Pre-production Unit- Reading up on script-writing.

Today I have taken it upon myself to begin reading up on books on scriptwriting. I am fairly confident that I will be taking script-writing as my major project subject, and as such it is important that I get very confident in the subject and research it as much as I possibly can.
Luckily UCAs online library has many ebooks that I can look at to investigate this subject further while I am home in Nottingham with no way to access UCA's physical library in Rochester.

So far, some notable sources I am finding particularly useful in my script-writing studies are: "Writing and Script- A very short introduction" by Andrew Robinson and also several websites which showcase the actual scripts used in major Hollywood blockbusters.

The UCA online library which connects me to the resources I will be studying.

I have also come across some more obscure sites in my investigations such as THIS ONE, which has taught me that script-writing shouldn't be majorly focused on suggesting camera shots and angles (this would usually be at the Director's discretion, not mine)  and camera angle changes and shots should only really be suggested when wanting to highlight something in particular.
This is highlighted in such scripts as this first draft of James Cameron's ALIEN:

something I noted was that this script-writer's style involves a lot of focus on the actual actions of the actors and set, with minimal emphasis on what the camera is doing.
I believe this is beneficial, as it allows the director to be more experimental with the camera on the day of the shoot, and also makes the script easier for actors to read, as a lot of information that is irrelevant to them is taken away.

Pre-production Unit: Investigating "Women in Refrigerators"

I have recently found out about a comic book trope website known as "Women in Refigerators". This site investigates the usage of women in comic books as nothing more than "eye candy" and tools used to further the story and emotions of the main male protagonist and other male character's.
The trope stems from the websites author noticing that in one particular comic, the main character's girlfriend is killed and left for the main character to find in a refrigerator.

The significance of this is that although the girlfriend character is obviously of great importance to the main character, her death scene isn't even shown, and is instead alluded to with the character finding her body later.
This makes her death seem almost irrelevant, and her usage as a character seems to be to purely give the main character the motivation needed to fight her murderer.
This can also be seen at work with female super-heros, as they are often depowered in some way, or captured in order for male characters to save them. It is rare that a female character will have the upperhand and save the male protagonist.

This investigation has given me the opportunity to thoroughly think about the way I may want to represent the female characters in my own future films, as I would like them to have clearly defined story arcs and personalities and not just be added to further the goals of the male characters.
I will continue my investigation into these comic tropes.
I am still undecided whether or not I want to follow what has already been set by previous comic-book-film-adaptators, or try something new.

Pre-production unit: Investigating Superhero scripts

Recently I have taken it upon myself to investigate the superhero genre, and also invest in some super hero movies so that I can get a better idea about how the genre has been treated and filmed over the years. A movie series I have been investigating a lot is the xmen series, and so I some of the xmen DVDS to watch and make some notes on. I also checked out one of the xmen scripts online so that I could read the script and see how the director interpreted what the script writer had written. It is relatively easy to find movie scripts online, and the one I read can be found here.

The collection of Xmen dvds I acquired for research.

I have noticed that alot of the super hero scripts I have taken a look at are very on descriptive details.
This would of course be beneficial for a director, but sometimes the amount of description used seems quite redundant. For example, on the 2nd page of the script I have linked to in this blog post, this is written:

"A LITTLE BOY. A boy who will not die this day. A boy who will live to see the end of the war and the world of the future."

A lot of the description is written almost like a sentence in a story book, and not at all like directions in a script. I am not sure of the purpose for the script being written like this, and I put it down to the writer's personal preference and style, but I feel that this type of writing would hinder the director's ability to properly absorb the important information I will be writing in my script, and as such I think it would be best if I were to keep my scripts as concise and to-the-point as possible.
This should help the director understand exactly what I as a script-writer would like to convey in my story.