Monday, 25 April 2016

Major Production Unit: Production - Perry's House Rewrite

Prior to shooting Scenes 5-8A at Perry's house, I decided to rewrite it. This was for two reasons:

- Firstly, Post-Production had already started and the running time for the film was just under 30 minutes: our target duration. This meant we were going to overrun regardless and a shorter sequence at Perry's house would result in less footage having to be cut.

- Secondly, the sequence was very long: 7 pages to be exact, which for a 38 page script is a large chunk of it. The pacing seemed to be too slow and would be following two already slow-paced scenes.

I needed to quicken things up and get to the point rather than forcing the audience to watch Sean and Archie search the entire lower floor of Perry's house and make sure the total running time didn't exceed the goal as much as it was already going to.





I much prefer this version to the original: gone are the slow and, to be frank: boring, parts of the sequence and now more focus is put on Sean's disliking towards Archie.

UPDATE:

Having now filmed the new version and watching it back in the edit the scene is very strong. It has a very nice pace to it and the tension is maintained throughout. I'm glad I rewrote this sequence and it's a step up from the original one, which would probably have clocked in at 7-8 minutes, maybe even more. It's good to have things like this happen as, an earlier version of me would have fought to not change the sequence, and is a good lesson to learn for when I next write a script: get to the point!

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