“Simplicity and subtlety is beauty.”

This week has started off with a packed screenwriting class with Richard, who is back from LA for 3 days! I felt really happy to be in a group again and seeing and feeling all our minds whizzing about with ideas, all bouncing off each other. I really like seeing other people's approaches to the same idea: we made up a premise together and linked the crucial beats to form a strong structure in one exercise. Everyone has such different styles it's so interesting to see where we end up with an idea when working together face to face.

Today we looked at:

*Refresher: Structure & Theme

* Visual Storytelling

and we were meant to cover Dialogue too but we didn't have time.

Our creative synapses were set off with a simple exercise - the statues. Pairs went up and posed in a still image and we all came up with different scenarios with diverse characters. However it became clear that none of us were very clear or familiar with the meaning of theme anymore. There was a lot of: "I don't know!" and confused faces as we tried to justify acceptance and trust and things that are really devices and whatnot as themes!

I felt odd going back to square one and I didn't like how confused I suddenly felt when asked what the definition of theme was.

For the record it's:

*a message or statement of your beliefs

*what a story is really about

*what the protagonist learns during the course of the story

**X over Y.

A lot of the class was recapping but it was sorely needed as it helped me clarify things in my head and feel more confident about writing another script.

Richard asked us what we felt about the scripts we had just written. I was happy with my idea but I have a feeling that I wrote a screenplay that spills a little too much over the 5 minute time limit. I still think it could work however if I re-visit it because I don't feel it's impossible – I had an EPIC idea – but it would only fit a 60+ minute feature film.

With Visual Storytelling we discussed the importance of letting an image tell as much of a story over dialogue. As much as dialogue is important, film is essentially an art of images. The visuals we create on the screenplay provide us with the only way to externalise the internal story.

So basically today I had a good recap with the main points of structure and themes and I know now to go away and write more premises in my own time so to get better at working out appropriate themes. I also reminded myself that it's not all about the dialogue and that images can tell so much more. 3 Colours Blue reminded me of this in particular and I found Juliette Binoche's performance compelling – no words need to be spoken for us to understand and see her grief. All we need is to see the reflecting light of the blue glass shards on her face and her tight fist against her mouth to understand and empathise with the main character.

We were sent off after a long (and absolutely hilarious – I feel I can't explain well enough here – group storytelling + misunderstandings = claustrophobic submarine drivers!) day to write two premises. I'll tell you how mine went tomorrow.