Visualising the Script

I have started converting an idea for a story into a script. After drafting the character bible and scenes, it was time for visual verification to check that those words can be told in pictures.

I am not formally trained beyond those basic art lessons in school, which was decades ago; and I haven't been sketching for a long time too.

My first difficulty and probably the toughest one, was to determine the perspective - that is, the position of observation. Inherently, this corresponds to camera positions and angles during production, though this is early days yet to dwell on them.

After fixing the perspective, the next struggle was to find enough space to represent what I want within the frame - objects that are symbolic of what I want to tell in the story!

I am terrible at drawing human bodies.  A consistent trouble to draw them in the correct proportions and perspective. Sigh!

The next challenge would be to put the facial and body expressions in the characters - very much like directing the characters to perform on paper.

After that, the shading and details are easier.

Through sketch, I get to understand the characters better. Some characteristics previously left nebulous, became evident once the picture was drawn. This in turn inspired new ideas and plots to the script.

In this particular picture, I am depicting an Indian family where the father and the son are often busy watching football on TV. The  young and attractive daughter, though educated to be an engineer chooses to be a fashion model. She also spends too much time hanging out with friends and clubbing till late nights, to the dismay of the mother. The mother spends most of the time cleaning the house and taking care of the husband and two kids and lets her frustration off  through her persistent nags.

Sketching is fun! It is quite therepeutic, letting the logical mind rest for a while, while the visuals take over. However, it is time consuming, so I may resort to getting some friends to role play and test out some of the scenes instead. That is, if I can gather enough friends.  :)

Stay tune for more sketches in this blog.

This is the 40th post in this blog, which was started 1 year and 10 days ago. Which approximates to about 1 post every 9 days. They have taken quite of lot of my time during my off-days and time in between takes on set.

At the time of writing, there are about 11,472 hits: which approximates to about 1,000 hits a month or 30 a day or 1 an hour.

I have also noticed that the popular posts are those that are longer and are richer and deeper in content. The online statistics probably explains, as it shows that about one-third of readers are production professionals; one-third are actors, aspiring actors or people who aspires to act; and one-third just movie buffs or laypeople.

Finally, thank you for visiting the blog and keep your comments and suggestions coming. You may also like to subscribe to this blog at the bottom right hand side of the page.