Intro to Screenwriting Week 7: Midterm

This week we screened Little Miss Sunshine for our midterm exam. 

Screening

I have had Michael Arndt‘s 2006 film, Little Miss Sunshine, on my watchlist for years and have never gotten around to watching it. I am so glad it was our film for the midterm. 

When his pageant obsessed daughter, Olive, is admitted to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, Richard must get his daughter across the country before the van full of his dysfunctional family falls apart.

Over the course of their roadtrip, they face marital problems, death, disappointment, hope, humor, heartbreak, shock and everything else you can think of. The film is raw and relatable, and I did tear up. 

The actors were all perfect for their roles. Most notably, Steve Carell was fantastic as Frank. Seeing him as a suicide survivor when my only exposure to him (and I’m sure many others) is Michael Scott in the office was jarring, but he played Frank incredibly well. 

Midterm Exam

The midterm covered everything we’ve been discussing the last few weeks, from plot points, to types of conflict, to archetypes and character. 

All of the content came to me pretty easily except who the main character was. I debated with one of my friends who has taken the class and we argued about whether it was Olive and Richard.

I think there is an argument for both, but in the moment I ultimately decided on Olive. Looking back, I would probably say Richard. The themes of imperfection and family seem to reflect most on him the more I think about it. My argument for Olive was that the inciting incident happened to her and the journey was for her. 

Pitch

Although we didn’t have anything new assigned, we reviewed our pitches for next week briefly. 

I put together a document where I fleshed out what I wanted the film to be and what elements I needed to pitch. Based on the assignment, we were to discuss:

1. Hook for pitch
2. Logline 
3. Synopsis
4. References/Comparisons/Inspirations
5. Why are you the person to tell this story
6. A brief budgetary overview
7. Genre and themes

I went through and listed everything I could come up with in bullet point form. To answer most of the questions though, I first put my plot ideas to beats:

• Set Up: anxious and stuck
• Inciting Incident: left party with friends, too anxious
• Point of No Return: takes med, music stops
• Midpoint: gets drunk first time, likes it (false victory)
• Big Gloom: throws up drunk, laying on bathroom floor, music creeps back in & shot realigns (and then goes to black)
• Climax: freak out to bsf
• New Normal: talking through with therapist

The next day, I wrote out more of a script for myself to get used to talking through everything and get an order down. 

As a tool for our memorization, we were allowed to create a pitch deck with visuals.

Conclusion

I am very nervous to actually pitch since I have never done it before. I’m trying to practice though and be confident so that I can deliver it the best I can!

Be sure to check out last week’s post, and stay tuned for new ones in the future!