Script Draft Two ~ Feedback | Tutorial #4

We recently had another tutorial with Simon, highlighting feedback from our 2nd draft of the script.

He liked the idea of the teaser scene but it needed to include the children more. He said we needed to start the episode with 'blocking the children', so maybe a scene where Annie & Dean are embarrassing, which is the reason why the children have blocked them from their lives.
He suggested having a party scene, or some sort of social event, where the two main characters ruin the party and that ends in the children telling them they don't want to see them anymore.
He also suggested having a new scene after this one that shows the couple distraught so the audience have a chance to feel sorry for them and their situation. He had the thought that maybe they could be in bed, which you see quite a lot of within sitcoms, and that's usually where couples haver serious conversations. We all liked the idea of these two additional scenes, but we need to figure out how we're going to write those scenarios and Laura is going to produce them.

One of the character's he wants us to drop is Claire. He feels that her scene doesn't really do much in the episode, and it doesn't help develop our story any further. We're going to keep Claire in the overall series, because some of the other episodes involve her, but we all agree that she should be dropped from the pilot. Some characters/extras he wants to add into the pilot, however, is a film crew. So far, when Jordan Hamsay arrives at the house it's just him, but it might be effective to have him arrive with a film crew. This creates the sense of them becoming famous and being featured on TV, while not surrounding the whole episode around this. We all agree this would be a really nice touch, and we could think of some creative shots with the film crew cameras throughout production as well.

In that same scene, he thought it would be a nice idea for the children to come over to the house at the  same moment that Jordan is puking up the cookies. Perhaps the children have come to apologise and feel guilty, but after seeing the Jordan situation, they know that they made a mistake in coming to apologise.

A small detail that will introduce the modern world within the episode, is instead of the delivery man handing Dean a clipboard and pen, he hands him an electronic device to sign for the package. These days you usually sign for a parcel and a digital device with a stylus. This is something we will add to emphasise the modern day element of the show.



In developing the script, we will add those two extra scenes and get rid of the park scene in order to create a better sense of the problem throughout the episode and series. We are happy with the feedback we got back from Simon, and will start to improve our script through these changes.