a. venue
b. costs and dates
c. content
The venue has been found. Please visit the site:
Hearth
Solar
Library
Great Hall
The next thing is the cost.
It's not cheap!
RATES FOR VOLUNTARY, COMMUNITY ANDPUBLIC SECTOR ORGANISATIONS
Residential
Rate per 24 hours or part thereof (Including set up time, use of 1 group room, all meals, teas/coffees all day and overnight accommodation)
For groups of 9 or less £74.00 per person
For groups of 10 or more £67.00 per person
Non-Residential
(Including lunch, teas/coffees all day and the use of 1 group room
For groups of 9 or less £43.60 per person
For groups of 10 or more £37.20 per person
Extras
Use of additional group room £108.00
Additional Lunches £9.00 per person
Additional Suppers £9.00 per person
Additional all day tea/coffee £4.00 per person
Open wood fire £21.50 per day
Residential Self-catering
Rate per 24 hours (Including overnight accommodation in the guest house, use of the guest house kitchen and dining/meeting area)
For groups of 9 or less £ 49.00 per person
For groups of 10 or more £ 44.00 per person
Open fires £ 21.50 per day
Additional meeting room in main house £122.50 (excludes
Great Hall)
Bed and Breakfast may be available for early group arrivals subject to availability at a cost of £34.50 per person per night
Dates available
So it would probably cost about £134 or more for 2 days/nights. (It is a beautiful place though)
The place is wi-fi enabled.
That leaves CONTENT
Here are some ideas - I stress, they are simply ideas, not cast in stone
1. Five days before we left, email each other scripts etc and I will also have them printed for everyone going if required. That means right from the first night (Friday) we can discuss scripts etc.
2. As the evening progresses we could try to write a joint play(lette) by using our computers. (Do people have laptops?)
3. As the evening further progresses we could share some more ideas or simply relax, sleep etc etc
4. Get given a 'night-time task to think about'
Saturday
After breakfast discuss the task from the evening before.
Then, adapt one of the exercises from here, for example
Or maybe adapt one of these:
People You Know
This simple exercise will help your understanding in creating realistic characters. Even seemingly dull people can be highly interesting or funny when placed in certain situations.
For this exercise write out a list of ten people you know. Try to pick a broad spectrum of people from your family, friends, work place and neighbours…you don’t necessarily have to like the people you pick!
For each person on your list write out a single paragraph character description. Come up with one characteristic for each person that makes them unique. Who knows, somewhere within the list of people you know, you might just find a gem of a character to write about!
It’s Not Paranoia If They’re Really After You!
They’re after you! You don’t know why, but you’re being chased down relentlessly. Write out a chase scene where you are the only being chased. Imagine the panic and fear you’d be feeling as well as the confusion. Really get into the frame of mind of someone being chased, and fearful for their life. To make it even more interesting write out three different scenes, each with a different method of travel.
- On foot.
- In a car.
- In a helicopter, being chased by a UFO
feel real to the character then it won’t seem real to the audience.
Scene List Practice
A scene list is a set of one sentence descriptions of each scenes in a movie. Scene lists are done to keep track of story and character development. If a scene achieves nothing to develop either the story or a character then it’s probably a good idea to either rewrite the scene or lose it all together.
Writing a scene list before you start writing your script proper is an excellent way to make sure you don’t get halfway through your screenplay and end up lost with no place to go.
To practice writing a scene list, try this little exercise using the following steps:
- Chose a movie from your home collection.
- Download a copy of the screenplay, preferably a txt file. You can use either FSW Scripts or SimplyScripts.
- Get yourself a pen and a pack of note cards. If you can’t find any note cards then you can up some paper into 3”x5” pieces. It’s much easier to buy them though as you’ll need a hundred or so to be on the safe side.
- Watch the movie closely. Keep pausing the movie after every scene and write a one-sentence description of the last scene on a note card.
- Once the movie is finished, put your notes to one side.
- Pull up the screenplay you’ve downloaded. Copy and paste every scene heading into a notepad file or any other similar program.
- Compare your note cards to your list of scene headings. Did you miss any scenes?
- Write out a page-long report on what you’ve learnt from this exercise. Things you might notice include how the story is kept going in every scene, the pacing of the movie, use of subplots and how characters are developed.
Break to write one Act of a play.
Then discuss this early evening (I can bring a photocopier - not very good one but it'll do...)
Dinner
More discussion/relaxation
Evening task
These are ONLY ideas.
IF, and it's a big 'if' we go ahead then the costs would simply be the charges above and each person would be responsible for paying their own way. Ideally we'd all agree one Thursday evening and bring the money to class. Then one person (not me) makes the payment online.
As far as the content goes we could say the whole 48 hours or so is made up of say ten sessions and each of us is responsible for designing, orchestrating one....
Justa few ideas.
Let me know your comments - by email to:
chris@osl-ltd.co.uk
Also - of course, post comments here.
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