Development

What did I do:

The first thing the I did during development was work out what sections I was selecting from the script. "Love Actually" is a film with multiple narratives therefore I had to go through the script and select the sections that I needed from the scene that I chose. As you can see in the images below I highlighted the sections that I had chose in pink and scribbled out the irrelevant sections. This enabled me to focus on what was important for my scenes and nothing else. I then re typed out the script to Final Draft and printed it. At this stage I read through the script multiple times and I follow Steve Finn's advice on breaking down a script. I focussed on the characters and the setting, I began to make rough notes and drew a very rough floor plan because at this point I knew my location. I highlighted the areas of the property in the floor plan that we would be using for each scene which enabled me to know what set space was available. Then I created bubble maps for the two main characters Karen and Harry as you can see in the photos below. These included their physical appearance (build and age), their characteristics, their behaviours and their costumes. This enabled me to have in depth knowledge on how I viewed the characters just from reading the script before starting any direction. Finally I went through the script and wrote out directions throughout it; this was for performance so that I could visualise how the scenes would look before moving on to storyboarding.  Once I had gone through the whole script I had a clear plan in my mind of how I wanted the action to run and how I could bring my vision from reading the script to life. I wanted to stick as closely to the script as I possibly could however it gave me quite a lot of freedom due to there not being much dialogue or action in some scenes so it allowed me to add my own action such as Karen having a look through all the presents and looking under tree as I extended this section as well as the scene with Karen standing the bedroom after she finds out about the affair which is similar to Curtis' version but I wanted to add more about her passion for her children so I planned her looking through photos of her children and drawings and cards they had given her just to make it that bit more personal.


What Was Successful?

The most successful part of the developmental stage was definitely doing the character breakdowns because they allowed me to then add some of their personalities and characteristics to my directions in the very early stages. Just by going through the script and focussing on what the characters were saying it was allowing me to bring them to life and focus on their intentions which I could then highlight during my film. For example in Curtis' version of "Love Actually" the character of Harry is very serious and doesn't seem to care about anything, yet when I read through the script I saw a different side to him where he is a little caring and he does want to be happy around his children so I wanted to bring this out. Another element that I found successful was a slight change I made to the script for the second scene.


What Went Wrong?

The hardest thing during the development phase was trying to not recreate Curtis' scenes. I did not let myself rewatch them once pre production had started because I did not want to mimic his I wanted my own stamp on them so it was tough to not think about them and try to copy his shots especially because I am very familiar with the film so something that I definitely struggled with was not copying Curtis however viewing the characters with my own interpretation did help to avoid this.


Conclusion:

In conclusion it was really useful to go through the script and read it over and over until my vision was clear and then write it out on the script because then I had a full version of my vision noted down even though it was rough ready to turn into shot lists and storyboards. Before we had the workshop with Steve Finn on how to breakdown scripts I probably would have just copied Curtis for lots of things however breaking it down created my own vision, some parts similar to Curtis' however unique at other points. In future I would always break down scripts in the same way again.