Two years after reading The Island of the Day Before for the first time, I started reading it again to select the script scenes; I was finally embarking on the journey of writing the adaptation. The “visions” re-merged and I was turning them into the legacy elements of a movie script. The initial idea was to reduce the book story to the quest for the longitude measurement and the interesting aspect of a Jesuit priest being in the contest. After a few pages though I started to wonder, where am I going with this story, what is its meaning and how would I summarize it, if I were to write the synopsis. Could the script include just Roberto’s and Father Caspar’s amusing scenes in the struggle to get to the island and the eclectic discussions? Maybe not, so wouldn’t it be better to write the treatment first to tell (to myself for now) what is the meaning of the story and who is to learn from it. Changing the course, I stopped writing the script and concentrated on the synopsis and treatment. I’ve browsed the books on treatments that I had but what actually defined the path through its completion was “The Five Key Turning Points Of All Successful Movie Scripts” article I’ve found on Mother Internet (one may ask why not Father? OK, good question). The article follows the tradition of the plot building but breaks down the whole treatment into acts, scenes, and most importantly the events between them, those that mark the changes in the course of the situation at hand, ideally but reasonably in and out. That’s what would keep the viewer engaged. Back to the treatment “method”, I came up with a spreadsheet laid out to include all the elements of its structure, in a column, and the description of the scenes and key events “visions”. (I certainly searched for a script writing software, but none satisfied me; I felt that they will constrain the freedom of free form thinking and further the ability to narrow down the choices for decision making). The spreadsheet works well as the equivalent of the “cards”, to jog down ideas, topics and sources of research. Filling-up the cell/cards with descriptions of the scenes, while reading the book, I decided that I can’t have just Roberto and Father Caspar in the script. I’ll have to bring in more action, people and characters from the book, possibly as memory flashbacks. But then how do I bring in motivations and feelings? Umberto Eco has the literary freedom to interpret and explain but I do not. Could I use some dreams? Yes, the dreams will better show rather than “tell” by dialogue (as I do not wish this to be a “talking heads” movie). So, the spreadsheet gets improved with new columns such as “Dreams”, “Memory Flashbacks”, Artifacts” and, last but not least “Dialogue”, the most challenging element of a good script. The challenges that I face with the latter are: what is essential for the story progression and its robustness and how does it characterizes the characters. The remarkable book translation offers ample material but I need to keep it short and in line with the visuals, thus interesting and fun.And Oh! very well documented; consequently, I am starting another spreadsheet with a timeline with philosophical, religious and scientific personalities and events, e.g. Aristotle, Inquisition, the Jesuits, Tycho Brache, Galileo Galilei, discovery of navigation instruments. (To be continued with the memories of the journey to writing the adaptation.)
25 thoughts on “SCRIPT WRITING JOURNEY: YEAR 1645. VALVOLINO JOINS THE QUEST FOR THE LONGITUDE METHOD”
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