Mini Assignments #3

  
     
 

The Assignment

To write a short video script, using the standard two-column documentary scripting format, in which you integrate at least two voices, moving pictures, sound and music.

The assignment requires two kinds of vivd writing: the writing (often in abbreviated form) that contextualizes the content (the scripting conventions), and the content itself. As a reader, I should be able to visualize clearly from your script the final product that will be created from your writing.

I shall thus be looking:-

a) for succinct but dramatic descriptive writing as you use location/scene descriptions, shot descriptions, descriptions of music, etc.

b) for succinct but dramatic writing as you 'tell the story' in your script itself.

Good Luck!

  
     
 

Objectives of the assignment

  • to understand the relationship between text and moving pictures
  • to integrate the clear, concise, dramatic writing already practiced with moving pictures
  • to gain command of standard scripting formats for video/screen drama prior to adapting them to the scripting of interactive multimedia
  • to understand basic narrative trajectory: hook, story development & closure

What you need to do

You should adhere to the two-column documentary script format and control the length of your assignment very carefully. Your meeting of the suggested time limit forms a critical part of writing to commission, or to writing your specific component within a multi-author project.

Err on the side of too much material rather than too little: most writers and script editors (often a role taken by the producer, executive producer or director) find the cutting of extraneous material much easier than the generation of additional material to pad a thin script.

Scenario

You will find the raw material for the scenario on the disc that accompanies Writing for Multimedia and the Web. You should follow the link to Chapter 21, and then click on the segment entitled, "Video: The Making of The 11th Hour." You will find seven segments of video.

Your task (I feel as if I'm in Mission Impossible) is to write a five-minute video script detailing (in whatever way you wish) the making of The 11th Hour. You may choose your own target audience (from MTV to boring old national news, broadcast or online). Just make sure to include the target audience at the top of the first page.

Remember to use the two-column documentary script format we discussed in class. You may use anything from the interviews and any of the shots in the video segments on the CD-ROM. You may also imagine other shots that you would like to use in creating your script (as long as the new shots don't cover more than 10% of your script).

You may add music, special effects, graphics, etc., always bearing in mind that such additions should be purposeful: establishing your personal creative approach to the story, suggesting a mood or an attitude of mind, adding specific meaning to that provided by the video, interviews and commentary, and so on. Please include all interview comments in full.

Some Tips
As with the radio script, try to choose a theme on which you can concentrate throughout the item. And try to find a theme that imparts a little tension to the item, so that it isn't just a straight narration of 'what happened' (although keeping straight exactly what happened is always important). Are there uncertainties that need to be overcome? Are there conflicts that need to be resolved? Is there an obstacle that has to be overcome? And so on...

For example, in the radio scripts you wrote in class several gained tension by stating an opposition in the lead or hook: for example, the contrast between the crowds' happy 'oohing' at the pandas and the bears rights as animals and human treatment of other animals; the contrast between the apparently simple drunken driving arrest and the man's subsequent death in custody. Even such simple oppositions quickly create a question in the audeince's minds: who's right or why did it happen?

  
     
 
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Lesley Smith
Spring 2001

New Century College
in the
College of Arts and Sciences
George Mason University