Cross Channel Film Lab

Tuesday saw the launch of the Cross Channel Film lab, which aims to build connections between Cornish and Breton based filmmakers. In particular, the scheme purposes to connect writers, directors and producers with people who work in visual effects and 3D technology. Money is involved.

A series of open sessions have been held at University College Falmouth's new AIR building. "AIR" stands for Academy of Innovation and Research; I can imagine whoever came up with this patting themself smugly on the back and taking a month off to recover. I will be disappointed if they do not name their next three buildings Earth, Wind and Fire. Unless this is the case within the next five years, I say they should have followed the tradition of naming buildings after notable alumni. For example, St Andrews now has Blackadder Hall, named after Sir Edmund, a distant relation of Rowan Atkinson. Some say standards in History teaching are declining, but I do not know what they are talking about. UCF alumni include a cyborg. Now that's pretty innovative. They should have named it after him.

Today's session focused on scriptwriting and how visual effects may affect storytelling. Kate Leys gave a lecture via Skype to start it off, focusing on what makes great storytelling.
 Here are the main points, re-explained by me:

• A Great Hook. This is why Peter Pan is such an engaging story and why there are so many films about coathangers.

You should be able to describe the story in incredibly simple terms. One sentence to sum it up. One sentence to guide it; with this sentence in mind, you can check that the whole of your script is 

• A Big Idea. Buy a large notebook. Big notebooks mean big ideas. Plus, you can sit under it when it rains.

What you want the audience to understand. A simple message to be woven into each scene. Making sure it is expressed in every scene will give the film coherence and let the message gain resonance. Don't write it on a sledgehammer that knocks your main character on the head in the denouement.

• Well-Defined Characters. Usually only a problem with animation and anorexic actors. Drawn badly or badly drawn characters will be hard to viewers to spot within the frame.

In real life we may are often contradictory. Our actions and our feelings may not match up, or if they do it would take three years of psycho-analysis and reading all our childhood diaries to work out why. If you want to create a complex character like this, have unprotected sex

• Stake. Particularly important in vampire films and biopics of Alan Titchmarsh [non-UK readers insert alternative garden-dweller here].

What matters to the main character? We all have different priorities, so you as the writer must decide this and make it clear to the audience. It shouldn't be their entire philosophy of life on this planet, unless that really is what you film is about. It needn't be a big thing. Perhaps what really matters to them throughout the film is that they just want a bacon sandwich.

• Problems. For nerds with over-active minds, you should include some maths problems up on the screen during the latter half of the film. They should be in the bottom right hand corner and include jokes in binary form. If you cannot manage this, give up all dreams of becoming a scriptwriter now.

Keep bringing in problems throughout the film for your characters to contend with. They'll keep the story ticking along.

• Whose Story Is It? Protect your copyright at all times and punch any producer who tries to interfere with you on the schnoz.

It's not yours, unless it's an autobiopic. Do those happen? The story must have one person at its centre. They need not be the loudest character or the one with most screentime. The example Kate gave is that in Little Miss Sunshine the story is organised around the mother. She helps things happen. She is the only one who gets what she wants in the end, which is for her family to get on just a little better.

• An Ending. Unlike a puppy, an film-goer is not for life. An audience will turn up at the cinema and probably leave before they've bothered to read your name in the credits. To avoid this happening, some films have secret scenes inserted after the credits, forming a second ending. Go one better and have your credits put in the middle of the film. If the director disagrees, compromise: just have your name flashed up for ten seconds.

The ending should be worked in to the story. A snooker ball goes in a certain trajectory, which you had to decide at the beginning, before you placed your shot. If you're good, it'll go where you intended it to. There's no skill in shooting the ball of the table and screaming 'it was all a dream!'

Kate also stressed that what drives a film is a character's dramatic struggle. The plot must not be just a series of events, but happenings in the course of a particular human struggle. Big crowd scenes and flashy effects must be there to help a story along. Don't look at Scene 5 and think: this is boring, I'll add fifty thousand women in loincloths / a mutant dinosaur-moth and leave it to the costume department and the effects guys to create something good.