May 2008

This week we had the first two of three sessions on ‘development' workshops and were taught by a visiting tutor, Lisa. Lisa is an independent producer with a specialist background in development, having worked in the USA and the UK as a development executive for a number of top studios, before setting up her own production company, and running a sideline business in script development, a service which provides writers with extensive feedback and constructive criticism on their scripts. Anyway, Lisa come fully armed with extensive handouts and a powerpoint presentation to take us through the principles of the development process from writing scripts and story structure, to finding and working with writers and the role of a producer in providing coverage and feedback.

In the first session, we began by discussing what it is that makes a good story and the importance of having a strong concept. Lisa suggested a test-theory to us, that the best way to decide if something is a strong concept is to see if you can pitch it. If it works, then you should be able to easily break it down into its basic components and be able to throw out a pithy one-liner to grab someone's attention with the idea. Having worked in Hollywood, it was entertaining to hear her anecdotes of having to accost the head of development in a corridor and pitch your idea to him in under a minute as he runs form one meeting to the next. It made me realise, firstly, the need for a producer to be capable salesperson, as well as the central importance of the idea or concept being alluring and clear.

We also covered the role of genre in this session, and as an American producer working in the UK, it was interesting to hear Lisa's opinion of the anti-genre attitude which pervades the UK film industry. In Hollywood, genre movies are still the main output, even if the current trend is for movies which cross two or three genres. It was Lisa's feeling that the UK shouldn't be so afraid to tap into this market, as a genre is how an audience identifies with a movie and allows a much easier task in marketing and distributing the movie and appealing to a clear target audience.

For the most part of the rest of the session we learned about story structure and touched on a variety of film narrative theorists, from Voglers ‘Map of the Journey', through Blake Snyder's '15 Beats' and Syd Field's ‘3 Act Paridigm'. In my experience of script reading, this formality of story breakdown is something which I hadn't really considered, I had simply relied on my instinct to tell me whether it was a successfully story structure. But having learned about the different theories, and discussed the different elements which make up a story and where they should come in the overall structure, it has definitely presented me with a new way to look at a script. In the class we looked at a couple of successful movies and broke them down into formal structure, and I have to admit I have always been sceptical about the restrictions and limits of these kinds of theories, but actually, when we worked through the movies, I was surprised at how easily they fitted into the standard structure and covered all the traditional story elements.

We finished the first session looking at log-lines. This is something I had experience of from my work in development at Slingshot and Celtic, but again it was interesting to explore what makes a good log line. Lisa then set us the hilarious and trickier than expected task of pairing up and writing our own log lines to a number of different movies, and I think we were all surprised how difficult it is, not to write a log-line, but to write a successful log-line. She set us a homework task of each writing one for the following day's session, using the breakdown/advice sheet she had given us. I worked on a log-line for my own project and it when we came in the next day we spent a really useful half hour going over these loglines and discussing what worked and what didn't, and now I do feel that I have a logline which is perfect for my project.

The second evening was spent largely discussing our own projects and how we approach these as writer and producers in terms of producing the necessary documents, from one-page summaries and synopsis, to step outlines and treatments, and the purpose of each of these documents. This was actually really super to hear what the other people in the group are working on, and I felt it was a good exercise in bonding the group as well as learning how different people approach the development process.

Lisa the spent the last hour talking about where you can look for projects as a producer and the importance of always being on the look out for a new idea, script, book, magazine article, painting, or any inspiration which may make a good movie. She then covered the practicalities of finding a writer and how to get the best out of them once they are on board. Lisa's sessions were a great balance of group discussion and her instruction, which has once again left me inspired to get cracking on my own project, and in fact I went straight home from work last night to start re-working my treatment and logline based on this weeks sessions!

Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy
Site Map

May 2008

June 2008

July 2008

August 2008

September 2008

Week 2: Development

Claire Dunn