photographs.

We were asked to bring 4 photographs with us to the next session.
2 photographs of people that we asked if we could take their photo, i asked these two interesting looking people that i spotted in manchester.

and 2 of people who did not know that they were having their picture taken.

These are two more which i took in manchester of unsuspecting people.

homework task

1. Write up your learning journal for these two days- ASAP, remember, your learning journal counts for 25% of your marks.

2. Do your written homework- ASAP (as in the course brief outline "your own written piece- either a series of poems, or a short story, or the the synopsis for an opening scene of a stage/radio/TV drama.")- then put it aside until a few days before the next session, the read it through and edit it with a fresh eye. Bring in both the first draft, and the edited version because both will be required when reviewing editing techniques.

3. Bring in a list of 5 cliches that interest me. 

4. Bring in 4 photographs that YOU have taken. 

It would be great if they are completely new photos, inspired by the content of the writing course so far, rather than stock items from your portfolio.

All four must be of PEOPLE. They must all be people who are OLDER THAN YOU. This is to prevent all bringing in pictures of peers, and to avoid the issues raised with bringing in photographs of children.

TWO of the photographs must be of people who you have talked to and asked to pose in some way- e.g. maybe you ask them not to smile, or ask them to look angry, or in love with each other...be creative!

The other TWO must be photographs were none of the people in the photos knew they were being photographed.

We will be sharing these out amongst everyone and writing stories from them. You won't be working with your own photos- so you can choose whether you are going to go for utterly obscure shots, or are going to be less cruel to your fellow students!

Use this as a creative oppurtunity to talk to people you wouldn't otherwise have any social contact with- e.g, elderly people, non-students, shopkeepers, builders, office workers, etc etc. Treat it as an excercise in itself- in terms of building up your bank of future characters to work on and with. Explain to people that this is a project from your course, and, of course, back off if they don't wish to participate. 

Have fun with your photographs- and try not to come back with too many black eyes!

ideas for my own written piece

For my written outcome of my elective i had planned on writing a series of weird short stories, similar to the ones by Stanley Donwood. Stanley Donwood is the artistic mind behind all of radioheads artwork and merchandise, designing every album cover artwork and basically everything since the first album. Being a massive radiohead fan i first heard these stories when they were included within a promotional film for the album 'In rainbows' the film was called 'scotch mist' where they played each song from the album live broken up with artistic montages and cuts between songs, where these stories were included. Since hearing them a couple of years ago i have pretty much become obsessed by them, the way stanley donwood is able to describe a locations so poetically and perfectly in a way you would never expect to hear making it sound as if this story was going somewhere however just ends with a blunt strange often humorous ending. The best example of this is within the story 'Midsummers day in the graveyard', the story is only short mainly consisting of beautiful descriptions of his surrounding, really painting the image in your head of where he was and what is going on, however just ends with, 'and i wasn't their for very long before i thought, that i should leave.'

Here are the stories which were included within the radiohead film narrated by Ric Jerrom;

Their are tons of these stories on his website, http://www.slowlydownward.com/irony.html
each just weid and poetic but funny in a strange way, here are a few of my favourites.

I hope to write a series of my own stories based on those of stanley donwood.

creating a story linking two newspaper articles

in groups of four we were given two unrelated newspaper clippings.  The aim of the task was to think of a storyline to link the stories by thinking of a film plot.

The first story was about the results of an inquest of a baby who had died in a Nottingham hospital after a ‘drug error’  The second story was a South Wales woman aged 21 years old who had received 160 parking fines.

Our group came up with the following plot:

Louisa Swinburn was sacked after the dreadful mistake and moved from Notts to South Wales. She had a breakdown, is unemployed and got 160 parking fines.  She has also discovered she is having a baby.

Introduce a red herring to surprise the reader

The reason for the mistake.  Louisa had been really drunk after splitting up with her boyfriend.  Really stressed at work

Louisa’s best friend bumps into her ex in Nott’s and spills the beans about Louisa’s pregnancy (his baby)

Who are the characters?

Louisa Swinburn

Age 21

Just qualified as a nurse when ‘drug’ mistake’ happened

Was living with her boyfriend however night before mistake she had a big argument with her boyfriend.  She got very drunk drowning her sorrows.

After accident she runaway to Wales

Smoker

Not very strong, insecure.  Outside she appeared confident.

Best friend is Danielle from Notts.

Boyfriend is Paul

We then worked by ourselves to write the story around the plot which we had created.

I started mine by writing dialogue, but really struggled, after speaking with Gary he advised me to avoid dialogue as if was clearly not my strong point and try to find a way of working around it.

Here another free writing exercise writing up the start of the story which we put together.

Stepping out of the scruffy 2 bedroom flat, Louisa apathetically tears last nights parking ticket from her window and throws it amongst the pile of rubbish building up in  the  back of her car. The car door let out a deafening screech as she slammed it shut. She lethargically leans back in her seat and pulls her seatbelt across her, the heat from the sun pounding against the pile of rubbish in her car creates a sickly musky scent surrounding her. However not even seeming to notice the smell she just places her key in the ignitions and gets ready to drive off into the sun. ‘’ring,ring,’’ Louisa is stopped suddenly by the ringing of her phone.

I struggled with this task,  the group which I was put in didn’t seem to work very well together and our ideas just didn’t seem to go anywhere, I constantly felt as if the group were dismissing my ideas as if they had already created an idea  of where they though the story was going and I was just trying to twist it around.

resolved dialogue script

After looking at how genre could affect a script we then tried to revolve our scripts.

Here is the revolved final version on my script.

paul: Yalright mate?

Taxi: Yeh where you going pal?

Paiul: just round the corner, duck street, you knoe it?

Taxi: Yeh yeh cheers..

…awkward silence…

Taxi: So hows It going? You ok?

Paul: Yeh…

Taxi: you had a good day?

Paul: yeh…

Taxi: …so what you been up to?

Paul: Look, im not really in the mood to talk, ok?

Taxi: ah, sorry… ok.

Paul: sorry I didn’t mean to yell. Its just not been a very good day.

Taxi: ahhh its fine, don’t worry about it.

Taxi: so whats up with you then?

Paul: I really shouldn’t say..

Taxi: hmmm.. alright then.  Well if somethings bothe..

(paul interrupts)

Paul: well, if you must know, I witnessed something the other day, its been messing with my head since.

Taxi: witness something? Like a robbery or a… murder?

I never finished my script, i just didnt feel like it was going anywhere and struggled with writing in dialogue. Really didn’t enjoy doing script writing, I just didn’t feel that I could be creative enough and that my stories where going anywhere interesting, definitely to practice this some more.

dialogue within genres

Testing our scripts in a different genre.

Gary introduced us next to genres, and how genre can effect a script, these are some quick tests to see how our script would work in other genres.

Horror

…man just gracefully strolled in the taxi saying nothing.

Taxi: where you going pal?

Paul: sharply just shouts the words, Duck street!

Taxi: erm… ok

Romance

…man gets into a taxi and is taken back for a second by the driver before nervously stuttering.

Paul: hh hh hh hi?

business - creating dialogue

 We did some more free writing now for 10 minutes, however this time writing in dialogue, we was given a scenario by another member of the class and asked to fit dialogue around it.

                  A TAXI DRIVER PICKING A PASSANGER UP, the passenger being the character Paul from the previous exercise.

paul: Yalright mate?

Taxi: Yeh where you going pal?

Paiul: just round the corner, duck street, you knoe it?

Taxi: Yeh yeh cheers..

…awkward silence…

Taxi: So hows It going? You ok?

Paul: Yeh…

Taxi: you had a good day?

Paul: yeh…

Taxi: …so what you been up to?

Paul: Look, im not really in the mood to talk, ok?

Taxi: ah, sorry… ok.

Paul: sorry I didn’t mean to yell. Its just not been a very good day.

Taxi: ahhh its fine, don’t worry about it.

Taxi: so whats up with you then?

Paul: I really shouldn’t say..

Taxi: hmmm.. alright then.

Paul: well, if you really must know, which you wont want to, I witness something the other day, its been playing on my mind ever since.

Taxi: witnessed something? Like a robbery, a murder?

Paul: sigh… yes

Taxi: well which one?

Paul: look were almost here now, just pretend I never said anything, ok?

Taxi: but… mate, this sounds quite serious

Paul: look, if I could just get out here that would be great, I really shouldn’t be telling you this, I can walk the rest of the way, thanks.

DIALOGUE – I really didn’t enjoy writing dialogue, it just never seemed to go anywhere, at least not anywhere interesting, your not about to describe things and write about your surroundings, you just have to write out boring everyday conversations, maybe it is something I can work on, try to improve my skills.