Major Project Unit- Episode Titles and Justification

Something I have been taking into consideration recently are the titles that I will be giving each episode of Ascension. Giving specific titles episodes makes it easy for me to differentiate between each episode, and also helps viewers do the same. Episode titles also helps me as a screenwriter set the tone of what the episode will be about.
In this post, I will be justifying why I have given each episode each specific title.

Episode 1: Gathering.- Quite self explanatory. Each character meets at the lodge, therefore "gathering."
Episode 2: Nose Candy.- Nose Candy is a slang term of street name for Cocaine. Since episode 2 revolves around Alex's decent into addiction and usage of Cocaine, I felt that this fit perfectly.
Episode 3: Sabbatical.- A sabbatical is when an individual takes a period of time away from work in order to achieve something. In this episode, Cindy smashes her boss in the face with a keyboard and storms out of her work place. The usage of the word "sabbatical" is quite ironic, and a very formal way of explaining what has happened.
Episode 4: Revelations.- This episode revolves around the idea of Jairo being influenced by his heavily religious father, and enduring his abuse. Jairo eventually discovers that he is strong enough to overpower his father, therefore coming to the "revelation" that he no longer has to suffer. It could also be seen as a reference to the bible's Book of Revelations.
Episode 5: Dodgy Dealings.- This episode revolves around the story of Mitch as he becomes a drug dealer. Pretty obvious why this episode is called what it is.
Episode 6: Clarity.- This episode revolves around Stanley's backstory with Dreizer. The title is in reference to the "clarity" of the diamonds which are an important story piece in this episode. It could also be a reference to the stories secrets being revealed, and character's intentions and motivations becoming known, therefore becoming clear.

I feel that these titles are adequate enough to show what each episode is about, and are subtle enough that they can be interpreted by viewer's in different ways, but relatable to the episode enough that they don't seem at all out of place.

Major Project Unit- BBC: Writing TV Drama and the importance of storytelling

I recently found this webpage created by the BBC which discusses what makes a great TV drama.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writers-lab/genre-toolkits/writing-tv-drama
The website emphasises the importance of including scenes that aren't redundant, and making sure that dialogue compliments the story, and isn't used to tell it instead. This is something I have been told in the past, and the fact a major corporation like the BBC is reiterating this sentiment just suggests to me that this is something every screenwriter should know.
This concept is something I have been doing my best to incorporate into my own work recently. At a recent tutorial, with my script editor, we discussed the possibility of making Dreizer more of a silent antagonist in order to put more emphasis on his actions as opposed to his dialogue.
I will be experimenting with this idea, particularly in episode 6.

Major Project Unit- Women in Business

A major story element I wish to explore in the 3rd episode of Ascension is Cindy working at a finance agency, and her struggle to maintain equality in her workplace. Her boss, Mr. Sherwood is revealed to be a sexist, bigoted man who strongly believes that women have no place working with business and finances, and should instead work in menial positions such as cleaning and child-care. Of course, this philosophy is severely outdated, and women have proven to have formidable business skills and have excelled in their work.

Since the Suffrogette Movement and women's rights activists taking a stand, their have been some improvements in the way women are represented in business, however even today some women believe that they're degraded and not treated as fairly as men in the work place, with some reporting lower wages,  less opportunities for employment, and having to work harder than men in order to maintain and thrive in the workplace. With this in mind, I decided to conduct a small investigation into women in the business world. The main reason for this was so that I could present a realistic depiction of sexism in the work place, and one of the ways I could learn about this was to see how the position of women in the work place has evolved over time.

"Women in Business: A Historical Perspective" documents the rise of women in business due to a feminist movement, and claims that the watershed moment for this happened in the 1970s (which coincidently happens around the time my series takes place) and makes the claim that by the late 1980s, women owned half of all american businesses, indicating a major shift in percentage of which gender owned what amount of business.

Although I do want to present Sherwood as a sexist man, I would have to be very careful with how this is done. I would prefer to have Sherwood have subtle jabs at Cindy for her gender, rather than outright telling her that he doesn't value her due to her being a woman. Having Sherwood be a straight out sexist male, mistreating Cindy would be too "disney villain"ish and afterall, if she was mistreated enough, Cindy could just quit.

The reason for Sherwood bringing Cindy into the company when he clearly doesn't like women very much is due to influence from the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union who has been on his case about hiring more women into his workforce.
Many unions have a strong belief that every person should have equal opportunities, regardless of gender, race and disability, and therefore it is quite realistic that Sherwood would agree to hire a female employee to keep the union happy.

Major Project Unit- Man Arrested for Keeping Falkland's gun.

I recently came across this news article about a former soldier who kept a weapon from his time in the Falkland's conflict as a souvenir, and has since been arrested for having it. Although this only has minor relation to my project, I think it adds a sense of realian my character; Stanley is treated with hostility for keeping his own Falkland's handgun on him on his return to England.
This says to me that the way in which my other characters treat Stanley and react to him bringing the gun to the lodge is justified.

Major Project Unit- Condensing my Treatment Documents.

I have recently begun writing my treatment documents for episodes 3,4, and 5 of Ascension. The purpose of a treatment document is to provide a reasonably detailed plan of the story that you want to tell in a film or television series, before an actual script has been formed. 

Due to the nature of what a treatment document is used for, there needs to be a compromise made by the writer between inserting enough detail that the reader understands the story to a reasonable degree, and not too much detail that the reader becomes buried in useless information.

Below is a segment of the first treatment draft I created:

As you can see, I go into a lot of detail that is actually quite unneeded. 

The purpose of a treatment document is to provide a sort of "trailer" for the script, detailing only the most important events of the script. In the uncondensed version of my treatment, I go into way too much detail describing the scenery and how characters move, and if this is the case, I might as well just write the script itself.

Below is a more condensed version of the above segment:

Although I still use a lot of detail in the condensed version, some of the more irrelevant details have been removed. A treatment document for a 25 minute film should ideally be around 5 pages, and cutting useless details such as the ones I eliminated in this condensed version should allow me to reach this amount of pages.

Major Project Unit- Inspiration from "The Shining."

Whilst scripting Ascension, the kind of atmosphere set pieces would create was something I wanted to focus on heavily, particularly with the scenes taking place at the Lodge in the Scottish Highlands. The kind of atmosphere I wanted to create was similar to the atmosphere created in Stanley Kubricks film adaptation of Stephen Kings; "The Shining."

As seen in the above photographs, the location of the haunted hotel in the Shining is actually a very scenic one, and would probably be described as some kind of winter wonderland, if not for the horrific goings-on at the place. The use of snow and fog creates the illusion of a very small, enclosed (almost cozy) area which is the kind of atmosphere I wanted to capture and use in my own location for Ascension.

I wanted to play with the idea of a very beautiful, scenic, grotto-esque type area being made dangerous, and inescapable, and so during the creation of my script and describing the scene, I made sure to pay special attention to the description of the snow, and the enclosed nature of the area, such as mentioning "glistening frost" "hanging lights" and "snow that covers the place like cake icing."

I feel that the idea of having such creepy, dangerous occurrences in such a scenic and beautiful area adds its own effect and definitely adds a sense of fear and unknown to the story I am trying to tell.

Major Project Unit- How to Write a Treatment Document

I have begun to thoroughly research the ways in which a treatment document is written, which I hope will allow me to create a much more entertaining and informative treatment document for episodes 3,4, and 5 of Ascension.
I began my research by first finding out exactly what a treatment document is, what it's intended use is, and what aspects make up the document. I came across this website; http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/how-to-write-a-treatment.html which I feel was a suitable starting point for my research into this subject.

Something that the website points out is that a good way in order to test out whether a particular concept or idea for a visual piece works, is to create a treatment document before even beginning to create a  script itself, something I did not do for episode 1,2 and 6 of Ascension.  Although I do not feel that my work has suffered as a result of not doing this, I feel that if I had created a treatment document to form the basis of my project's beginning, there is a great possibility I would have been able to carry out the script-writing segment of my project much faster, as I would have already had a carefully structured story template which I would be able to base my work off of.

In terms of what exactly a treatment is used for, I have spoken with several screenplay writers and media practitioners in the past, and so I have learnt first hand exactly what the purpose of these documents are. Treatment documents are usually created BEFORE a script begins to be written, and is used to pitch an idea for a film/series episode or concept or idea before a script has been written. Since there is never a guarantee a series like the one I am creating will get commissioned, there are benefits to creating a pilot episode, and then treatment documents for the remaining episodes, as treatments are significantly quicker to write, and as such, if a pilot episode doesn't get the green light to be commissioned, the screenplay writer will have more time to create a fresh pilot episode or a new series that WILL be commissioned.

Once I had a clear idea about what a treatment document would be used for, I decided to check out exactly what aspects should be included in a treatment in order for it to fulfil its intention. The website suggests that the following should be included in a treatment;

Of course, the aspects listed here for "what should be in the treatment" are what should be used in a short or feature length film, but some of these aspects could be included in a treatment written for an episode of a series too.

The next stage of my research will be to begin looking online for treatment documents that have gone on to be commissioned, and check them out for any recurring themes or writing styles that I could incorporate into my own work.