Evaluative Analysis – Charlotte Archer

In the creation of my screenplay, I referred to the short films we had watched for help when
generating ideas. There were two films which helped to give me inspiration. Namely ‘About a Girl‘
and ‘Wasp‘. I had decided I had wanted to go for a story which had a plot twist. ‘About a girl’ really
helped when thinking about this because of the shock right to the end with the young girl throwing
the baby into the canal. ‘Wasp’ did not have such a plot twist that I could take inspiration from, but I
did love the family values were in this film there is a great one between not only the mum and the
children but also the mum's boyfriend at the end. In both films there are absent father figures, but I
like that there is a replacement figure in ‘Wasp’ with the mum's boyfriend. I had always known that I
wanted to have stepdad in the film I was just unsure as to whether I wanted him to have a good
relationship with the main character, but after seeing ‘Wasp’ I decided that I did want a good
relationship between them.

Both films had a lot in common, another one of these things being that in both films there are strong
willed young girls. I took this inspiration more from ‘about a girl’ however because she is a teenager
while in ‘Wasp’ the girl is noticeably young. The girl in ‘about a girl’ is opinionated and seems to be
quite self-sufficient, which is how I wanted to depict my character to be. The story works far better if
the main character can stand on her own 2 feet and produce her own solutions to the problems she
is facing.

Typically, a short film cannot include much dialogue as there is not time and it can typically
overcrowd the film making it difficult to watch. we see this more so in ‘wasp’ than we do in ‘about a
girl’ as ‘about a girl’ is made up entirely of dialogue. It breaks this rule as there is not much on the
screen to describe what the girls saying so it is required that she sits and talks about it instead,
however in ‘wasp’ we can see that as everything is shown in the shot so there is not as much of a
need for the excessive dialogue. Short films are used to extend the idea that film is more of a visual
medium. I tried to follow this in my own short film and the only dialogue is speech from one
character to another.

My screenplay is based in an apocalyptic time so I had found two other films which were good to
watch. They did not necessarily inspire any aspects of the screenplay, but they did include various
aspects which can be seen depicted in a post-apocalyptic society. Specifically robots. The two films
are ‘high maintenance’ and ‘the wrong trousers.’ It initially seems like a strange connection but in
‘the wrong trousers’ the robot that Wallace and Gromit had built starts to be used to control the
human characters and in ‘high maintenance’ the characters are in fact all robots which shows the
robots had taken over. As I stated previously these could be seen as links to the post apocalyptic
idea that I was looking to follow with the zombies. Whilst they may differ on the surface, when you
investigate It in a slight bit more detail you can see the connection. These films began to show me
how animated to make the responses of my characters.

I also really think the plot twists in ‘high maintenance’ were completely shocking and I did not see
them coming at all which is really what I was looking to do with my piece. I wanted the twists to be
shocking and unexpected to grip the attention of the reader / audience. Also, in both my film and
‘High Maintenance’ all the sound is diegetic.

I did watch one short film, which was very entertaining and well made, but did not really help to
inspire or encourage any parts of my screenplay. This film is called ‘the gunfighter,’ it was truly short
and was more of a comedy or spoof of a country western film. This meant I was not able to take
much from it, but I did like the snappy camera movements between characters to show a conflict
between them. I chose to use these in one of my action scenes as I thought it worked well and could
create a good amount of necessary tension.

Whilst I took influence from films I also took some from the film makers as well. One of these people
being David Boyd. He is a talented cinematographer who is worked on a multitude of feature length
films. The films of his I focused on mostly were the zombie ones. He worked on ‘The Walking Dead’
and a film called ‘the laughing dead’. I feel like when it comes to creating the tension and fear you
need to create in a film like one of these cinematography is an especially important aspect of the
film creating process. As is the props and costume and make up. I took a lot of inspiration from the
show the walking dead, so I did a little bit of research into the people who made this side of
filmmaking come to life. There are hundreds of people involved in creating this side of the film but
the most notable people in this specific series would be; Greg Nicotero – The lead make up artist for
169 episodes, Peggy Stamper - The costume designer for 169 episodes , Victor Scalise - The most
notable special effects artist, and Greg Melton - The production designer for 169 episodes. These
people collectively made the TV series what it was and despite the brilliant writing and
cinematography the series would not have the same affect as it did if these people were not there to
bring it to life.

I have always thought it is a struggle to find women of any kind of notability in the film industry, at
least one that is not an actor. Being a young female who wants to dip my toes into whatever the film
industry could be, I did some research into how women progress and I found an inspirational woman
who truly inspired me to push forward and create the best screenplay I could. Shonda Rimes is
known as one of the world's leading female directors having directed shows such as ‘Grey’s
Anatomy,’ which has been running since 2005 and ‘inventing Anna’ which was a new series that
began this year. Grey’s Anatomy is one of the most widely watched TV shows in the world and it got
Shonda Rimes known for her scandalous attitude and dramatic storytelling. Many people have had a
problem with this inspiration due to her being a strong independent black woman this commonly
intimidates people, but she never let this stop her and carried on making and building the Empire
that she had created. I also took great inspiration from one of the only female film directors in the
1950s, Ida Lupino, she directed eight films one of those being ‘the hitchhiker’, during the 1950s the
view towards women was hardly a positive one so for this lady to have created such successful film
in these days was a shock and a turning point for women in the film industry everywhere.

When writing my screenplay I had a few struggles which included adding too much detail for the
camera movements and not enough detail to show the audience certain things I had wanted to. But
after working past these issues I feel like I created a detailed and meaningful screenplay which would
have a positive affect towards an audience wishing to read or watch it. I tried to go for a screenplay
because I felt that I could have the creative freedom I needed to give my peace meaning and to push
it to the next level that I could not have reached creating the film or a limited budget and with the
limited understanding I have. I had initially wanted to base my screenplay on a short story I had
written a few years prior however I found them a few kinks and the story would have to have been
changed slightly to fit my vision and ability in a film. Thankfully, I managed to change this up without
ruining the first essence of the story which means that this screenplay became the creation of
something I have had in my mind for a long while.

When compared to other professionals' screen plays there is an obvious difference since I do not
have the same experience the professional screenplay writer to however, I feel that with a bit more
work and a slightly more understanding of the area that I am entering I could bring it up to a similar
if not same standard. There was no way that my screenplay would be at the same level as one made
professionally but I feel like I could’ve strive slightly harder to get it to that next level. When
compared to the screen play for ‘High Maintenance’ there are a few similarities, and they sit at quite
a similar level. The amount of dialogue is near enough the same in both screenplays and they both
look professional.

I thought my biggest struggle was the storyboards as it is hard to make them seem professional, and
I really struggled to capture what I was trying to in the hand drawn pictures. I wish I had been able to
go out and take digital pictures but unfortunately with what I was writing my screenplay about I did
not have this opportunity as I did not have the ability time or budget to recreate the images in my
screenplay to any acceptable level. With the inability to include too much detail in the storyboards it
is tough to get across the information in them, I had hoped I would have had a bit more success with
these but overall, they were to an acceptable standard.

I had a great deal of fun creating my screenplay and with the inspiration that I took I think overall I
have created a A decently effective piece of work and hopefully others see it the same way I do.