Elements of Design

Structure

This weekend has had a theme. It wasn’t on purpose, rather far from it but the subject of structure kept coming up and I’m happy that it did.

On Friday, after completing a draft of a spec script for flashpoint that I’ve been working on for weeks and had a lot of trouble getting through, I realized that most of the turmoil I was facing dealt with the fact that I went into the script without a solid outline. I had the basic story in my head, knew the characters, while the end was vague.

Somehow, it all seemed to work out and the episode seems to have enough strong points that it makes for an interesting encounter that the SRU Team has yet to encounter.

Then, on a whim Saturday afternoon I thought it would be good idea to begin check out the films that were nominated for the Academy Awards. I don’t think that every great movie gets nominated but there are some titles I just miss at TIFF. I started off with Slumdog Millionaire at the cinema (although I thought the DVD release date was back on the first week of February) and thought it was a fantastic story. Since the script doesn’t gives just enough exposition to make sure you don’t get lost, for the most part you’re on the ride with Jamal through the tale without much forewarning.

Then TROPIC THUNDER made me hurt. Robert Downey Jr. deserved any and every accolade for his performance.

Then, under a vail of inspiration I started on my next project. Learning from the struggle I had with the Flashpoint script I bought a decent quality outline program called Contour. It’s from the same company that makes Montage, the first Mac-only scripting software.

The program really helps give a solid structure (there, I said it again) to not only the character’s qualities but the journey they must take.