Story Analysis - Score Card

The colour that was assigned to my group was red, me and my group had to come up with quirky film ideas which relate to the colour red without using the typical meanings of red. For example, red means anger. All of the individual stories that were written were then analysed by the group and then given a score.

The first story written by Jojor was scored 2/5 for practicality. Practicality was the biggest problem because realistically we wouldn’t receive permission to film in rural areas such as, villages.  Living in London our so called “rural” areas happen to be overtaken by flats. Cast was considered as another problem as the cast members in the film will be required to know how to drive because at some point in the film idea the main character is driving down a long road. In addition to this, the streets of London are too busy and dangerous to film on.

The logical causality within this film was fair as it was given a score of 3/5, the only issue that was raised was when the main character got into his car and started to drive, this seemed slightly random as the story doesn’t tell the audience the reason behind why the character got into his car. This also seems to baffle the reader as they are left to wonder where the character may be off to.

The thematic unity in this film idea isn’t strong as there is not one strong direct theme. It is a combination of anger, curiosity, resentment and regret. This was said to be confusing for the audience causing disconnection between the audience and the character. Thematic unity was given a score of 3/5. Finally, character development was given a score of 2/5 as there is no sense of character growth from the beginning right through to the end. The character is said to be stuck in a phase which doesn’t dramatically evolve and this may cause boredom for the audience.

We then looked at Deni's idea. Within practicalities we found  a few issues, the first issue is finding a red blob to use as a prop, this will be hard to find as it is not something common, it will not be easy to get a hold of. Problem two is the use of dogs in the story, this could affect our scheduled time for film making, making it hard for us to shoot consistent shots and also we may also have to train the dogs or even hire trained dogs. This could lead to high expenses and can also be time consuming.

Logical causality is the idea that everything that happens occurs in a logical manner and is not unexplained and without a clear motive. For Micheals idea, we spotted that the only lack of logical causality is when the main character randomly finds out about the article on the contact lenses, our group felt that this was a significant plot point and should be furthered and explained in detail. One idea we came up with in order to correct this was to change the story. We decided that the main character is a university student who comes across the contact lenses whilst visiting labs on the campus.
In Deni's plot we spotted the same issue, in this story the red blob plays a key part in the story but, the reason behind the existence of the blob is not explained, giving it no logical sense.

Thematic unity is the idea that the activities that happen in the short all center around one theme.
For both Micheal and Denis idea, we all agreed that both stories had one clear theme of greed with a collection of may themes with red such as passion, anger and willpower, we felt that this would be the most effective as with a clear theme it is easy to create a short around those ideas as well as adding other themes into the story as well increasing its depth.

 

Character development is important in that it allows the audience to emotionally connect with the story and characters, character development can be the driving force in a story and without it it can leave the viewer feeling unsatisfied with the ending.

In contrast to Jojr’s story , in both Michael and Deni’s there was good character development, both the main characters change due to greed and at the end of the story. There is a clear difference between the characters at the beginning and the end, we felt that Deni's idea had the best character development as we also see the changes in other important characters such as the old man and best friend.
This story analysis task has helped us to identify all the issues in each story idea and improves our hindsight to similar issues when creating other story ideas, it also allows us to understand what we need to do in order to perfect our story ideas.