Baker’s Goods: Screenplay
Reflective Analysis
I have produced an animated short film screenplay, titled ‘Baker’s Goods’. Throughout the writing I tried to incorporate several techniques from my influences whilst retaining from copying/parodying their works. This was in order to create a piece that would be appropriate for my target audience; which would include women and for the most part mainstream audiences. However, due to animation not being targeted at a large portion of the adult film audience, I now recognise that my film should be directed to an art-house audience even though I am still following the codes and conventions (for the most part) of a genre film.
Choosing romantic-comedy as the genre for my screenplay can be attributed to many of the animated shorts I had watched; such as Paperman, Blue Umbrella and Lava. It was also writing easier as I used the knowledge I had gained from AS genre studies and related it to romantic comedies instead of horror.
One of my main influences for this piece would be Charlie Kaufman, writer and one of the directors of Anomalisa. After watching this film I was able to see that animation was not only for children but instead could tackle other issues, it also lacked the constraints of reality which enabled more freedom to express and work within the ‘abstract’. Although I did not use this aspect of his film, I was influenced by him going against the tradition of animation being a stylistic approach that’s meant to cater to children, and instead creating a story which could be told as live action.
The mise-en-scene of my screenplay was heavily influenced by the bakery scene in Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, I tried to emulate the levels of detail he produced in his screenplay in relation to set design and props by using similar techniques, such as using writing about the bakery’s store front and sign, rather than merely stating the objects existed.
A new aim that progressed whilst writing my screenplay was to show the main protagonist’s (The Baker) perspective on all the events that occurred; this was meant to keeps the audiences’ alignment with her and ensure that my preferred reading of wanting The Baker to succeed was taken on as a spectator response. This would ensure that the audience was familiarised with The Baker, by being able to see what he is seeing. The character was meant to possess a childlike amount of hope in that there was always a positive to whatever situation she was put into. I tried to illustrate this in several scenes such as when she first sees the flower shop and the sky loses its grey colouring in place of a bright blue. Originally the alignment within my screenplay was split between both The Baker and Florist (still favouring The Baker) however I did not feel as though both characters were properly fleshed out due to the constraints of the word limit. I felt that keeping The Baker solely at the centre was for the best for the development of my screenplay and didn’t completely take away from The Florist’s character.
My main concern was being unable to stay within the word limit, there were several factors which kept causing me to go over: such as my reliance on flashback which caused an over use of dialogue, as well as the inspiration I took from Brian Petsos’s Ticky Tacky which is a film that relied extensively on dialogue over action which was mirrored to my first draft. This did in fact have a negative effect on the development of my screenplay as it caused myself to rely too much on dialogue which only went against my original aims and context (to use minimal dialogue) but it also caused my screenplay to failed to fit well with how a majority of animated shorts were constructed.
I had convictions in terms of whether to use fantasy elements or keeping within a realistic approach. By writing a short film rather than filming one I didn’t have constraints of what I could produce, this lack of limitation only increased with my decision to write an animated short; however it didn’t add to what I wanted to portray. In the end I chose selective realism which enabled me to incorporate element of fantasy whilst not letting it mould the story I was trying to tell.
Wanting to have my characters easily digestible whilst not being one dimensional was extremely important to me during my writing process; I wanted the reader of my screenplay to want my characters to succeed, which I believe I succeeded in from the feedback I was given by my peers, this is why I chose to have the antagonist be the lack of success of the bakery rather than an actual individual.
I had intended my piece to be an easily enjoyable light hearted short film unfortunately the light hearted aspect which I clung onto so strongly ended up retracting from the screenplay’s form. In the first draft of Baker’s Goods there wasn’t a central conflict which made my plot too simplistic and had to be changed immediately. After some reflection I decided to make the conflict apparent nearer the beginning, as to help progression and avoid time/word count being wasted building up to it.
Taken as a whole, I feel as though I have succeeded in creating a detailed yet fluid screenplay. I believe that I have done the best as I could have to correct the critiques of my work and I am happy with my now revised screenplay.