The last main negative that I felt was raised during the second consultation of my script for Dig Down was the character of Rob. The judge’s notes and comments weren’t that he was a bad character – in fact as I mentioned in the post about the positives, he felt that actors would be interested in the role – the negative was that the character was misunderstood.
The one comment that stuck out to me was when the judge said that in all of the situations Rob found himself in, there was never a time where Rob demonstrated his genius in figuring out a way out of them.
That to me was a problem because this was also said in the first consultation with a different judge, who had also suggested that one of Rob’s main motivations was his true love of Vicky. What this told me was that Rob’s true character hadn’t translated clearly when I adapted Dig Down from novella to script, because readers understood by the end of the story who Rob was.
While this is a big negative, with a little bit of distance, I actually had a positive takeaway from this. While it was true that multiple judges didn’t perceive the character the way I had intended, one of my objectives was to get important feedback as I adapted my story into a medium I wasn’t as experienced or familiar with. I didn’t expect my screenplay to be flawless, and these notes could help me identify areas that needed improvement. Getting two separate judges making the same remark was actually a good thing because it told me the way I had adapted Rob to this style of writing wasn’t working, and that I would need to make revisions so that he could be seen as the character was intended.
These were the three main negatives that were brought up during the consult. There were other areas of improvement mentioned as well, but just like this last point, I actually felt that there were a lot of positives to glean from them, so I’ll be including them in an upcoming post about the takeaways from this meeting.
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