The Wasteland of Rewrites
OK, so officially we are on rewrite number 3. Unofficially I've gone through something like seven or so. The official releases are the ones that have been handed out to the group as a working copy whilst the unofficial ones are those made for editing and feedback purposes.
It's genocidal, the number of characters murdered and resurrected in various guises (in particular the character of Fi that started out as a drunken lush, turned into a bartender that had an affair with one of the main characters, his mistress, old landlady, his mistress again, his sister, mutual friend and finally into an inanimate headline).
The real difficulty lies in the plethora of comments that come with every rewrite. It turns the prospects of the next rewrite into a minefield of pitfalls, do's and do not's, avoidances and things to make sure are in there. It literally got to the point where I was changing words halfway through typing them out.
I think I need to find a better way of dealing with notes and comments. The way it 's happening so far is that as soon as I finish a major rewrite of the script, everyone pours their feedback into it. Some people love some lines and others hate them, some people find the scenes cheesy, others find them evocative. Fi, in particular, has been the character everyone loves to hate (except for our beloved graphic designer Mr Hawzers who thinks she's the best thing in the script), and after a while your original reason for including anything in the first place becomes suspect.
And this is where the madness ensues. Every aspect of the script becomes up for grabs, the changes so radical and the options so numerous that every decision adds an exponential amount of choices and possibilities. On the other hand, every idea you get becomes challenged not only by your internal author-ial voice but by an internal choir of comments and remarks as well.
Dialogue is the trickiest to take comments on because everyone reads a script differently. Whatever adverbs you stick before the delivery of a line, people will still interpret it according to their own personal character compass and the remarks may vary from "stilted" to "brilliant". I think if I was only a scriptwriter this would be reason to worry, but as I am hopefully going to end up directing this I usually have clear idea of how the dialogue is being delivered. Plus, my current retort is; the dialogue is all temp. The actors are gonna make it their's and all will be nice and smooth.
So, doesn't it get better with every rewrite? Not really. The second official rewrite grew bloated with dialogue, turgid with explanation and swollen with imagery. It tried to fix things by adding stuff and that was detrimental. Reeling from the horrible reception of what took an age to languish rewriting, my mepiphany (mini-epiphany) was to get rid of EVERYTHING. Just lose it all until the script was operating at its bare minimum.
See, with comments you get caught in the crossfire of ideas and every rewrite becomes a struggle to cram more of the cool stuff you've been thinking off. By the end, I didn't know what was necessary for the story and characters and what wasn't anymore. Does it matter if he's Jewish and she's Arab? Could we lose that? What about their respective careers? What is that adding to the plot (Gerry, our benevolent course director, keeps asking me this question. I have a subtle answer; they're both obsessed with what they do [her with her history and him with his art])?
It's definitely a different script now and I feel it lost a lot of the immediacy and briskness of the first draft but overall the whole thing seems to clunk together better. Is it the end? No more rewrites? Bah, I'm already planning the assasination of more characters so I doubt it.
It's genocidal, the number of characters murdered and resurrected in various guises (in particular the character of Fi that started out as a drunken lush, turned into a bartender that had an affair with one of the main characters, his mistress, old landlady, his mistress again, his sister, mutual friend and finally into an inanimate headline).
The real difficulty lies in the plethora of comments that come with every rewrite. It turns the prospects of the next rewrite into a minefield of pitfalls, do's and do not's, avoidances and things to make sure are in there. It literally got to the point where I was changing words halfway through typing them out.
I think I need to find a better way of dealing with notes and comments. The way it 's happening so far is that as soon as I finish a major rewrite of the script, everyone pours their feedback into it. Some people love some lines and others hate them, some people find the scenes cheesy, others find them evocative. Fi, in particular, has been the character everyone loves to hate (except for our beloved graphic designer Mr Hawzers who thinks she's the best thing in the script), and after a while your original reason for including anything in the first place becomes suspect.
And this is where the madness ensues. Every aspect of the script becomes up for grabs, the changes so radical and the options so numerous that every decision adds an exponential amount of choices and possibilities. On the other hand, every idea you get becomes challenged not only by your internal author-ial voice but by an internal choir of comments and remarks as well.
Dialogue is the trickiest to take comments on because everyone reads a script differently. Whatever adverbs you stick before the delivery of a line, people will still interpret it according to their own personal character compass and the remarks may vary from "stilted" to "brilliant". I think if I was only a scriptwriter this would be reason to worry, but as I am hopefully going to end up directing this I usually have clear idea of how the dialogue is being delivered. Plus, my current retort is; the dialogue is all temp. The actors are gonna make it their's and all will be nice and smooth.
So, doesn't it get better with every rewrite? Not really. The second official rewrite grew bloated with dialogue, turgid with explanation and swollen with imagery. It tried to fix things by adding stuff and that was detrimental. Reeling from the horrible reception of what took an age to languish rewriting, my mepiphany (mini-epiphany) was to get rid of EVERYTHING. Just lose it all until the script was operating at its bare minimum.
See, with comments you get caught in the crossfire of ideas and every rewrite becomes a struggle to cram more of the cool stuff you've been thinking off. By the end, I didn't know what was necessary for the story and characters and what wasn't anymore. Does it matter if he's Jewish and she's Arab? Could we lose that? What about their respective careers? What is that adding to the plot (Gerry, our benevolent course director, keeps asking me this question. I have a subtle answer; they're both obsessed with what they do [her with her history and him with his art])?
It's definitely a different script now and I feel it lost a lot of the immediacy and briskness of the first draft but overall the whole thing seems to clunk together better. Is it the end? No more rewrites? Bah, I'm already planning the assasination of more characters so I doubt it.
posted by the fdz at 6:25 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home