Development: Character & Location

Character

Our characters must be more complex than just what we read on the pages of the script. This course supports all those working with scripts (from writers and directors to camera department and actors, etc.) to develop a dynamic relationship to character that extends beyond traditional mainstream conventions. For example, we don’t have any “extras” we have community members.

In this course we deepen our relationship to the texts covered in (Script) Development: An Introduction and work with a few more. We draw out tools from the texts for developing dynamic characters in our script, preparing to rehearse actors and touch on directing actors using the script as the primary tool. We work with the technology of character development as ancestral reverence and community accountability in crafting our characters.

You will walk away from this course with more than a few well developed characters and a toolbox full of tools for sculpting a full dynamic character from an idea.

Location

The natural world and so-called inanimate objects carry powerful possibilities in filmmaking. Our scripts are one of the first places that we conjure inside of this possibility. There are tools to imagine and write dynamic locations whether you are interested in the natural world (rivers and forests), outdoor locations (intersections and yards), indoor locations (kitchens and gymnasiums) or sets built on a soundstage or in a warehouse.

In this workshop we consider power sites, power objects and symbolism in our own emergent work and in existing scripts and films. We explore locations as characters themselves that interact with the (“human”) characters we have written. We also consider some of the logistic questions relevant to our location choices.

You will walk away from this course with YOUR OWN cosmology for using nature and various locations in your work and tools for writing locations that are dynamic and take visible (i.e. cinematic, viewable, discernible) action.