Godspeed.

We have our new assignment. The one hour drama. We only have to have two outlines by the new term. But i want to take full advantage of the time we have and get started straight away.

Initially I thought about breaking away from the family drama of my previous uni scripts and try something new and challenging. Also I knew that I couldn’t top the tragic pain of Christine and her final actions in Sinking (Narratives) or the paralysing guilt and mourning felt by Jason in Marlow Road (Audiences). But it’s a genre I’m drawn to and feel strongly about so I decided to proceed into the new challenge.

The initial title was Godspeed and is based on a one situation-short story I wrote. The character of Logan and the situation will form the basis and opening for my one hour drama.

I’ve begun initial development on the characters and certain revealing scenes: human affection, revealing hidden emotion, universal messages on being human etc. - They are what a character in ‘Waking Life’ refers to as ‘the holy moments’ in a film. They are what I see first in a story or a particular character from initial conception and then I create everything around it that precedes and follows. A script/film is all about those moments. About being alive and knowing it.

After initial development on Logan and his story, I began to think about his parents. Once I knew where they were both coming from and where they’d end up I had a problem; because now they are competing for centre stage. All three characters stories and character arcs are just as powerful as each others. This then led me to rethink the title and change it to something that not only reflected the state of Logan but all of the main characters.

That’s when Requiem was born. This then inspired me to create a premise for each main character in relation to the title. What I found was that the three of them are each dying from something different. And it’s within this combined tragedy that I hope to create something far more dramatic and unlike anything I’ve ever written.

The amount of time we have before we officially get this assignment is too good to waste. So I hope to have a scene by scene breakdown (at least) by the start of the new term and a first draft by Christmas. This will leave enough time for a second maybe third re-write and final draft revisions before the deadline in April/May 2008.

Something that I didn’t really do on my previous scripts and that I will do for this is research. At the same time as developing the story and characters I will do as much research into their world and themselves as I can. My arena for Marlow Road wasn’t very strong and for a story of this length I think that arena and equally character research is just as important as what happens.