line up in front of a grocery store. They are thin and dressed poorly. Their faces are sad or desperate. A woman collapses and others ignore her. A low hum of  industrial noise underscores the scene.

Screen directions should be clear and discuss what we see, not what happens.

BAD: Jannicore is obviusly in a BAD muud. He is fed up @ skool and we can tell.

GOOD: The camera comes up on Jalen, sitting at the back of his math class. He is scowling at his teacher and turns on his iPod. She waves at him. He pulls his hat over his eyes and the camera zooms in to his obscured eyes and frown.

first two tasks

Writing journal task 1: (include these next two writing activities in your journal)

Activity #1: Rewrite - Take a sentence and rewrite it five times, jumbling up the word order. Don't think about it, do it as fast as you can. It's not about making sense, but about feeling free to write nonsense, and you'll find you get interesting results anyway. It helps you put language together in surprising ways, breaking through your own cliched phrases, and finding new meanings, great for poetry and prose.

Activity #2: One Liner/Tag Line

For the 60 second idea you were developing yesterday;

·         Write a 6 word summary of what your film is about.

·         Write a snappy short tag line for the movie poster

Writing journals

Preproduction & Theory                                                                                                                                                          6%

Throughout the next month we will have a variety of lessons of different aspects of screenwriting. Many of them will be tied to a writing exercise. These exercises will constitute your writing journal which will be submitted and evaluated in two major chunks – part 1 & part 2 each worth 3%.

The instructions for each task are on various handouts to come. But this handout reminds you of what the pieces are and how you will be evaluated

PART 1 [3%]                             DUE November 9^th

Task a: Rewrite task, tagline, one liner                   Oct 7

Task b: Writing For Character                               Oct 9

Task c:   Story Design; Principles of Antagonism  Oct 29

Task d: Conversation Snatch                                  Nov 4

Part 2 [3%]                   DUE November 27^tht

Task e: One story three genres                                   Nov 10

Task f: Deep Thoughts                                                Nov 12

Task g: Titles                                                               Nov 16

Task h: Non Linear Story                                            Nov 20

Evaluation:

Part 1:

·         Completion          1              2              3              4

·         Effort                   1              2              3              4

·         Detail                   1              2              3              4

Part 2:

·         Completion          1              2              3              4

·         Effort                   1              2              3              4

·         Detail                   1              2              3              4

Screenwriting Process

The Screenwriting process can be broken down into the following time divisions:

Pre-writing            = 65%

Actual writing       =   5%

Re-writing              = 30%

Overall Stage		Stage	Description	Steps	Hints/Advice
Pre-writing: Conceptualization	1.	Concept	The concept	It is a story about __(character)___ who wants to __(do something)__ and ends up __(succeeding/failing/changed)__.  The somethings need to be visual/tangible. Develop a story with a beginning, middle and end, using only one or two sentences for each section.  Drop those that don’t lend themselves to this. Story: This is the series of events which form the screenplay in chronological order	Know your subject matter but you’re not writing documentary.  As they say in journalism: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. – rf
Pre-writing – Character development	5.	Characters		Whose story is it?  Decide on the point of view.	The characters have to be true from what they do. – Norma Heyman
Pre-writing – Plot development	6.	Climax		Write backwards.  Start at the end. Where does it need to end to move forward?  Then, work backwards from there.
	7.	Acts		Think visually. An image system is a category of images which repeat throughout your script.
Writing and rewriting	12.	Treatment		Treatment = tells the story in detail, tells us what we see, imparts the mood of the screenplay, includes brief character details, avoids camera and music directions, is written in crisp, short paragraphs (one per scene) using active verbs and descriptive nouns.
	13.	Exploratory draft		Write it all down. Don’t fix any of it.	Do all of your thinking before you get to dialogue.
	14.	The rewrites	The rewrite is about cutting the unnecessary, the redundant, the insipid, without lessening the passion and urgency.  It should follow six stages: Understandability, Structure, Characters, Dialogue, Style, Polish	Don’t even attempt a rewrite until you have finished your first exploratory draft.	The problem with new writers is they keep rewriting all the time.  Just get it down.  It’s not like this is the only time you can write it. – Tom Schulman A good writer is not someone who knows how to write – but how to rewrite. – William Goldman You write from the heart; you rewrite from the head. – Viki King

Example screenplay format:

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Avatar.html

• Each scene is indicated where and when it is in time and space:

 EXT. CITY – NIGHT

• Each piece of dialogue has the characters name caps and centered, then lines:

JAKE (V.O.)

               They can fix a spinal, if you've got the

               money. But not on vet benefits, not in

               this economy.

• Stage and camera directions are written as follows, note all caps for specific important items, props and sets:

         The traffic light changes and Jake pushes forward with the

        crowd, pumping the wheels of his chair. Most of the people

        wear FILTER MASKS to protect them from the toxic air. In a

        LONG LENS STACK it is a marching torrent of anonymous,

        isolated souls.

• Editing and camera directions may be discussed in the screenplay, but they may not be.

Ex: cut to: dissolve: long shot: KS:

http://www.celtx.com/

(a free downloadable software to write screenplays in the correct format)

Screen writing: The pitch, the treatment, the storyboard

The Pitch: The story ideas should be written out in no longer than four sentences in length, and should demonstrate both the hook and the developmental potential of the idea.

The Treatment: tells the story in detail, tells us what we see, imparts the mood of the screenplay, includes brief character details, avoids camera and music directions, is written in crisp, short paragraphs (one per scene) using active verbs and descriptive nouns. In Hollywood, 90 -100 minute features translates to a 30 page treatment. So our 3-5 minute films should receive treatments of about a page and a half.

The Storyboard: What is a storyboard?

 A storyboard is a visual representation of how a story is to be shot.  It is one of the easiest and most effective script formats.  Although, there are many different types of storyboards, they all feature drawings and sketches which represent all of the shots in the production.  These drawings are placed in frames similar to a comic strip.