Making good grounds on development of the second short film project

A tragic love story is really starting to take shape on the back of my office door. Scene cards blue-tacked all over the place, believe it or not they are actually in some sort of order.

During the development phase of what will be my second short film, it is clear that I have learnt lots from Angel of the Night, my debut short film. I now have a more structured process for developing my ideas. It really is making things flow much easier. During Angel of the Night there were more than a few moments of stalling because I wasn’t sure what to do next to get things done.

I start by deciding what genre to tackle, in this case a tragic love story. Next is the concept, one sentence that sums up my idea (a potential tag line for the film, “It’s a story about a ???? who ???”). This is followed by a brief character development phase, this will include an outline for the story arc for the main characters. I’ll then work on plot structure, main events of the story, when they happen and what relationship they have with the characters. The final section of this part of the development is the individual scenes. What’s needed to take the story forward and to bring all the plot lines and key events together?

Once I have all of the above I find myself in a much better position to be able to take another stride closer to starting draft one of the screenplay. There are still lots of notes and revisions to be made, but it does give me something to work with and beats staring at a blank page.

With my tragic love story I’ve just finished round one of the four phase development of my idea. The individual scenes have been scribbled on small cards and are stuck on the back of my office door. The next move is for me to go over those scenes later and make changes, add bits, revise bits, improve on certain areas to increase the dramatic tone and emotional feel.

Once I’m at a stage where I have scenes that I think closely resemble the beats of my story, I’ll then start to think about dialogue. Now, for this project I want to enlist the help of other writers and individuals, tell them about the scenes and get their reactions. How would they react if this happened to them? What would they say? How would they say it etc.

And that’s where I’m at right now.

Exciting stuff, I’m so very hungry for this industry and am so very excited about the future.

Thanks for visiting!

Danny.

ALSO – If you haven’t seen it yet. My debut short horror film Angel of the Night is now on my YouTube page in full HD for all to see. Please do have a look if you have three minutes spare. http://www.youtube.com/user/dannylaceyfilm