The Script (not the band)

Sooooo, yo whats up? How are you? Good? Me you ask.....me? well I'm just myself...so I’m BAD! Hhahah we just got back from Media Camp. Which is a camp in which you do media like activities. It was fun. Won two Gronkfest (courtesy of Mr. Brendan Humphries, yes the Kill devil hills guy!) awards...meh all in a days work of just being EPIC!!! Hhahah nah. But I was very happy and surprised to be in a winner group, which didn't happen last year, when I played a drunk leprechaun....long story anyway....Directing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today in Mr. Chris Richards-Scully's class we watched Gladiator. And I WAS ENTERTAINED! Well only one scene, not Ridley's best work I have to say, but an undeniably epic action movie with good performances. In this scene there was Russel and he was talking to Dumbledore. No not Michael Gambon, the other dude! The far superior Dumbledore who appeared in the first two Harry Potter films! And we were asked to break down the emotion in the scene, the "scene Action" which is the psychological state of the character in any scene. As well as the Unit Action which is the "Beats" of each scene, or the emotional turns the character takes in a scene. These are used by the director for emotional stimuli, if you will lar di dar!!!, for the actors.

Eg. something we came up in class was a scene where Mr. Richards-Scully enters a class room and throws his pen down and storms back out the door. Our Scene action was:

Chris is fuming about the accusation

What’s the accusation you ask? Don't you know!!!! Nah well you don't really have to know, it's just whatever happened in the previous scene that leads to Chris fuming and walking out.

For the unit action, we managed to break the scene down into 2 beats (yes that's right I'm too lazy to write TWO):

1) Chris is fuming about the accusation
2) Chris Regrets backing down from the argument

Remember the beat is when the emotions in the characters change, so when he regrets backing down that’s when his emotion changed from just fuming.

So that's a scene action and a unit action. You can use this while directing to mark your scripts so when an actor asks "So ah what's my motivation when I like...ya know pick up the coffee cut?", you'll know what emotions to give him/her.

So that's it. Get a life and stop reading my blog, I'm sure at this moment you’re reading this you could be outside in the sunshine, playing croquet

I'm out suckers!

Blake Lockett