Reflecting on Screenplays and Stage Directions

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Over the last couple of weeks, three of my classes at school have been very busy producing screenplays and stage directions for various performances of Shakespeare’s plays.

This was a very significant piece of work with plenty of learning opportunities, for me as well as the students, so it is really important to reflect on this experience – what went well, what was challenging and how did you manage your time to get such a big job done on time?

Please share your experience below. This will help not only you, but also future cohorts of students and teachers can learn from your advice 🙂

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Comments (29)

  1. The most challenging part is to decide which kind of puppet we should use, we use most of our time thinking which kind of puppet can be the easiest one for us to manage and the easiest to make. Due to the lack of time, we need to buy the materials very quickly. And after a few days of decision, we decided to use socks to make hand puppets for the play (since paper puppets and the one with many strings are both hard to make and manage).

    And, even though I try to write the tone description of the characters in the way that I understand, voice-acting is still very hard, since Sebastian usually speaks in a low voice in that scene, but I can’t really do a low and loud voice at the same time, and it’s hard to make it sounds more dramatic (I don’t think I’ve solve this problem yet).

     

    • Yes, my own reflection on this unit is that I think we may have needed a lesson or two studying different kinds of puppet and evaluate the practicality of each in our classroom environment. I’m also thinking that next year it might be a good idea to try to make this an Interdisciplinary Unit with Art or Design so you have more time to work on the puppets and stage.

      Regarding your voice acting – consider the importance of pauses. Dramatic pauses can really help the performance.

  2. (I finally got my password right…!! 😭)

    What went well was that I FINISHED my stage directions.😙 I spent like, half a day summa-writing, changing stuff, going through to make sure it could be finished in 15 minutes, etc. Although not perfect, I managed to shorten the 2 hour (maybe longer?) play into a 15-minute one. I think that’s a big step and a big challenge for me, and I think the main contributor to finish writing this piece of script is time management 🙂

    I think the MOST challenging part was when we wrote/drew the stage directions. I missed that part (sorry Dr. Terrett I 4got😥) and it looked (it was, according to @Serena) absolutely FRUSTRATING when 8ELL was organizing it. It requires us to consider the positions on stage, body gestures, talking tone, and interactions with each other/audience.

    The stage directions got harder when we actually tried performing it on stage. I’m the narrator and I spent the class in the theater watching G8 students & teachers telling each other what to do, where to stand/lie, etc. It looked a bit of a mess and I was too confused to participate😰, but after the changes and management and all that stuff the play turns out to be pretty awesome! 🤩

    I hope the play would turn out right after all these hard-work and alterations of @all 8ELL students.😌(also, thanks @Mr. Alex-Banana & @Dr. Terrett! ) 

  3. IDK, but first, switching the PDF to a word document was a total PAIN, plus, in fact half of my time was formatting the original script. But after that half, things got better. The writing took a quarter of the time. It was very easy to write since we already have seen a video of the portion of the play we are writing the script for. So **** adobe. For the final quarter, I was just revising.

    Though from my experience, the screenplay wasnt hard, I just got a low score because I was so focused on the formatting I didn’t even have the focus to ask “How to write a screen play?”(even asking AI would work)

    As for what went well:
    Completing the assignment in time, Formatting the entire assignment, descriptions for camera, lighting,

    As for what was challenging/ forgotten:
    adding descriptions for props, scene layout.

    As for what I can do to fix this situation:
    Search for the subject every time we start a project, remember to take time on the small details.

    So yeah it was a very useful experience(type correction corrected it to useless bruh)

    PS is markdown available?????????

    EDIT: thinking back my brain is probably smooth since I forgot PDF to Word converters exist, Shout out to convertio.co!

    • Your work was well formatted so your pain and/or convertio.co did a good job! I also find PDF to Word conversion is bothersome, especially when the line breaks don’t automagically fix themselves and require manual fixing.

      Your advice regarding the importance of seemingly small details is helpful. These things really help to share your vision of the scene.

  5. Writing the screenplay of The Tempest is EXHAUSTING. I spent about 13 hours in total to finish it(including the stage directions, the PPT directions, music and sound effects, and the list of duties). A note on the LIST OF DUTIES part is that because I’m in 7ELLA, and there’s only 6 of us, so we planned about the actors and the duties in class together. I think that our cooperation is sort of well, because everyone got to do something instead of just playing his iPad. The puppet making part was AWFUL. Our class chose to make the puppets by ourselves using paper, which the actors can control the positions from the back of the “stage”. We were lucky that Anna is good at art and making puppets(she has tried to make a puppet before). For the question of how we managed to complete it in such a short time, I guess it’s because we got Dr. Terrett to help us. Our time management is okay, and everyone helps out a bit either in the puppet making or the PPT making.(To improve, we definitely need more students to help us. The groups are from 6-8, and we only have 6 students in our class.)

    • Yes, I’m glad you’ve stated the problem with having so few students in our class. It is definitely an issue.

      Anna is indeed a good artist but I think she needs to learn to delegate more so that we can get the puppets finished quicker. We are behind schedule now and still haven’t finished making all the puppets 😯

  6. So the absolute worst part for me was definitely writing that script and trying to figure out all the stage directions. It’s such a headache turning Shakespeare’s super complicated lines into actual movements, expressions, and positions on stage. We had to read through the script a thousand times, then use our intelligent brains to visualize where the characters should stand and how they should talk. It was seriously time-consuming and exhausting. I heard someone even put in like ten hours or more.
    And then there’s the fact that our group didn’t really get perfectly. The task was huge, but it felt like most of the work landed on just three of us, including me. It was super stressful and, honestly, kind of frustrating. (Today we even had a fight because the workload wasn’t split evenly.)
    But at least we’re still moving forward. Not everyone’s thrilled, but we’re getting the job done, even with all the arguing.

    • Right! Real group work is tough and can be very time-consuming. Is there anything you or your teammates or your teacher could have done differently so the exercise wouldn’t have been so time-consuming? This would be very helpful advice for next year 🙂

  7. What went well. Our group could create the background of the scene and the harpy animations within the given time constraints. The harpy animations were fairly realistic and the “strange shapes” part was also fairly realistic. In short, the VFX used in the play is good. The SFX and color grading also help with the mood.

    What was challenging: The time constraints given for this project were tight, so our preparation for the puppets was mediocore to say the least. Also, the screenplay was vague at times so the puppeteers would sometimes not completely know what to do. In terms of teamwork, as the director for the play, I think I didn’t completely utilize each person in my group. Sometimes, one or two people would have nothing to do, so this decreased productivity.

    How to improve: I think the main problem was that our group had bad time management. I think I could have done a better job at dividing the job for everyone to help. Also, the preparation for the screen play and puppets could have been better.

     

  8. Our planning on the puppets, stage and background is very efficient, and contains our creativity at the same time. Our puppets have a great operability, which can let the puppets become lively.

    But the transportation efficiency of our props is not very satisfied, so we didn’t finished all of the puppets in Friday. That means we’re going to lose some times for rehearsal.

    We started to discussing after we got into our groups, and listed all of the works we’re going to do. We discussed every tasks in order,such as form of the stage. Then assigned everyone’s works.

    • Yes, I’m beginning to worry that your group was too ambitious with the stage and props! Let’s hope that you still have enough time to rehearse so the final performance goes smoothly. It will be useful to look back at this reflection when you do your post-performance reflection.

  9. What went well: basically, we had nice sound effects and a good ppt for the performance. Our puppets and our stage background was handmade and realistic.

    What was challenging: We had limited time for the screenplay and the preparation so we could have done better if we had a few more days. Also, our teamwork was like a director just telling us what to do so some people were not satisfied with the division of tasks.

    Managing time: we had a leader who gave tasks to us, so we knew what we needed to do so generally completed the tasks on time.

  10. Yes. When you’re designing a screenplay, there is a couple of standings you need to follow. We need to read through the speech and to understand each character’s emotions when questioning or replying. When we have the analyzed emotion ready in one or two words, we have to write it down at the right of the name tag. The name tag should be all capitalized. The way we perform is also crucial to decide, the harpey has black cloaks and wings which is hard to make in real life, so our group chose to create a 3d model of the harpey so we won’t have to challenge to make a puppet of it.

  11. When making the part about backgrounds, you need to give a picture of an example that you want it to be like, or else the people who read it can’t know what you think (if they don’t have enough imagination).

    When adding the voice and tones of characters, you need to use adverbs and adjectives to show how the line is supposed to be read. Also be sure to make it a different font or highlight it out, or else it might be mistaken as a line in the script.

    When making the part about characters, be sure to add descriptions of the clothing they wear and tone of there voice, also adding a picture of the clothing you want it to wear.

    • Yes, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words! Visuals can really help the team understand your vision. I also agree that the formatting of text is important so it remains obvious what are director’s instructions and what is dialogue. A very helpful reflection on the process 👍

  12. When you do screenplays, you need to write about how your characters stand on the stage, how they talk with each other and should also use different kinds of highlighters to highlight different characters’ words.