Outline

Oof okay. I know my genre, I know my influences and what I want to create. Now to make the outline. This is going to be kind of a weird post because it's going to involve a couple different mediums.

Let me explain.

Today in class we had a lesson on screenplay writing, and my teacher, Mrs. Stoklosa gave use a couple good ways to create an outline for our script, and I kind of want to try all of them/combine them in my own way.

So first let's start with the message and the conflict. Like Mrs. Stoklosa said, all (good) movies revolve around a single message and a simple conflict. After much consideration, and taking my personal conflicts into thought (shout out to my post on influences), I've settled on a singular message; Adventure above life. It may sound a bit odd at first but just bear with me. So now the conflict; person attempting to reclaim their life. Basically, the film is going to be about a girl, feeling trapped by the nuances and rituals of society/ the simulation of life, who's given a chance to escape that through an adventure, but at the risk of losing the stability modern society provides her. In the end, she must choose between stability and adventure, choosing adventure.

Cool cool, so message and conflict done. Yay, whats next? Ok, so now I think I want to just do a simple plot outline, a concise description of the three acts that I can use to build a concise plot, and something I can reference back to.

  So yea, this is my outline. I have my three acts defined and now I can move on to creating a concise outline of the plot. Mrs. Stoklosa said something her during the lesson that I really liked, i.e. "Develop the spine of the production." I don't know why, but I really liked that phrasing, so I think for my outline I really am going to try to create the 'spine' of the production.

So uhm... I really love this!!! I think this outline vs the act outline works a lot better because now I have something more detailed I can reference back to for the screenwriting. But, I think I can still take it one step further. I want to create a mood board, not just for the art direction but where I can combine all my different thoughts into one place, my influences, my character ideas, my general notes, like a pinboard. After doing some research online, I found the perfect software! It's an online software called Mural that lets business and professionals make 'pinboards.' Its interactive and other people with a link can access it and give me feedback on it! I actually love Mural and playing around with it, I really adore all the different features it offers, I can't wait to use it!

Except - I won't be posting it in this update. I want to hold off because I think I want to use Mural to plan out my character and art direction (including location), and I want to present it as a full package, not just pieces. So, stay tuned for that update!

-Isa Ollie Mason

(Btw, I switched out a pin for a ring while working on the second outline - I felt like it fit better in the plot and mechanics of the world)