A Note on Symbols.

Tonight's entry is going to be a bit less direct at first, but I promise it comes back around.

If you've read the first post (if you haven't, don't worry...I know it's very long) you may have seen that I've been writing as a hobby since I was around 11 years old. However, I don't consider myself to have fully blossomed into a writer until I wrote my first full-length screenplay. It was called "The Adventure," and the current draft clocks in at 108 pages.

The reason I consider "The Adventure" such a turning point for me is because it is the first time I ever attempted AND finished a story that purposefully had a deeper intent behind it other than being entertaining. I highlight finishing it because I had begun writing something a few years prior called "Unreality" that failed in this respect because it was...too outspoken. To this day it remains on my hard drive, saved, but incomplete.

See, "The Adventure" had a thing called subtlety. For all its ridiculous, high-budget imagery, pyrotechnics, and Apocalypse-based plotline, the story had a heart. The best moments of the script are arguably the tamer ones...at least as tame as the tame moments can be in a script about a world-ending disaster. It wasn't focused on grizzled military tacticians, or people killing each other in a struggle for survival, or about scaring you..."The Adventure" is about the universal human need for love and wonder, and about finding God and yourself, sometimes in the same place.

The problem with "Unreality" in its drafted form was that, though it had some grand ideas behind it, it was far too overbearing. Its symbols were thrown at you, rather than simply shown to you. Its messages were literal, rather than implied. Quite frankly, I think I was assuming my audience was stupid (which also gave it an added air of pretension.) I focused too much on craft and too little on just writing from the heart like Sir Philip Sidney suggested we all do so long ago. "Unreality" was a spectacle too, but it was sort of like the second Harry Potter film: pretty, but empty, despite its best efforts.

"The Adventure" had its literal symbols and its literal messages. For example, in one section of the film protagonist Evan is walking through the streets of his city after the disaster. A paper drifts by that he catches with the headline "PRESIDENT IGNORES ALL THREATS." This scene lasts around 7 or 8 onscreen seconds. It is a literal message: oftentimes, our leaders are clueless and make bad decisions. This has further ramifications in establishing his disconnection with the world and, to a lesser extent, with authority. It is very direct and to the point.

However, it is not overbearing. What is overbearing is a conversation between two characters about denominations within Christianity, as there is in "Unreality." This is not a message that is slight or swift; instead, it is akin to a large man wearing a three-wolf moon shirt running up behind you and beating you over the head with a tire iron.

There's something I like to call the "The Misty Forest Syndrome." This disease extends beyond imparting messages to your audience; it also infects the devices used to impart those messages or ideas. For example, in Hawthorne's classic novel "The Scarlet Letter," there is a scene where Hester Prynne is wandering in a forest filled with fog. It is a surreal, almost dreamlike moment, reflective of the confusion in her own mind. However, this is obvious...and yet Hawthorne sees fit to quite literally spell it out for us and say it stands for confusion.

"The Adventure" has moments like this. Trees in the film are repeatedly used as a symbol of God or protection. However, this is never spelled out. No, I am not a better writer than Nathaniel Hawthorne (read "Maypole of Merry-mount" or "My Kinsman Major Molyneux" and you'll agree), but I feel like "The Adventure" succeeds because of moments like this. It balances sporadic direct symbols, such as the trees, with overarching ones, like the literal journey in the film being suggestive of a quest to find inner peace.

With "Our Story," I have opted to take what I have learned from "The Adventure" during the still-ongoing drafting process (did I really write dialogue THAT crappy just two years ago?) and apply it to "Our Story."

The script for this film contains one major element that can be called a symbol, one that I can't really reveal for spoiler purposes. However, like the journey in "The Adventure," it is overarching. "Our Story" is a story, with a beginning and end somewhere. However, it is much more a movie about a situation than a problem solved, and I feel like, at least for this format, it works better. I think people relate better to ideas than to anything delivered verbatim, because ideas are one-size-fits-all, whereas stories merely copied are just one-form-fits-one. Of course, then you have to worry about too MUCH ambiguity...but that's another entry for another night.

Well, I suppose that's all. ROSEBUD MEANS CHILDHOOD!

Spoiler alert,
-JD

Script: 100% since 2/09
Cast: 100%
Crew: 100%
Camera Supplies: 25%
Storyboards: 56%
Definitive Shooting Schedule: ~7%
Movement Rehearsals: 0%
Locations/Permissions: ~75%
Green Screen Construction: 0%