London Film Academy 

I have been in rush, walking quickly to the overground Dalston Kingsland. I bought coffee and sandwich at the Turkish cafe on my way. I have put the Oyster card to the turnstile, the red signal appeared and did not let me in, clearly my card ran out of money. I got nervous while I was  standing in a line, cause it was the first day of lectures at the London Film Academy, and I did not want to be late. 

      I came to the desired street and I started looking for the old church, in the church building the Film Academy was located. I wandered a little along nearby streets and finally found the Academy. I had never been so happy when I approached towards the church’s door. I started considering the brick facade of the historical place with carved doors, stained glass windows and the white-snow railing. I forgot that I was in a hurry for a moment and I was terrified to be late to the first lecture. I checked the time and figured out that I had an hour of free time. It was cool, I thought, I could safely have a snack and drink a cup of coffee while staring into the stained glass windows and passers-by. 

After an hour  I rang with bated breath at the door of the church. The door was opened and the nice girl appeared, at the first glance she resembled me a French movie-star from 60s. She was Emily, coordinator of the reception, and I was greeting her and watching her every day for two weeks. 

The first that that caught my eye in the Film Academy were the walls on which were hung colorful pictures mainly depicting the film sets process and movie posters of familiar and unseen  films before.  

 I have become acquainted with Moe, the film director from Slovenia, in the corridor of the Academy. We managed to discus a few words about cinematography of our countries, when I was called by Emily to give my fingerprint of the thumb. It appeared that next time when I came back to the Academy I should put my thumb to the button and the door would be opened if my fingerprint  was recognized. However, I was applying my thumb several times, the  door wasn’t able to remember my fingerprint. 

Mo and I were in the middle of the story telling of our brief filmographies, when our tutor Mr. Fairbanks came  into the hall and invited us to the classroom. 

The classroom was filled with soft day light, the classmates sat down to the tables which already were standing altogether, and the tutor table was in the middle of the class behind the blackboard and the screen. There were six students in the class: one Ukrainian - me, three British Peter, Dana and David, Mo from Slovenia, and Federico from Spain. Almost a multi cultural group, although, the majority was British, tutor Davie Fairbanks was also an Englishman.

Tingling with excitement, I opened my jotter. The first thing which Davie Fairbanks reminded us was the the structure of the screenplay. 

Specifically, he pointed out to the pages number where should the Act 1 (setup) on pages from 1 till 30, the Act 2 (confrontation) on page 30 till 90, the Act-3 (resolution) on pages 90 till 120, and finally credits appear, according to the fact that duration of the film was 120 minutes (‘The Definitive Guide to Screen Writing’ by Syd Field). Respectively, the first turning point (Plot Point 1) was on pages 25 till 27 and we can find it still there, and the second turning point (Plot Point 2) on pages 85 till 90. Then we discussed 5Ws questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why?) that particular questions should not be forgotten to be answered when creating the set up. After that we moved on to discuss the three dimensional characters: that was crucial to create characters biographies, good and bad habits before starting writing the script.  As I understood the main key thing about creation the characters no need to be afraid to constantly ask questions about your characters even if the questions are awkward and unpleasant such as childhood traumas and ect. All these questions should be raised and then answered: what is the name of your character?, how old is he/she?, what does he/she do for living?, is he/she married or has children?, where was he/she born?, by whom was he/she influenced?, how  did he/she grew up?,  so on and so forth. 

Moreover, you should raise completely random questions and answer should be the first thing that comes to your mind. All these are intended to expand your outlook and your character's world. Also, you can answer the specific questions, such as: what did happen to the character when he/she was five years old, when he/she was ten or sixteen.  This is called ‘characterization’ - the art of creating the characters. We have discussed thoroughly the most common mistakes in creation of the characters as “passive character”. Passive character is that character who does not make a decisions and does not make no choices.  Furthermore, these characters are not moving the story forward, that’s why they are not interesting for the audience to be watched. The screenwriter should always check the presence of activity in the characters’ actions. 

I was surprised by my tutor Davie advice regarding writing the script from the end. I should admit, for me it is a pretty difficult challenge making an approach which I have never fully managed to perform, and always jump to the beginning of the script. The tutor has explained that when the writer knows his\her final story, then the end will lead him/her straight to the beginning of the script, if only the writer knows about what to write. 

Devi Fairbanks is the person with incredible energy, fast, and ready to act, therefore he has demanded the same from us. Most of all I have been admired by the tutor’s Devie’s task when has shown us the six images and asked to choose the one picture, then write the story based on the picture. The main difficulty was with this task that the all paintings were the landscapes, sometimes apocalyptic. However, there was one single image that had got at least a hint of the genre: a dumb-sweet man in a frock coat was going up along the fluffy clouds in the heaven approaching the princess castle. My classmate Peter said that this picture was to easy for him, it was obvious for him, that it was the story about  the Jack Ripper who was going home after the crime.

My choice, was a picture depicting a red planet similar to Mars and I managed to write a good melodrama with dialogues in twenty minutes.  

One of the funniest and challenging tasks for me was to rewrite a well-known ferry tail. Our tutor decided that I should  rewrite the "Mermaid". I have completely distorted that ferry tail by making the crab Sebastian the lover of Mermaid voluptuous swindler, who decided to cheat on Prince. Devie Fairbanks has got a lot of interesting tasks for practicing the authors imagination, therefore, I experienced my imagination every day among the course. Such exercises are really very beneficial for the both, the writer and the director.

On the fourth day of studding the lecturer Mr. Windus joined us. Edward Windus thoughtful and serious writer and director who developed an interesting lectures, especially for me, because his examples were mainly based on European and American classical cinematography, which were familiar to me. That’s why I felt comfortable, really like a fish in water. With Edward we worked on with dialogues development and analyzes: we were reading an extracts from decent screenplays, such as Iron Sorkin (The Social Network), Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson (UP), Mario Pyuzao and Francis Ford Coppola (Godfather) and many others, then we discussed the written dialogues of those professionals and how they managed to increase the intensity of their dialogues.

In addition, Edward Windus proposed the exercise where we should answer such questions: How to show on screen New-York location not in trivial way? How to present the protagonist? How to show that the protagonist has a talent? How to show that he is a man of the working class? How to show that the protagonist makes mistakes in behaviour in the higher society? How to show that he does not correct his mistakes? How to show the attitude of other characters toward the protagonist? Such kind of questions are real keys in visualization the story. It turned out that all those questions were about the film “Talented Mr.Ripley” by Anthony Minghella. We were able to see the scenes of the film and to figured out how the screenwriter and director of the Talented Mr.Ripley answered all those questions.  It was very useful for me, and I believe for everyone in the group.  

During the training program, my classmates and I remembered our main aim to create the three drafts of short script that have to be performed by professional actors at the end of the Screenwriting Foundation course. The main purpose of the actors’ performance was to eliminate all ambiguities and trouble spots in dialogue in oder to figured out what was done and wasn’t.  I wasn’t afraid of writing the leading script, therefore, I took eight synopses and three fully written screenplays, so, as you can see I was pretty prepared for the course.

However, I saw an interesting situation in the London Tube, which I told in the class. My tutor immediately said: ‘it is going to be a short film’,  and advised me to start working on it.  Well, I took his advice and started writing the ‘Ladybug’. 

I do believe that I will shoot this short film next Spring, can’t  wait to be on a set of  the ‘Ladybug’ film.

A lot of attention was paid for script formatting and it was repeatedly emphasized that formatting should be done correctly according to accepted norms. For instance, if the script has the interesting story the amateur formatting could only harm, cause will lead to prejudice attitude towards the script. Also, if the story is a complete bullshit at least it will look professional. 

Edward Windus advised to read a book about formatting The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley, 2ND Edition, and to use software such as Movie Magic, Celtx, Final Draft. However, it is quite difficult to write in Ukrainian language in the Celtx software. The Typeset formatting engine used in Celtx only works with the UTF-8 character set. So languages like Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, etc. cannot be processed by the server. Once you go to create your PDF, you will find your script filled with code, or the PDF won't populate at all. I hope to one day the Celtx team will correct and improve the software. 

What was I surprised the most was the Davie Fairbanks advice about formatting to split avery three lines, hence, the information will be delivered in more effective way and will ease the reader’s perception. 

      Juxtaposition (opposition) and Overdirecting (excessive director’s tips) are the terms that often could be heard at lectures in the Film Academy. The juxtaposition means to place together two  completely contrary ideas or events in oder to enhance the impact of the story on the audience with the help of contrast. The two oppositions have already started to work effectively for the story, and make the script much more exciting. Do you have an idea what can the three oppositions  do? 

         Overdirecting is a negative meaning term, which characterizes an excessive instructions  to the actors who lead to abuse of the brackets use. Actually, the guidelines are needed when the direct phrases such as ‘I’ll kill you’ is said with another implication. In such cases you should write ‘speaks to her gently’ and take it into the brackets. 

        One of the most essential tip that I have received was about Narrative Voice. When a film producer, director, actors read your screenplay they can sense the invisible character voice that tells your story, and it is not voice over (V.O) character extension after its name, it is a Narrative Voice. Narrative Voice  is the storytelling sensibility you bring to your script allover your writing style. It is present in every episode, scene and dialogue which screenwriter creates.  Here is a formula: Narrative Voice = Genre+Style ( Craft by Scott Myers. Narrative your Invisible Character Voice.)  The style of narrative voice must be in harmony with the story genre.  For instance, if you are writing drama the narrative voice should be serious and sad. An action screenplay should have a style which is active. A comedy should be written in easygoing and funny style. A horror script should have a style which is scary. ( Craft by Scott Myers. Narrative your Invisible Character Voice.) The key thing in maintenance of genre style is to use an appropriate vocabulary: for actions should be used mainly active verbs which express the movement,  for comedy should be used most common words which are funny, witty and smart which express the mood, for horror should be used darkness, dense and the mystery what express the danger, ect. 

The second week of the course was heavy used pretty much as the first one: I spent it mostly in constant rewriting and editing my script and in discussions on the individual consultations. Three drafts of the script have to be sent in time to our coordinator Marina, otherwise the tutors won’t be able to read them and give a feedback. It was the opportunity to work directly in the Academy in the well-equipped  computer class with all necessarily soft ware for writing the Final Draft. 

We had got the coffee breaks in the smoking place where we were continue to communicate about the craft with students and tutors. The creative process is impossible without coffee breaks, constant communication, and expressing new ideas. 

Finally, the final day of the course came, and our scripts were able to be  read by professional actors. The event took place in the cinema hall in the Film Academy: the actors were sitting on the chairs behind silver screen, and students and tutors settled in the audience places. The script preparation occurred without our group participation, that’s why it was a total surprise for everyone.  I’m a film director and used to control everything on the rehearsal and set, thus I was a bit nervous. As long as I remember, my script ‘Ladybug’ was read the third one, I was feeling my heart beating during the actors’ reading, and relaxed only after the words ‘The End’. However, everything was exiting and cool about this experience, I was able to notice some awkward and uncomfortable moments in the script, and, in general, it was really interesting to listen to my own screenplay. 

At the same day I and my classmates received the certificates which confirm our successful graduation, and went to the local pub for celebration. 

It was really a beneficial and interesting time for me, and what is most important, it was prolific. The key idea is never give up to shoot and write. The more we write, the more we learn, subsequently, the  more tools we have for creating a powerful script.