script exercise: deciding what to omit

[miker]

seems you're all reading into a bit too deep ...

the story is "a woman gets hungry so goes and gets a sandwich and eats it" -- if you omit all steps you have no story!!

but how many of the steps are essentially redundant?

it should be noted as well that step 10 is always going to be in the sandwich bar.

you could approach this from an editor's point of view, too. steps 1 - 10 are the rushes you have but you want to tell the story in the least number of steps. if that makes it easier to understand?

does that make it clearer?

(d a m n insomnia, it's 2:22am)

[ickle_jim]

well ok... lets take the view that a story must have a start, a middle and an end thats at least 3! not 2 like everyone is saying [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[GREATwarEAGLE]

I had a feeling this exercise was gonna go awry. I guess the problem is that Miker's original description of the story contradicts the description in his most recent post.


first post
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If a woman in an office says she is hungry and is going out to get a sandwich, what are the possible scenes?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

most recent post <BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">the story is "a woman gets hungry so goes and gets a sandwich and eats it" -- if you omit all steps you have no story!! </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

See the difference. In the first post, there's no mention of her actually eating food. And I took it mean She says she's hungry and she says she's gonna go get food.

I interpreted the first post as this:
--------------------------------------------------------------
INT. OFFICE

PAM
I'm hungry. I'm gonna go grab a bite.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Therefore, the rest is useless. This exercise came across as being very technical. So I approached as technical.

Anyway, I think everyone here gets the point. It's just that the exercise was flawed to begin with.

But, Miker, it was interesting, and an important fundamental in screenwriting. I suggest you take a look at David Mamet's book On Directing Film.

It's somewhat similar and oh so valuable.