Session 3 - Theme

This week there are a series of tasks to complete as you listen to the lecture.

When we write we're not just completing a mechanical, technical exercise. The theme we explore is the reason we write because we want to understand the world better than we did before.

So what do we mean by theme?

Let's list five universal themes.

1. Good verses evil, right against wrong.
2. Love conquers all.
3. Growing up is hard to do – or coming of age.
4. Crime doesn’t pay.
5. What if…?

These are known as universal themes because no matter who we are or where we come from, these themes affect us all and because that is so, they have been explored time and time again. By looking at our examples of universal themes you might be suitably inspired to develop a script idea simply by the notion of 'crime doesn't pay' so how might you go about it? Will you set it in a shanty town in South Africa, a Pacific Island or the back streets of London?

For your first exercise we would like you to list at least five films per universal theme mentioned before. Try to be as diverse as possible. To get you started, we will name one film for each theme:

1. Good verses Evil – Gandhi directed by Richard Attenborough
2. Love Conquers All – Doctor Zhivago by David Lean
3. Growing up is hard to do – Kes directed by Ken Loach
4. Crime Doesn't Pay – Heat directed by Michael Mann
5. What if? – If - directed by Lindsey Anderson
6. Triumph over Adversity – Slumdog Millionaire 

Next, we would like you to select one of your film examples, and write no more than three sentences on each film describing how the theme is explored. We will give you two examples to get you started.

Kes by Ken Loach explores the relationship between a boy and his kestrel. The impoverished boy has little to enjoy in his life but the relationship with the bird brings a peace and a meaning to his bleak existence. But the boy's heartless brother eventually kills the bird and the boy learns that he must forget any notions he had of love and tenderness in order to be a man.

If  by Lindsey Anderson. Boys are brutalised under the harsh reign of public school. Instead of buckling down and accepting the system of the school and indeed the class system in British society, the boys achieve the impossible by taking over the school at gunpoint thus destabilizing not only the school but also society itself.

By completing this task, we hope you will see how writers and directors grapple with similar themes, but have very different approaches. What might your approach be? But before deciding, you have been given two weighty examples, two classic films but be sure that many excellent writers and filmmakers simply want to make entertaining films. Ghandi might explore good verses evil but so does Iron Man or Harry Potter or indeed the Indiana Jones movies. A 'What If?' Movie called Happy Feet explored the possibility of a dancing penguin that completely upset the all-singing penguin world. We raise this point because we don't want you to think you have got to step into the shoes of the Lindsey Andersons of this world or the Steven Spielbergs.

Another lovely film that beautifully expresses the theme 'triumph over adversity' is called Once and it's set in Dublin.  It's about a busker and flower seller - and how the busker over comes a broken heart and records his songs in a studio with flower seller's help. All this on a budget of £200,000. We must stress that it is of equal merit to set out to purely entertain just as long as you still explore a theme otherwise it won't entertain it will bore.

So we'll ask you again, and we will keep asking, because this is the crucial and fundamental question, what theme do you want to explore and how do you want to explore it?

We have discussed in simple, broad terms, universal themes. But by speaking only in broad terms we fail to explore our own unique view of an idea, our own unique argument and our own unique resolutions. But themes can also be much more specific to a particular social or economic group and some writers and directors spend a life time pursuing related themes over and over again because this is what fascinates them the most. Martin Scorsese for example has explored the violence inside men many times, from Mean Streets to The Gangs of New York. He hones it down even more by looking at the violence within Italian American men. They are clearly his favourite characters and this is his favourite theme. In fact, his attempts to make a different kind of film, with a different theme have been his least successful. Similarly, Bernardo Bertelluci, whose career seems to have gone a bit quiet at present, often looked at the empty lives of the privileged, from The Last Emperor to The Sheltering Sky. It’s important to remember that no serious director or writer thinks of a definitive answer to the questions they’ve posed, they wouldn’t be so foolish, so trite to do so, instead, the script they write acts as a forum, if you like, within which they can explore their theme and come to some kind of character led conclusion.

For your second exercise we would like you to write down issues and themes that are of interest to you, these might be ideas you have already or completely new and off the top of your head. These can be universal themes or themes that you find, in your own mind, interesting and provoking. Don’t forget your point of view and opinion, no fiction writer is objective, their writing is born from the beliefs they hold and their own emotions. Think broadly.  Writing from your own experience is very useful but think out of the box, think about different subjects that you might not have thought of. As long as you have an affinity and passion with your subject matter and your main protagonist, you will be able to write it. Mary Shelley probably didn't have any kind of scientific or medical background when she conceived Frankenstein.

Next select five of your ideas and write one paragraph for each one, describing how you might realise the project in very simple terms: What is the genre (comedy, western, thriller etc)? What is the setting? Who is your main protagonist, what is their goal and what is the main obstacle to them achieving their goal?

Here is an example: A woman in her 40s has never wanted children. She falls pregnant but doesn’t know until it’s too late for a termination.

Her partner is delighted, she is not. The baby is born with a learning disability. Her partner's dreams of a happy family are shattered and he leaves. The woman is left to raise a child she never wanted. Theme: What happens when you have to raise a child you hate?

Do the first part of this exercise quickly, let your mind wander and don't over invest in each idea. But for the second part of the exercise take your time.

After you have completed this exercise, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Does it have enough conflict in it to last the length of a feature script?
2. Are the characters potentially sympathetic and interesting?
3. Who is my audience?
4. Am I interested in it enough to sit down and write it?
5. Out of all the ideas, which is my favourite?

At this juncture, we would like to raise an issue regarding your final project. Should you chose to write a feature script, you are only asked to submit a first draft, completing a script can easily take two or three years so question number four - an I interested enough in the idea -  is much more relevant than you might think.

Therefore for your third exercise, select another five ideas and repeat the exercise. We're asking you to do this because you need to practice generating ideas and, whilst a script might take two years to write, we don’t want you to get too emotionally attached to one single idea. You need to nuture the craftsperson inside as well as the artist.

• To round off this week's proceedings, we would like you to submit two ideas that you are most happy with and two that you are least happy with. Post these to the anthology.

• Following feedback, please check all your other ideas and ask yourself do they have the potential to be developed further? If so please keep them in your portfolio of ideas.

• Please keep adding to your portfolio of ideas. You might not use them for the course but who knows when they will be useful.

Post your work to the forum for this session. Also critique the work of two of your fellow students in the anthology for this session.

Please note that any work you post to the course forum is available to the public under a Creative Commons License. 

PORTFOLIO OF IDEAS:

• Please submit two ideas one you are most happy with and one you are least happy with for my comments.

• Following your peer's comments, please weed out any ideas you are no longer interested in.

• Feel free to keep adding to your ideas portfolio

We would recommend watching any of the films listed under the section where we covered Universal Themes. We also particularly enjoyed Michael Clayton. Its theme so movingly and subtly unfolds.