Script Development

First Draft

This is the first draft of my script and was written with my initial ideas and planning of how the film opening will look. At first, I wrote the script with annotations of specific camera shots I wanted to use and sound effects and lighting that were applied to the scene. Later on, having read several professional screenplays and research more about the screenplay format on StudioBinder, I rewrote mine to the industry standard. So, after changing and improving my script, I took away the technical elements and added more detail to each scene that I planned to film, and my second draft was formed.  I decided to keep the first draft as a guide and reference for the technical elements of the film opening and the second draft was mainly scenes that are described in detail. 

Second draft

My 2nd draft has a lot more detail to it and therefore it is 3 pages long, which I believe it should be cut down to fit in a 2-minute opening sequence. This is because the conventional screenwriting wisdom was that each minute on screen equals a page on paper, according to StudioBinder. For this draft, I decided to conduct a small survey to ask the potential target audience about the idea and how they think about the script. I also asked them about parts that they found interesting and parts that were hard to understand as suggestions to improve my script. As a result, I have found out the 'favorite' parts and parts that are not so logical. These are the results that I collected from the survey. 

According to the survey, A few scenes like the scene where character B was introduced, the breaking news scene, and the murder scene were positively received which is good news to hear. The part that is not logical and hard to understand in the script is mainly about 2 events, one is the pirate's knife and the other is the bloody hands. About the pirate's knife, at first, I wanted to create an enigma for the film opening by bringing in an object that might not make a lot of sense but based on the reaction, I think that having the knife being old and rusty is enough to bring in the emotions without the need of using a pirate's knife.  

For the bloody hand scene, the target audience questioned how could blood be able to dry up so quickly despite character A only running across the hallway for a short period. After I looked back at the script, I also felt like that part was a bit illogical and would not make a lot of sense, therefore I decided to also remove that scene and replace it with a scene where she washed her face and looked in the mirror. Moreover, I also removed the appearance of the police mentioning the evidence by the breaking news, to create more synergy for the scene that happened before. 

Third draft

My third draft is formed after taking in considerations of the suggestions from my potential target audiences. A few more details were also added by me but not much have changed from the 2nd draft to the 3rd ones. This is also my final draft before I developed my final script, where the only difference was the addition of a cover page, to look more like a professional screenplay.