A Simple Story

Craig, Mike and myself are working together as the team "The Purple Cobras" for this assignment to develop a short film around a story about a teen who was struck with kindness of strangers when a man offered him a well paying job.  This man had heard about the teen's struggles to support his brothers and sisters after their mother passed away and how the teen had trouble getting a job.  This sounds like a good ol' heart warming story that can be turned into a film?  But can it really?  Does it have a 3 act arch and does it have character development?  We had to find some ways to creatively tell our story and still make it appealing as a film.

We have decided that the story it's self will remain the same, but will be the middle chuck of our film.  We still need a solid beginning and end.  Without these our project might as well be useless.  Without the beginning we wouldn't be able to get into the characters situation and learn about his life and the hardships he goes through.  We need a reason to root for this character and learn a little back story about him and his family before we can develop the plot.  On the opposite spectrum we also need to wrap up the ending with closure.  We can't just leave the audience wondering what happened because we ended our film in the middle of the story.  We have to show the effect and reactions to what happens in the plot and how everything turns out.

I love writing but this should be an exciting challenge for me as I write the script.  My writing excels in scriptwriting for television.  I love how the characters have room to grow and develop over a broader sense of time and how intimate you can make certain situations that would be cut from a film.  I'm very lucky to have such hard working and brilliant team members to help me develop the story and change/add things to the script.  I look forward to writing it this weekend.  But it will not come as easy to me as if I were writing an episode of TV.  We have to tell an entire story in a very short amount of time and still develop strong connections to the characters and produce a heartwarming story.  It will be a good challenge for me and I hope I can do this story justice.