Explorations

Introduction

“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”
For the Explorations Project, all Junior Freestyle students was asked to explore their own passion and improve upon a particular skill set that addresses 21st Century Skills.

For the Explorations project, I chose to have the topic of dialogue in film, specifically exposition in film. Exposition in film or screenwriting is one of the most difficult aspects to master. It’s necessary for our audience to understand our characters and plot, but we don’t really want the audience to be aware of exposition, in and of itself. It can pluck the audience right out of the story.

Explorations Process

When writing my script, I wanted to hone in on all the skills I have learned over the past few weeks. So I put together a short scene that uses bad dialogue, and then took that script and refined it.

I wanted to do my own take on the “dead parents” scene to use one of the tricks I learned when telling the audience that the characters’ parents are dead. I started the scene off with a little girl aiming to buy a cigarette pack off of this 20 year old. He obviously denies the girls request and they have a little banter, using the dialogue skills I have learned. They conclude that the little girl will die of lung cancer in the future. Then there is a shift in the mood of the scene and the characters break the fourth wall by saying that the little girl will end up dead from lung cancer just like the main character’s mother. Then, boom, the main character wakes up and realizes it’s a dream. So I used the fourth wall trick and the dream scenario trick when revealing key information about the main character’s life.

Final Production

Infographic

Explorations Project Reflection

Over the course of this project, I have learned many valuable skills about the art of screenwriting and the way dialogue is used in screenwriting. I am really grateful that we were able to use this time to learn about something of our choice and that we are passionate about. This project gives us the time to learn about something that we might specialize in the future for a job.