Reflecting On My Learning; Where I Have Gone And Piecing Things Together

 As I find the time of the assessment of this unit (the presentation) slowly, yet all encompassingly, looming, I feel the need to reflect upon what I intended to do with this unit and my time. Confession: I honestly haven't actively/ consciously looked at my learning agreement in order to develop my knowledge. However, as I checked my learning agreement earlier today following our Production Office 'lecture' I've realised that I have subconsciously followed what I intended to do in terms of developing my understanding of storytelling. 

I went into this year (following a fantastic experience in the second year) knowing exactly what I love to do in relation to TV (and producing) and what I wanted to do to strengthen these areas- primarily to learn more about the fundamentals of storytelling and how to develop and structure ideas. I also wanted to improve my management skills, and understanding of what a creative producer does, due to having the role of 'Series Producer' during second semester last year, which I actually struggled with more than I expected following the first semester. I felt that was a great experience, and showed me how far I still need to go, but lead me to want to steer away from all the organisational elements of production (...mainly because we had no specialist production manager so I was out of my depth as well as others stepping into that role), leaving those elements to production managers and directors instead. The parts that worked the best to me was when I was thinking as a 'creative' producer, rather than focusing on the more organisational aspects such as RA paperwork, location permissions, and compiling technical and organisational elements of the production bible. Seeing how the other crew members worked together and only brought things to my attention when needed was really refreshing and made me excited to work on bringing the small details of our idea together with the larger picture we needed.

In my learning agreement, I also mention my intention to look into 'showrunning' and management. When discussing this with Trevor, he seemed reluctant to use the term 'showrunner' at first, which completely confused me as I grew up hearing this term used to describe people like Steven Moffat and Russell T. Davies' times on Doctor Who, who normally occupy the position of a writer but also producer, and oversee the whole show, predominantly from a narrative standpoint. He also questioned if I wanted to write, which resulted in a half-and-half response by myself. I mentioned how I honestly had no understanding of how to go about writing a script 'properly', which I have since learned more about, but I have found that when I do write scripts, which has been surprisingly frequently due to my job as a film class teacher at a local drama school, I've thoroughly enjoyed the process of getting my thoughts across into words for others to read. However, I also have no desire to see my exact wording used, or present on the screen. This has accidentally lead me to deep-dive into the world of treatments. 

This was lead on by one of my other units (Enquiry and Experiment) where I was looking into what artefact/ creative research method I could use relating to adaptations. In one of the open sessions where we discussed as a group our ideas, some members of the scriptwriting course suggested creating treatments for my different approaches, rather than a synopsis that Trevor and I had previously decided on. Initially, I didn't see the benefit- I only really understood treatments to be used to give the basic details of the production; including an idea overview and more technical aspects. However, reading 'Writing Treatments That Sell' by Kenneth Atchity and Chi-Li Wong (1997) has made me realise how mistaken that view of treatments was. Treatments are meant to go alongside those sort of elements, but they should mainly be used in a pitch. 

“Treatments should feel like pictures rushing together to form a story in which you can see the characters and hear them speak. A treatment should never read like a synopsis, like dull beats of a plot moving forward, trudging toward a predictable outcome. When you’re reading the pages, however simple, the thrill of the story must be captured. And how do you do that? You forget that you’re writing a treatment and tell the story like a classic around-the-campfire cliffhanger- as if every event happened before your very eyes and you can’t wait to share it."

This expression by Victoria Wisdom (p.4) in the beforementioned book really struck me. As have all the other books I read on the same topic. Trevor's insistence upon understanding the intention and feeling had never really made more sense, to effectively tell and sell my stories I need to forget about what and focus more on the how and why- such as 'How stories work and why we tell them', the subtitle of John Yorke's 2013 book 'Into the Woods'. 

This change in framing and being given words and phrases that expressed what I desired to know at somehow the right time, made me understand my story intent for one of our grad project ideas which I've taken lead on developing, which has the working title Baking Bad, and like its namesake will follow what Yorke describes as 'dark inversions' (a term I had no clue existed but is an area of storytelling I've always loved and been interested in making). Yorke sums it up most clearly to me in this paragraph:

“Tragedies follow exactly the same principles as Jaws or E.T. but in reverse order. In Jaws, Chief Brody learns to be a hero; in Macbeth the protagonist’s heroism is corroded. In dark inversions, a character’s flaw is what conventional society might term ‘normal’ or ‘good’- a goodness that characters overturn to become evil in their own way.” (p.21)

I've always wanted to see if you could turn the guy everyone is meant to route for, the protagonist, and slowly make them seem more and more like the bad guy depending upon your perspective. In 'Baking Bad' there would be at least two parallel perspectives being shown; one of our lead, a business uni student who inadvertently joins a crime/ mafia group, and that of those investigating these actions (basically, the police). And now, I have a much greater understanding that this idea exists, has a name, and how I can go about doing so myself. 

Moving forward with my learning, I want to learn more about creative management, which I hope I will find out more about in Chris Bilton's 2007 book 'Management and Creativity; from creative industries to creative management' (which if I don't I believe will have been due to a very misleading title).