The Canvasser: The Protagonists
In this week's post about the development of my screenplay, The Canvasser, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the two most characters in the story: the candidate Devon Shire and his campaign manager Marie Bellechance (names subject to change) and their roles in the screenplay.Devon Shire, protagonist and titular character, starts the movies as an earnest yet slow-witted political canvasser who dreams of working in the Parliament of Canada. Despite spending seven years of his life volunteering for the party, his dreams are blocked by a lack of connections and a Parliamentary culture focused on prestige. Underemployed and with his savings nearly drained, Devon is faced with a ticking clock until he forced to go on welfare. A chance encounter convinces him to take a long-shot run for Ottawa City Council.As the protagonist in a comedy, Devon has to be likeable, has to be someone that the audience can laugh at and be enough of an underdog to win the audiences sympathy. If all of these elements are done well, then the audience will laugh at his failures, cheer on his small victories and general want to see him succeed against overwhelming odds.Why does likability matter? It the audience doesn't like Devon, then the movie won't work. The audience won't care about his dire situation, his dreams or his long-shot campaign. While you can have a main character that isn't likeable, like an anti-hero, it's much more difficult to pull off and it has be part of their personal journey towards becoming a better person. In the case of The Canvasser, I tried to make Devon someone that audiences could get behind right from the beginning. Devon is polite, works hard and constantly looks on the bright side of life. He has small dreams but pursues them with passion no matter what obstacles are thrown his way. I also work to endear him to the audience by throwing obstacles at him that are clearly unfair. I keep him underemployed, prevent him from getting the job of his dreams for reasons of dubious merit, and give him "friends" that certainly don't have his interests at heart. These are all things that we've experienced in their own lives and so the hope is that the audience sees a little bit of themselves in Devon's plight.In almost every story, the protagonist needs to have a personality flaw that holds them back in some way, shape or form. This flaw creates tension early on and provides momentum to the story as the character has to learn how resolve or overcome his flaw. The process of resolving this tension provides the character with a character arc that drives the story forward and shows his personal growth. In the case of The Canvasser, Devon's flaw is that he lacks self-respect. He has spent his life giving his time to candidates and parties that have no use for him. His friends use him at their leisure and life keeps kicking him down. His long-shot campaign isn't really about winning or losing, it's about learning to believe in himself and see himself and his life as worthwhile. When he succeeds in this goal, he gains pride in himself the respect of those around him. While he loses the campaign, he does find a job and get his career started. Thus when the movie ends, the audience is satisfied that Devon's in much better place than when he started.The second major character and almost a co-protagonist in the story is Marie Bellechance, a highly sought after political organizer who cut her teeth in the Assembly of First Nations. By this point in her life, Marie is disillusioned, cynical about politics and is ready to move to the private sector and cash in. Her flaw is her lack of faith in politics and it's potential to bring forth positive and needed change. Based on her experience on her knowledge of the history of colonialism, she has come to the conclusion that politics is simply about two things: money and winning and usually in that order. This makes her a perfect foil to Devon and provides loads of opportunities for both conflict and comedy.When I wrote the original draft, my focus was on Devon but when I went back and edited it, I found I was more and more interested in Marie and her personal story. I liked that she was a strong and active character with her own needs and internal conflicts. She is not there simply to support Devon but has her own goals and dreams, all of which are challenged by Devon's optimism. So I went back and furthered developed her story so that she would go through an arc where she moves from a cynic looking to cash in to an inspirational leader who takes charge of her and the country's future, based heavily on her experiences with Devon's campaign. Likewise, once Devon completes his arc and gains respect for himself, he steps aside and supports Marie as she steps up and fulfills her potential. I attempted to create a story where two characters have their personal character arcs of equal importance and mutually reinforcing. At this point, I'm not sure it's there yet but it's certainly come a long way.The major challenge with having two protagonists in as screenplay is length. Currently, the last draft was about 136 pages which is far too long. Based on the advice of some friends, I hope to get it down to about 115-120 pages at a maximum. Hopefully, I won't have to cut any of the character development scenes of these two characters as I feel they're the heart and soul of the story.That's all for now. Hopefully, I'll have some exciting news for you soon.
The Canvasser: Clean Cut Humour - A Blast from the Past
Following up on my prior post, the next project that I've been working on is the Canvasser, a screenplay about an earnest but overmatched volunteer who decides to make a long-shot run for city council before he has to go on welfare. Today, I want to go into some details about the type of humour I tried to emulate.Over the past twenty years, film comedies have tended to become more raunchy, violent and predicated on shock value to generate humour. This trend appeared to start with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, continued in There's Something About Mary and reached its zenith with The Hangover trilogy. The growing success of this type of comedy has influenced the spec screenplay market to produce more extreme or shocking comedy stories in order to stand out from the crowd, make their first sell and get their start in the industry. Please see the excellent screenplay review website, ScriptShadow, for more details on the trends in the spec screenplay market.However, I did not feel comfortable a comedy in that vein. First, I don't think I would good at it. Two, I'm a public servant, a job I love and respect. I would not want to write anything that would reflect poorly on my employer and the Canadian public at large. It may be a day job, but it's a day job that I enjoy and want to keep doing. Third and finally, I think the type of market for that type of comedy has become extremely saturated. Audiences have seen this same type of comedy over and over again and have seen the enveloper pushed further and further. I'm not sure that there's much left to mine in shock gaps and gross-old comedy. Furthermore, I believe that it's hindered innovation and creativity in the comedic film genre in the North American market. Comedy has become formulaic and quite frankly dull. In the last few years, I've become more interested in the British style of comedies as pioneered by Edgar Wright and his compatriots Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Their Cornetto Trilogy films Shaun of the Death, Hot Fuzz (ESPECIALLY Hot Fuzz!) and The World's End, used smart writing, clever composition, innovative cuts and shots to create humour in ways that we hadn't seen before. Hot Fuzz is so full of clever ideas that you don't notice some of them on first viewing. One of my favourite jokes is when Nicholas Angel meets the Sandford Police Service and we cut to a shot of Sgt. Tony Fisher, played by Kevin Eldon, looking up. Behind Sgt. Fisher is a easel pad with numerous negative traits like disloyal, rudy and unfit encircling Sgt. Fisher's head.
These three movies are full of smart jokes like this that take advantage of the unique advantages of cinema. This seemed like to meet a far more promising source of inspiration then the latest gross-out comedy.In terms of political comedies, most films approach the subject of politics from a cynical perspective, presenting politicians as self-interested narcissists, voters as apathetic and stupid and the system as fundamentally broken. While some of these critiques are valid, it is not the image of politics that I have seen over my experiences volunteering on numerous politicians and interacting with voters for over a decade. Political campaigns are driven by thousands of people who sacrifice their free time with no or little expectation of reward or comparisons because they care about their home and how it is run. Voters care greatly at politics, they just don't like the options, or lack thereof, that they're presented with. In my municipal campaign, I was blown away by the technical expertise and intelligence held by many citizens about some very complex subjects. I saw hundreds of people work hard for free to shape their communities for generations to come. Unlike most political comedies, my experiences have given me a hopeful and optimistic view of politics in Canada and I wanted to translate that hope and optimism to a comedy.Based on the above reasons, I tried to establish a number of rules that I tried to follow when writing the first draft:
- Don't insult voters, they fully deserve our respect;
- Keep it clean, there are enough gross-out comedies, we don't need another one;
- Be innovative, try to use the strengths of cinema to create jokes and gags that haven't been seen before.
- Be positive, there's a solid heart of hope and optimism inherent in our politics, try to capture that as best I can.
I tried to follow these rules as best I can during the first draft and I'll try to reinforce it during the subsequent drafts.That's enough for today. In subsequent posts, I'll go into detail about the two main characters, their flaws and their motivations; and then general five act structure that I wanted to follow in writing the screenplay.
My Next Project: The Canvasser
Hi. Today, I wanted to tell everyone what I'm working on for my next project and why. I hope to write a series of posts highlighting the development of this project to help people understand a little more what goes into the writing process. In this case, my next project is a screenplay that I've called The Canvasser.
Logline
An unemployed and disrespected political canvasser takes a long-shot run for city council before going on welfare.
Genesis
The genesis of this story came out of my experiences canvassing on before of political parties for many years for a volunteer and as a candidate for councillor in the recently completed municipal election. Over my years of experience, I've encountered a lot of unique and humorous situations that would ideal for a comedy. Another influence for this story is a guest lecture that I gave a Carleton University last year about political communication. My ideas, which I attempted to present in a humorous fashion, were a big hit with the students as they simplified a great deal of theory and research into simple, easily understood, and memorable principles that were easy to remember. A screenplay provides an opportunity to present these ideas in a more visual and easily digestible format. It also gave me an opportunity to work in a genre (Comedy) that I've never worked in before, which will help to develop my skills in writing humour.
Genre
Political Comedy. I chose a comedy not only to develop a weakness of my writing (comedy) but also because it fit with a lot of the experiences that I have encountered during my canvassing career. There is a lot more to political campaigns than what you see in movies, most of which is pretty funny and so I wanted to capture these experiences in a format that people would enjoy, understand and remember.
Format
Screenplay. I've chosen the screenplay format because the story in my head, which is dependant on cutting and contrast to develop humour, is tailored specifically to the strengths of video. It is unlikely that I would ever be able to sell this screenplay but if I keep the cost low enough, it may be something that I could make on micro-budget sometime in the future.
Still to Come
That's all the detail I want to go into for now. In future posts, I'll talk about my characters, the structure of the screenplay, and my writing and later editing process. Ciao for now.
Long Time No See
Wow. I must apologize as I've been away from this website for a really long time. However, I have been really busy with things that were really exciting.For the most part, my time during the past 6 months has been focused on running for Ottawa City Council. Despite long odds, no money and few volunteers, we managed to put together an excellent showing in Capital Ward. Despite all of the long hours, I found that the experience was really worth it as I met some amazing people, campaigned on issues I cared about and worked hard to represent a community that has become my home. I'm not sure that I would ever do it again but it was well worth the experience!Following the campaign, I was hoping to participate in National Novel Writing Month but I found that I was simply too exhausted. I have for the most part been working on my next project, The Canvasser, a comedy screenplay which I hope to film on a micro-budget next year. I'm also working on a couple of other screenplays (tis the season of screenplays), namely I, Virus and an unnamed project over the long term while trying to find time to edit my 2012 NaNoWriMo project, Other than I, and my children's book, Ballad of the Four Princesses, into novella format. Over the next couple of months, I also need to update my website so that it's less like a blog and more of a bookstore. I wish that I had more hours in the day.Next year will be a big one for me as I hope to finally focus on the promotional aspect of my writing career and go ahead and starting making and meeting new fans. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that I will be able to keep all of your updated.I don't think I've ever had as much fun writing as I have recently so I'll see if I can keep up the momentum into 2015. Thanks again for all of your support.