I knew how I wanted the film to end and from there decided that I needed to establish certain elements throughout the film.
I knew that at the end, the boy would make a decision to learn braille as a way to read again, the story essentially following him in his journey to that decision.
Of course, I needed to establish that the boy is, in fact, blind. Therefore I added a scene in which he throws a book away, only to go looking for it after and putting it back on the shelf. His careful fumbling would indicate clearly that he cannot see.
The other important thing to establish was how much the boy loved reading. This is achieved by implying yearning using tension where both the boy and books appear in the scene. By drawing out shots for longer than is comfortable to watch and by having the boy react to books but never actually reading (in our case due to actual lack of sight).
Because the boy would take his reading light to where he would read braille, the audience would need to understand what the reading light meant to the boy and how it works as a symbol. Again, another point to establish during the film. This one was a bit trickier. I decided that the relationship between the boy and the reading light would be best established by the introduction of a habit. This works on two layers. First, the lamps would express a confusion and/or sadness over the lack of reading done by the boy in its presence by "looking" back and forth between the books in the boy's room and the boy himself. Another scene would play out in a similar way to reinforce that and as a way to establish the idea of a habit.
Based on these three criteria I put together a list of scenes that worked towards one or more of these points. The only ones set in stone were the first and last scene.
I wanted to open the film at a crossover between the two parts of the boys life, when him being blind crosses over with the time when he wasn't. It's when his room still looks like it did before he turned blind, but he himself is already blind. The room has not yet been adjusted. This is to contrast between the rest of the film, which should be situated in the new, clean and cushioned room, safe for a blind child. That first scene also serves to establish that the boy was able to see at some point.
This is the list of scenes after putting them in appropriate order:
- Boy staring at a book, from the view of the lamp. We see a borderline messy room, with a lot of books and active toys in the background.
- We see the boy's room, recognising the large amount of books, but no personal touches otherwise
- Lamp is going back and forth between the bookshelf and the boy, wondering why the boy stopped reading
- Boy listening to an audio book (?), lying on the floor. His eyes fall on the books, clsoe and he looks away.
- Lamp nudges boy while he's sleeping, wanting to read with him
- Boy tries to read book, fails, gets angry, throws it away, retrieves it after a brief hold out and puts it back in shelf.
- Boy turns lamp on and off, staring into space without reacting
- Boy picks up a braille book and a translation help and starts reading
There is symmetry in some of the scenes, mirroring previous scenes as a way to reflect the repetitiveness of the boy's existence at that very moment.
The focus also shifts from the room to the reading light and then to the boy. This way, the audience gets introduced to the situation slowly and it allows for the revelation of the boy's blindness to be surprising. It also ensures a direct connection between the reading light and the boy.
Writing the Short Film (2005: p 48) talks about the catalyst of a story. These two things I considered quite important for this short film. The catalyst is the inciting incident, the beginning/reason of the the protagonist's dramatic action. In this case it would be the boy turning blind. Typically this would be put into a film. Either jumping straight into the catalytic event, or beginning slightly before that to show contrast. I decided not to do either. The catalyst (the boy turning blind) is never mentioned or shown in the film. Instead it concentrates entirely on what happens after. The first scene is used to still create contrast, showing the boy's character through his environment. Writing the Short Film (2005: p 52) also mentions that the shorter the film is, the more license the writer has to jump straight into action; exactly what I have decided to do.
Writing the actual script proved a challenge in and of itself. I had written very few scripts previously, but never one for animation. I wrote a first draft and had it read over by two screenwriter friends. Their comments were that it was good, but apparently way too detailed. A script doesn't need details, that's for the rest of the film makers to sort out.
However, I did read some articles and blog posts by screenwriters who had done both and stumbled on an article on the Animation World Network (2011) that supports the idea of detail in a script for animation. The author Jeffrey Scott talks about how describing the action works in live action because the action already exists. In animation the action has to be made and therefore relies on more detail from the script. This is the example used by Scott:
"A coyote chases a bird over the cliff and falls into the canyon.
That’s how you might describe a scene in a live-action script. The director takes it from there. Now what do you see when I write this?
The coyote scrambles after the roadrunner, his legs a blur, running right off the end of a cliff. As the roadrunner sticks his tongue out and beeps at him, the coyote stops over thin air. He looks down at the canyon bottom a mile below, starting to sweat. Then he looks into camera with a loud “gulp!” and drops like a rock, his neck stretching like a rubber band as his head tries to catch up. He diminishes into the distance with a bomb whistle, finally hitting the canyon bottom with a dull thud and distant puff of smoke.
Get the picture? It’s eight times as many words, but it gives you a complete visual image with little need for interpretation."
(Scott 2011)
He then goes on to add how that changes the translation from script pages to screen minutes:
"This increase in description creates another difference between live and animation writing. In live action the general rule is one page per minute. This also holds true in most animated feature writing. But one page of a TV animation script generally translates to about 40 seconds of screen time. In live action the director interprets the written word, and thus expands on it. But in animation, the writing is generally more literally interpreted, and although better storyboard artists often add a bit or a gag here and there, most boarders just translate the written word to visual images."
(Scott 2011)
Between this and the opinions of my proof readers, I went over the script twice in an attempt to cut it down. This is the final version (at the moment):
References
Cooper, P. & Dancyger, K. (2005) Writing the short film. 3rd edition. Burlington, MA, Elsevier Focal Press.
Scott, J. (2011) The difference between live-action and animation writing. Animation World Network. [Online] Available from: https://www.awn.com/blog/difference-between-live-action-and-animation-writing [Accessed 29 December 2017]
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