Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Draft Two: Done

Finally. God that felt like forever. And I already what I'm going to have to do with Draft III. It just goes and goes, people.

Let's get some tally counts out of the way just for laughs. The entire script is:

- 117 pages (up 17 pages from the first draft, mostly bolstering the second act)
- 318 lines for male characters
- 711 lines for female characters
- a total of 1,029 lines overall
- for 26 characters in all

People will be talking....

Thursday, September 18, 2008

If Red Ink Were Blood

This script would be Gettysburg.



The weird nose-lookin' things ( > ) are a reference to a screenwriting term called "writing on the nose." This occurs when a character is feeling an emotion and instead of hinting at it or working around it, he or she just comes out and says it (eg. "You really hurt me, Jeff!") It happened a lot on this particular page, so I decided to make my life easier and write a little nose. I quickly realized how stupid that looks and refused to ever do it again...then put it on the internet. Sigh.

Second draft due this weekend....

Monday, September 15, 2008

Welcome To The Blog

Welcome to the PV Disorientation blog. What is it, you say? Why are you here, you ask? Who cares, you inquiry?

Good questions, all.

This is a blog dedicated to the potential Pascack Valley High School in-between-fall-drama-and-spring-musical play, Disorientation. Few people know about the play (most importantly all of the possible actors and actresses), so I figured a cool way to get the information out would be through a blog. This way, there can be some chronicle to what is a rather unorthodox (unprecedented?) decision to debut a newly-written play at a high school.

Every few days there will be some sort of update to let you know where I am and, well, frankly, what you'll be doing.

First, a bit of background....

I'm Mike Anton, a Park Ridge High School graduate ('04) and recent Boston University grad ('08) now with a shiny new BS in Film and Television. In mid-July I was contacted by Tom and Mer Lupfer (the fearless directors at PV) about the possibility of writing a play for consideration to be performed this Fall. I leapt at the chance. Then they told me that they had an extremely talented--although rather lopsided--group of young actors and actresses and that it was hard to find a play that could suit their needs. Namely, a play with 20+ female parts and about 5 or so male ones.

Then I nearly dropped the phone.

Since then, I have completed one draft of Disorientation and am busily working on a second draft (I'm taking a break to start this puppy up). The basic plot outline is such: an all-girl's college in New England accepts boys on a trial basis just so the Dean's son can try and get a date. The first draft was a clean 100 pages, which, when read aloud and timed, was roughly an hour and thirty minutes.

Just so you know that the this script actually DOES exist, here's the first page in my binder:



And just so you can trust that I have some sort of talent, here's a one-act that has been performed a couple of times for you to peruse.

Juicier things to come.

Best,
Manton