Relevance to directing: I practiced utilising story structure and building scenes to communicate character development and conflict. Through doing many redrafts, I have developed a strong understanding of what needs to remain in a narrative and what can be cut out in order to communicate a cohesive and clear narrative - this is a skill I find is important for a director to have. I also learnt to communicate my ideas in a visual way.
My initial vision - to have a group of people living in a desolate-yet-peaceful post-apocalypse have no choice but to enter a radioactive post-apocalyptic city - holds the core of the narrative together. All the characters exist around this idea, and so I believe I was successful in crafting this narrative.
This was a semester-long project, and taught me immeasurable amounts about building and developing narrative, world, and complex characters.
My main takeaways
1. Narrative - Planning the narrative before writing allowed me to be intentional about the parameters of each scene, considering when it began, ended and what conflict and character progression resulted from each part. This process took time, but meant I was constantly thinking about character, and considering how they would think and respond to the events occurring around them. Overtime, I developed a sense of their separate personalities and was able to ensure each scene was written with purpose.
This understanding of scene parameters transfers over to film directing, as it is important to understand pacing and how to make a scene progress as much as possible in an as economical a way as possible
2. Dialogue - During editing, I worked on a line-by-line level, considering each word and sentence and the way they both impacted the reader and conveyed character. Through doing this, I developed strong dialogue, working hard to interweave subtext throughout Henry, John and Katie's interactions to build tension, fear and conflict without having them openly state it. This proved to reinforce the kind of authentic compartmentalisation and subdued manner that would likely occur for people living in this situation.
3. Everything has meaning - During this writing, I learnt that everything included in story has meaning and is there for a reason. I think this translates very well over to film, when considering cinematography, action, dialogue and how a director chooses to direct a scene.
