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Produce Concept Outline
Hello guys, is anyone experience in producing a concept outline such as for the theme, mood and genre. I need your tips on how to get along with this thing. I still new at this stuff. This is for my concept design task
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14 Replies
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Not enough data to formulate a useful answer. Please give more details.
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Here’s a good place to start:
Who is the main character?
What does the main character need?
Who (or what) tries to stop the main character?
Who (or what) helps the main character? (Who helps the antagonist?)
Does the main character get the need? (If yes, it’s comedy. If no, it’s drama. If the main character gets the need, but the price is too high, it’s tragedy.)
What does the main character learn?This is a tool to get you started. Each of these character mentioned should have at least a full life — like real people. They have ages. Personal habits. Profesional ambitions. Dream it all up and write all that down. After you have all this beginning stuff written, you can move to a story structure.
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Actually I’m still can’t define what actually this Concept Outline about. I only know it is like a mind-map things was it. And example if you was given a task to create a concept of futuristic world . So what is the thing that you need to consider before jump into making this concept. How should I create the theme, mood and genre of this futuristic world?
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I think what you’re describing fits within the area of what we call a Creative Treatment. The Treatment stage comes before the Script-writing stage. A Treatment is like a blueprint for building the script. It describes all you see and hear, the looks, the action, but not the specific words, only the key concepts.
If your concept requires you to do some science fiction “world building”, try a google search on “world-building for science fiction writers”, and you will get a number of examples.
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Ok, what are the things that we need to know or the things that we need to consider while making this treatment?
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Let’s back up for a minute, so you can more clearly describe what this overall project is. Is this going to be a TV commercial, or an episode of a TV series, or a movie? Is this an actual job you’ve already been given, or some notional project without a client or buyer? Do you have a message, a story to tell? To whom, meaning, to what audience?
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Great, so then how suppose I create the theme, mood, genre and etc. ? I mean what should I need to know get all this things done after knowing the character.
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Is this project a commercial, an hour-long episode, a feature-length film? What?
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There are some technical definitions to consider and this is a point from which to move forward, and not the be-all end-all of the topic. These are off my cuff as memory recalls, a very dubious place!
A dramatic premise is the name for the idea that a drama can prove a logical premise: greed leads to destruction; opposites attract; birds of a feather flock together. In a recent script I wrote the dramatic premise is “we all need a community.” I sent the script to a few trusted friends. This morning, I threw it away. 2 years of work. It’s no big deal. The text on the page was not expressing the impulse I had to begin the story, in the first place. Impulses and ideas are cheap and easy.
Theme in screenplay v. theme in cinema is a complicated topic because in cinema the diegesis is presented in color motion picture, meaning the work can use color, slow-mo, cutting-style, sound design, lighting design, acting, and diegesis (I’ve used that word twice, now, because it is worth looking up, and I argue the camera by definition is “telling”; We get moments of POV) to express a theme. The screenplay theme is “English majory” type stuff: critique of male-dominated society, epiphanies of society in an industrial future.
Genre is the name for an idea that the written text is aimed at a specific audience using a discourse the audience knows. That’s a slinky definition I admit. But it includes essay, youtube video, Facebook Memes, creativecow posts, and so on. When you post in the Creative Cow Business and Marketing forum and ask about genre, we could also include spreadsheets, budgets, shot lists, call sheets, and also of course screenplay.
Mood is a lit term that spins along side of modality. We can talk about the subjunctive mood, for example, separately from the grammatical structure. Example sentence: I would play the role. The sentence is actually past tense but uses a future verb “will” in simple past tense to express the hypothetical. This is the subjunctive mood, in grammar. The mood of literary work is even more complex because we identify particular structural elements (sequences, scenes, camera angles, sound design) that lead to a convention of meaning.
If this is stuff interests you, consider studying literature. Film studies is a bit behind the literary critique although there is more and more cross-over.
For me, when I get started, all I have is an impulse. Just write it down as it comes. The impulse after impulse after impulse until I have accumulated enough “stuff” to shape into what I think it ought to be. And there is required some tenacity to realize what stuff is aligned with that impulse and what stuff is not. Maybe the impulse was marginal to begin with.
Mr Suszko’s comment regarding form addresses a particular problem that in order to sustain an audience’s attention, the impulse needs to be of certain quality: moving, funny, action-packed. That’s not an exhaustive list, just some examples.
A very good place to begin is to read lots and lots of screenplays. You can find many screenplays at https://www.imsdb.com/ There are inviolable conventions, and, while there are many books on the topic of writing, it is best to acquire your concepts of what-writing-is, ostensively — by doing and in-genre.
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This is for my research and vfx short film.
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