A (Speed) Bump in the Road

It has been a bit of a sail for me since yesterday, everybody.

I have begun sketching my ideas and writing out scenes for the finished product, and after reading over my story, I've hit a sort of bump. You see, when my class was assigned to write the short story I am basing my film off of, we were given one rule: no boundaries, just make it work. Of course there's the standard "school appropriate"—no pornography, nothing graphic or gruesome. So essentially, I wrote to satisfy my free creative will. My main character, Jeffery Robinson, was written as a current bartending semi-alcoholic, college dropout in his late to mid 20s. His father is an 82 year old, grumpy southern man with strong opinions, his mother a fragile woman about two years younger than her spouse, and his brother a spoiled young man in his early 20s who still lives at home. You can see where I've run into some conflicts here.

Here are some of my notes, excuse my fair pencil handwriting but you can tell they are a bit...scattered. I began yesterday to draw out some plans on how to solve this problem and came up with a practically doable situation.

My first issue came from Jeff's drinking problem. As a 17 year old female in high school, it would probably be considered uncouth for me to put that in my film; I shouldn't be showing actors of my same age consuming alcohol, whether it be a prop or not. The decisions I've had to make have got me feeling like a real producer! I began to research some of the best book-to-movie interpretations and from what I can see, there isn't one that didn't change a little something to make the movie more appealing to their target audience. In fact, the number two book-to-movie translation was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, number one the Fellowship of the Ring. In the Sorcerer's Stone film, they added many iconic scenes like Hermione fixing Harry's glasses and Prof. McGonagall changing into a cat during class, to the film that were not in the book.  These add-ons lead to this movie making over $90,000,000 in it's opening week because of the fantastic production and making of the film. Now, I know this two minute intro isn't going to get me 90 million dollars, but the fact that some change can lead to that kind of success are enough to motivate me!
So I've decided to cut the alcohol addiction of Jeffery and make it more obvious that he is a "party guy" through varying methods of misc-en-scene.  This way I can still build my character without breaking any boundaries.

The next issue I was presented with, I solved fairly quickly. The character of Jeffery's father, Frank Robinson, is a very important part of the development of my plot. To be frank, I don't know a lot of 82 year-old actors living in South Florida who would be willing to act in a student film. The only 80-something adult I know is my grandma, and she doesn't speak a lick of english, so that's out of the question. His mother is also fairly important and only 2 years younger than he is. The
best solution I came up with was to do a simple voice-over of the actors speaking, using a dialogue I wrote into the scene of a conversation between Jeff and his mother. Through this method, I am able to introduce my main characters without actually displaying them. As for adult voices, I have a lot of young adults in my family who I know would be happy to do this. As for introducing the father, his character can be described through misc-en-scene and dialogue between Jeff and his mother, so an audio of him won't be necessary, I think.

This is where I am now: facing a bridge that I've got to cross. In the coming days I will begin to actually piece together a feasible story board and script, get my actors and set together, etc. You will hear back from me soon enough.


Your friendly neighborhood stressed out teen,


Amalia Gonzalez


"Best Book to Movie Interpretation." (329 Books). Web. 10 Mar. 2016.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 10 Mar. 2016. 

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Novel vs Movie." Verba Mea Vita. 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.