MAJOR PRODUCTION: SCRIPT CHANGES

'When you’ve finished your first draft put it away in a drawer. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Not once. The aim is to get your imagination out of it back to a neutral place so that you can have a fresh set of eyes.' -https://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/13-steps-to-your-second-draft/

Over the break, it has been good to leave the script to one side for a while. A lot of the preliminary script research that I undertook, stressed the importance of having a fresh outlook every time you make a change. Regular breaks help to bring a writer out a rut, and bring a fresh view when you look at it next time. When I handed in the script back in December, I always knew that something was missing from specifically the end of the script. I felt as though with Nova, we were missing something and were not utilising her character. Having a break allowed me to think about the different ideas and ways to bring Nova's character back for the end. The ideas I played with were

- Making Marlo go back to the memorial to say one final goodbye
- Making Marlo go back to the park to say goodbye to her
- Have Nova appear outside of Marlo's bedroom, emotionally looking at him to give him her blessing to move on in his life
- Have another argument with Marlo
- Have Marlo find a letter written from Nova as a goodbye

After considering the options, I like the idea of Marlo and Nova having one final goodbye. It made more sense to me that Marlo would go to the park to say his final goodbye, because that is where him and Nova were at their happiest. Thinking about this scene, I knew I would prefer to have little dialogue in the scene, the story should be told through the emotion and facial expression of the characters.

Beginning of New Scene:

I'm really happy with how the script has come along, apart from minor changes in terms of minimises dialogue and extending the action, the new scene is the only major change. For logistical reasons, I changed scene 11 from taking place in a car driving, to taking place in a stationary car/on the side of the road. I knew that as a writer, the point of the scene was to stress to Julie that something may be wrong with Marlo and he perhaps has some issues. However as the producer, I knew that this scene would be logistically hard to film due to both cost and health and safety issues. This in mind, the scene now takes place outside Julie's house at the side of the road, whilst still retaining the original process/story.