Today’s Wednesday visit was a little different because instead of going to our regular Elementary/Middle School’s, all of the teacher candidates spent the day at Lambrick Park High School. We had the choice of sitting in on any class we were interested in, and for one of mine I picked the senior Film class taught by Mrs. Martin. The whole New Media program was started last year by Martin and was a huge success. The class was so popular they created two new senior classes that branched off the New Media course, that being Film and Photography class. Mrs. Martin’s class is currently working on creating a short film. The students read us their ideas and most of the plots carry a dark twist or incorporate a mystery. The focus of today’s film class was on the various elements of screenplay writing. The two main points addressed today was learning how to correctly format and write concise action and realistic dialogue within a screenplay. I learnt that there are four parts in formatting a screenplay, that being: fade in/out, slug lines, action, and dialogue.

Instead of saying ” the start” or ” the end” you would write in all capitals   ” FADE IN” or ” FADE OUT”. Writing “The End” in a screenplay is considered unprofessional and is frowned upon. A slug line offers three pieces of information, 1) is it inside or outside, 2) location and 3) when does the scene occur. When Mr. Pelton talked about the action component of formatting, he was referring to documenting the movement of the characters, not jumping or ninja kicks. Lastly, is dialogue; the advice Mr. Pelton gave the class was… make it realistic/natural- not perfect, consider the flow of conversation, and are characters listening or just talking (reaction is key!). Before today I had no idea that a screenplay had so many rules and restrictions. Just like an assignment we as university students get, there is a specific font and font size that must always be used. For a screenplay, it is always 12 point Courier font. Each page of a screenplay must have roughly fifty-five lines, where each page is the equivalent of one minute of screen time. This project of creating an original screenplay is done in pairs, which allows students to develop their collaborative writing skills. I was amazed to hear some of the ideas the students came up with and wished that a course like this was offered at my high school. I came out of this class more knowledgeable about another form of creative writing, and it feels really good. I am very pleased that I chose to sit in on that class and I wish I was able to go back and see the students final products.