Today we pitched both our REgenerate scripts and our short film scripts to our groups using a small synopsis and garnered a critical evaluation of our concepts. I was rather pleased with the reaction to mine, as it seemed to be very positive, and meant that I could focus on developing the story and characters in time for the next script workshop instead of worrying the idea isn’t strong enough.

‘A character-centered script may or often may not adhere closely to such a paradigm’ (Horton, 1994, 95) – I knew I wanted my short script to be ‘narrative-lite’ and focus more on the characterisation of both the elderly man and Death himself. I began to look into how Death had been portrayed in other pieces of media. Within the work of Terry Pratchett, various cartoons and the play 100 by “TheImaginaryBody”, Death is shown to be a charismatic, comedic joker who funnily enough livens much of the material. I believe I’d prefer to stick to a more traditional personality for the character, a strong, brooding, quiet-type, not unlike the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I like the idea of, even with his occupation, he doesn’t know what happens after death, and that he’s just as curious as the humans are as to what happens to people and about the possibility of an afterlife. He could be incredibly wise in his old-age, and maybe had only begun talking to the old man out of sheer exhaustion at staying away from people for so long.

The old man is going to be widowed. That’s how he first knows Death but I’m thinking this will have happened long before the script takes place. I like the idea of them almost bonding over something so tragic and it could provide a nice starting point for some dialogue between the two. Mainly I want to try and research/think about how I want things to look. I want the feel of the script to be almost a mixture of light-heartedness and melancholy. We’ll have to see…

Horton, A. (1994) Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay. London: University of California Press.