Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

teachwire.net/secondary LET’SMAKE A SCENE ### INT. MIDDLE OF THE PAGE – DAY David looks up from his laptop, clears his throat and looks at the reader. He wipes a bead of sweat from his brow. His Starbucks cup is half-finished. DAVID See, this is what a screenplay format is. You have only two ways to show the reader what your intentions are: dialogue and action lines. David gets up. Scribbles on a piece of paper. He lifts it up to show the reader. It reads: THIS IS AN ACTION LINE. The reader’s hand reaches in and takes the paper from David. READER Yes, that’s all very well, but how on earth do you teach something that has a format like a screenplay? It’s like learning a new language. And I don’t have time for that. DAVID I appreciate it’s probably alien to many. But. It’s really not that hard, and honestly quite fun. There are online resources that let you desconstruct famous scences from movies, shows and games, while displaying the screenplay alongside them. It lets you see how powerful simple words can be. Look – here comes another scene heading -- INT. CLASSROOM – DAY A class jabbers to itself. DAVID walks in, still sweating. DAVID Hello, look, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need a new superhero. CLASS ...What? DAVID Yes, I just got off the phone with the Marvel people. And they told me they really need you. CLASS Excuse me, where’s our normal teacher? DAVID No idea. Look. About the Marvel call. Apparently, everyone’s a bit tired of the adults writing these things and they felt another generation might help... improve things. Make it more... creative? Relatable? Not sure what they said, the line wasn’t great. CLOSE ON Yasmin, a shy young 12-year-old at the back of the class Her report card next to her shows low marks in English. She hasn’t found her thing yet. But her school jotter is a BEWILDERING KALEIDOSCOPE of images, characters, scenes. She listens intently. Then her hand shoots up. YASMIN How do you actually do that though? DAVID Write a new superhero, you mean? YASMIN Write something that’s a film. I mean… If you have ideas? DAVID Do you have ideas, Yasmin? Yasmin glances down at her jotter. Yup. She nods. DAVID Simple, then. You start with the scene. Where you are. INTerior or EXTerior. The name of the location. And whether it’s night or day. Then – your characters appear in the middle of the page, and what they say appears below it. When characters move, or other things happen, you add it in action lines... like this. A bit like how we’re doing this now. YASMIN Now? DAVID Sure. Didn’t you know you’re a character in a screenplay, too? YASMIN This is getting really meta. Back at the head of class, David turns back to the reader. DAVID Good point. Anyway, you get the idea... ### 73 E N G L I S H