It has been quite an eventful week as the students gather together all their coursework for the past year and preparation is made for the long haul of marking in the next week or so.
However, during this brief lull between external examiner's visits and the marking ahead, I took the opportunity to see if a script was brewing. To my delight, two weekends ago an idea popped into my head and I soon had an outline sketched out in my notebook. A week last Tuesday I opened Final Draft, the industry standard script writing software and began the first fifteen pages of the script. Each night, there after, I managed to add another fifteen pages, with a break on Sunday and the final act was completed by Monday night.
Quite a few news items during the week inspired various scenes, including an Australian doctor who had been forced to use a hand drill to release the pressure of a thirteen year old boy's brain after he had had a fall. Being some distance from a fully equipped hospital, the doctor was in touch with a neurosurgeon who talked him through the procedure over the phone.
Another story was that of North Korea testing a nuclear weapon underground, that caused an earthquake and a storm with the international community. Threats of war have since ensued and who knows where it will all lead.
The global economic situation also found its way into the script, as did some philosophy, religion, science and a lot of funny situations with aircraft engines, rampaging elephants and colourful hairdos.
The final script came out at 76 pages, not quite the full-length feature film one might expect but a similar length to 'Fiddler's Walk', my first film and the length of a TV movie. The intention is to have a film that can be comfortably made during the summer, so the live-action can be recorded and then all the special effects can be added next academic year as part of the coursework for 3D modeling and animation, digital post-production and image manipulation. This would allow the Higher National Diploma students to get a live project to work on and achieve a finished feature film by this time next year.
My current students are quite excited by the whole prospect, having nearly completed their National Diploma in Media Production and wanting something else to get their teeth into before going on to University next September.
I'll keep you informed of our progress.
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