Okay - you need to work hard to slim all of this down in terms of getting as much established as possible through visual storytelling; it's reading a bit long, and you've got some complex shifts of mood to accomplish here; for example, even before the boy gets his news, you actually need a set up where we see him a) being taught piano by his dad (and that his dad is piano teacher) and b) that is mother is a seamstress and c) that they're a happy family and d) that there is a butler etc. You need to tell your audience all of these things before you take everything from Edward and set your story rolling. If you establish the two professions of your parents at the beginning, you can just have all of their stuff being banished to the attic by Edward, without getting into his feelings about the two separate rooms, which is irrelevant to your story really. You'll also need to show Edward rejecting the piano etc. It did occur to me, for speed, you might have the parents drown on the Titanic - it moves your story a little forward in terms of chronology, but if the butler were to show Edward a newspaper with the Titanic headline on it, the audience would know immediately that his parents had drowned - but again, prior to this scene, we'd need to know that his parents had left to go on the trip. The point is, while everything is manageable, your story needs all this concision to make it work and to ensure that we can follow everything effortlessly. I suggest you now go for a more complex treatment in which you literally try and sequence everything as it needs to be - you need to ensure all the information required by your audience is on screen - and you need to do it as economically as possible!
I would say that I don't think your ending is quite right - you need a simpler, more emblematic way to demonstrate that Edward has moved on and is restored than bringing all the dead people's stuff back into rooms; something simpler and more poetic.
OGR 22/01/2015
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan,
Okay - you need to work hard to slim all of this down in terms of getting as much established as possible through visual storytelling; it's reading a bit long, and you've got some complex shifts of mood to accomplish here; for example, even before the boy gets his news, you actually need a set up where we see him a) being taught piano by his dad (and that his dad is piano teacher) and b) that is mother is a seamstress and c) that they're a happy family and d) that there is a butler etc. You need to tell your audience all of these things before you take everything from Edward and set your story rolling. If you establish the two professions of your parents at the beginning, you can just have all of their stuff being banished to the attic by Edward, without getting into his feelings about the two separate rooms, which is irrelevant to your story really. You'll also need to show Edward rejecting the piano etc. It did occur to me, for speed, you might have the parents drown on the Titanic - it moves your story a little forward in terms of chronology, but if the butler were to show Edward a newspaper with the Titanic headline on it, the audience would know immediately that his parents had drowned - but again, prior to this scene, we'd need to know that his parents had left to go on the trip. The point is, while everything is manageable, your story needs all this concision to make it work and to ensure that we can follow everything effortlessly. I suggest you now go for a more complex treatment in which you literally try and sequence everything as it needs to be - you need to ensure all the information required by your audience is on screen - and you need to do it as economically as possible!
I would say that I don't think your ending is quite right - you need a simpler, more emblematic way to demonstrate that Edward has moved on and is restored than bringing all the dead people's stuff back into rooms; something simpler and more poetic.