I was really excited to get notes on my script for Dig Down. Not only was I getting feedback in a medium that I still felt I was a novice in, a lot of it was also positive. This really helped give me a direction in terms of what I needed to do with my screenplay.
I read through the notes a few times, first just to see everything they had to say, then again to really start to consider the advice, questions and recommendations they were offering. As you could see from the three posts I had broken their notes into, there was a lot to digest.
I knew it was best not to just rush into it and address every note one by one. The notes offered lots of observations, but not all of them were on the same scale. As you saw, some were small grammatical changes, or just a need to explain something a little better. A good number of the notes were just positive: they liked how I had written something.
But there were also critiques that would have an impact on the screenplay as a whole. These needed to be carefully considered. While I agreed with most of them, addressing them potentially meant making big changes to the rest of the script, the way it was presented, or maybe the structure overall. This in itself could negate the need to correct one of the smaller suggestions made in the notes, either by addressing this at the same time, or possibly eliminating the scene where this note occurred.
As an example, one of the notes was that Ruth, and her storyline, almost come out of nowhere. While to me her presence is there throughout, because it was that way in the book, its more natural in literary form than in the screenplay. While the audience for both mediums doesn’t fully comprehend her existence and relevance to the story, the same scene really hits at the pivotal twist in the book, but in the screenplay, she seems to come out of left field.
I think this was a fair point, and agreed that she should be added sooner. But how do you go about doing that? Does Rob have a scene with her earlier in the screenplay? Is there a scene where she’s making calls, or talking to a private eye? Does she interact with other characters? If so, does this new scene introduce new information, or does it repeat something the audience already knows?
You can see how this one change can have a monumental impact on the screenplay. It isn’t as easy as just adding a scene to introduce Ruth and her context to the plot. This potentially means another scene would have to be replaced, but before I could cut it, I’d have to review what other relevant details were imbedded in that scene, and if it could also be incorporated in the change I was making. If I were to add just one scene to establish Ruth that forced me to cut another scene (this is changes to two scenes already), I might have to take other details from the removed scene and find ways to incorporate them naturally in the rest of the screenplay (now potentially three scenes altered, if not more!)
So the first thing I needed to do was rate how big of a revision each note was requiring. This was something I included in the three blog posts, my own notes of what I thought on the feedback. This way, I could not only gauge how much work was required for each note, but also whether or not I agreed with their point. Some notes I thought were self-explanatory, or could be explained with details later in the script. Others I felt they just might not have been grasping the scene (there were some notes involving the veterinarian that made me think this).
In the end, I compiled a shortened list of notes I would address. From them, I rated them into groups, from easy to handle all the way to overhauls of portions of the screenplay. The grammatical errors and formatting notes for scenes I believed would stay in tact were taken care of.
I was contemplating ways to address the more intensive revisions when I hit pause on the process. My second set of notes, this one involving a phone consultation with one of the judges, was coming in. This had been a process that ended up stretching across a couple of weeks.
And I’ll share the backstory to that…next time.