scriptwriting

Just to get a feel for scriptwriting/coming up with a dialogue etc, i printed out one of The Family guy's episodes. The show is just so hilarious and you know that their hilarity is based off their strong script. But it plays a lot on each of the characters on the set. I mean you expect each of them to say something that is in line with the personality of the character. And also, a lot of random humor. Sometimes reeaally random humor. You could say our vomiting cue is a really random bit, humorous? hmm... well it might play off just fine.

Anyways, what we have today was more of the general idea. We do have direction.

Kids arrive home from school. Dad is on the couch, Mom is the kitchen window. So the kid son has been suspended from school for flying. Dad warns the kid about the dangers of flying [ brother died flying into window bit]
[more chirping chatter]

[argument]

TV with natural disaster [what - hurricanes, blizzards, earthquakes, industrialization, wildfires ??]

dad doesn't want to leave - but family convinces dad to evacuate

---ending ---

screen with shadow puppets indicating their flight away.

--- also egg cracks on the nest couch ---

--- dim lights---

---the end---

and we all know that because our scenes are basically the family setting. our dialogue needs to be really strong and drawn out - but not dragged out.

So here are some of the components of sitcoms:

There's:
1) act (sitcoms are usually broken into 3 acts)
2) scenes - could be one long scene or several short scenes
3) A & B stories - main plot (A) and also possible subplots (B)
4) climax - usually in a sitcom there are two climaxes - the first at the end of ACT 1 and ACT 2 another climax- this one is usually the worst "I would never want to be in that situation"
5) lastly is the resolution, ACT 3.

some more points to remember about creating a story... (for writing a comedy script--advice from BBC New Writing Initiative)

1. REMAIN TRUE TO THE CHARACTERS. the characters should sound like the characters and act like the characters.
2. CHARACTERS SHOULD BE ACTIVE. not necessarily "active" meaning that they should continually be moving, but that the characters should not be passive and reactive. Make situations arise out of stuff the characters do instead of stuff that happens to them.
Generally, the BEST STORIES ARE CHARACTER-DRIVEN. There's a funny situation, but the situation should be especially uncomfortable for the main character. An instructor says: "If it's a situation you wouldn't want to be in, it's worth writing"
One way is to generate storiesby MAKING A LIST OF THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR FLAWS.

Now this is for comedy sitcoms and generally they run for 25-30 min or so. However, I think this can be helpful for our development. I don't think we're straying away from any of these points anyways. Plus, our characters are birds. Personified? yes, but people? not entirely.

At some point, I will bring in a microcassette so we can record our written script or storyboard and see how long it actually is, who's voice should go to what, etc etc.

Have a good weekend folks.