Intro

The Zenith project is the culmination of one’s skills at Freestyle. It is a project we fully design and execute ourselves over a course of six weeks. We make our own schedule and set our own deadlines. For my Zenith, I chose to write a full length mockumentary screenplay. This was a fairly easy decision to make. I’ve always loved writing and my favorite unit in Film by far was screenwriting. However, I have a bad habit of plotting out projects, beginning them, then ultimately losing interest and never finishing them. This would be one of the biggest writing projects I would tackle.

Process

I started out my Zenith with research. I had gotten a taste of screenwriting before, but the only one I had ever written was about 15 pages. This time, I was aiming for 70-100. I read Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. Self-aggrandizing title aside, this book was extremely helpful. One of the most invaluable parts was the beat sheet, a list of all plot beats that should happen in a screenplay and on what page they should occur. This was a great help in not only shaping the plot but working out pacing. My screenplay ended up being shorter than the 120 pages it outlined, but it was helpful nonetheless. But I wasn’t planning on writing a regular narrative screenplay. I was writing a mockumentary. For help, I turned to several popular films in this niche genre, including This is Spinal Tap and What We Do In The Shadows. These films provided insight on the importance of talking head interviews, b-roll, and breaking the fourth wall.

I started my screenplay knowing where it would start, where it would end, and a couple points in between. From there, I started writing. My beat sheet, plot map, and character sheets all got filled in as I wrote.

Final Product

My final product is something I am incredibly proud of. Not only is it one of the longest projects I’ve done, it also feels the most complete and complex. Each character changes and develops from beginning to end. Comedy is neatly balanced with drama. The ending feels gratifying, and more importantly, earned. That being said, it is far from perfect and still very much a first draft. But I call it a first draft with the promise that I will continue to work on this project and nudge it closer to perfection.

I’ve also included a video of my presentation of this project. It includes most of what I’ve said here, but also features a short table read of a certain ghost’s first appearance.