scripting

Scripting
I’ve spent the last two days going through the documentary scripting it. It’s a hard job because I’ve got to string together the talking heads into some kind of story.

In doing the rough edit I’ve cut out all the waffle, and ordered the clips, dropping in a few cut-aways. Where I think narration is needed, I’ve inserted a simple text screen to give myself a visual cue as I cut and to make sure the doc is roughly the right length.

Going through and scripting is a slow and often painful job, and it’s not finished yet. This rough script I’ll record (using my own voice as a stand-in for the professional narrator) and drop in, then as I work towards a fine edit, I’ll refine the script.

I did write a preliminary script a couple of months ago to give the documentary some shape and guide me as I did the interviews. However, I’ve barely looked at it while writing this version, so I’m not really sure if I wasted my time doing it before.

I suppose the preliminary script did help to shape the production in my mind, but I could probably have got away with doing that in a less formal fashion. Having said that, when I look back, the original script (because it was written fast and without the restriction of having to fit it around people’s actual quotes) contains a lot of useful ideas and powerful quotes.

Perhaps I’ll end up taking more from it as I finalise the edit and put the spaces and pictorial sections back into it.

That’s the next job. To find all the parts of the story told at the moment by interviews which can be told better with pictures…

That’s the job for tomorrow- however, I also need to juggle my new documentaries too – there are people I need to email and shoots I need to set up. Particularly there’s the possibility that I can catch a whole group of my potential dinosaur experts for my new documentaries on the theropods (two legged meat eaters) at a conference in March.

If I can do a deal to shoot there, it’ll save a lot of time and energy rushing round the country later on.

Anyway – what is the collective name for a group of dinosaur experts?
An excavation, perhaps?