Friday, 29 January 2010

Scrubs Without Braff



You must have noticed by now I waste a lot of time watching movies and series'… but hey it’s like research or something. I’m examining different kinds of writing… or something… Ok maybe I’m just an insomniac glued to her laptop, whatever.

So I am not a massive Scrubs fan – I mean, I like Scrubs but I’m not an avid watcher. It’s just one of those shows that’s always on tv and of the bunch it’s probably the best during those hours I spend wasting away. It is pretty funny and JD does make me smile, so when I found out the new season wasn’t going to have Zach Braff or many of the other stars I wasn’t too sure about it. The whole show is from JD’s head, how can you take JD away?

But I’ve been sat here watching a few episodes of season 9 and though I’ve not worked out names yet I am quite enjoying it. It actually feels like it’s a different show, it’s not really Scrubs anymore but that isn’t a bad thing. It’s not good, but it’s not bad; it just is.

Part of me feels like this should actually just be a different show, that they are just feeding off the ready made fan base. But I guess if you can do it, why not? I am actually enjoying it though, I like the idea of getting to be inside the heads of the characters. I actually think it’s a technique more things should use, but then I guess it wouldn’t be so special.

What do you think? Any Scrubs fans? Any script writers? Me and my mate are going to attempt writing a horror movie so every time we watch a movie we get to call it research – maybe that’s just an excuse.

Why a horror movie? Well, they are my favourite to watch. And I reckon I understand the rules of writing horror movies the best, because I understand the movies themselves the best. I always watch them. I can almost always work out what is going to happen, because they always follow the same rules. I want to try to break some of those rules, but work out how to make it a good movie at the same time. A lot of the time, movies that don’t follow the rules, fail. I don’t want to fail!

Also, script is so much harder to write than you’d think. I attempted once (way back when I was 15) and it was a pile of **** (I am not sure if I should swear or not in my blog, I swear a lot but I don’t want to offend anyone. Comment on that too and tell me what you think). You need dialogue in a script, I mean come on – no one really wants to watch a silent movie (unless it’s a short film) but at the same time dialogue can destroy a script. I think from what I’ve learnt in reading and research is that less is more.
Try not to give everything away with the dialogue
Say as little as possible – don’t spell things out
Use dialogue to develop the characters – the way they speak, what they speak about, who it is they are

Any thing you want to share with me is always welcome – we’re all here to learn! Well some people are here for entertainment or ‘cause they’re bored, but those people can just help me learn – ‘cause heck, I’m always learning. I’m a student of the world and even when I’m not officially wearing that Student Status badge I’m always going to be a student. We all are. As soon as you stop learning, you may as well be dead.

Sorry, I ended up on a bit of a tangent with this post… 

3 comments:

  1. I like movies and tv series as much as you do. I also look at these things like research too. I've read and studied this very interesting book called "Cinema thinks" and since then, I analyze every movie I watch with those philosophical eyes. I've also developed a number of class projects around movies like "Truman's show", "August Rush", "16 blocks", two of which were published by a P4C newsletter.

    I'm not much into horror movies - they scare me to death! =S

    Great thing you're always trying to learn from people and situations - I'm also proud to call myself a good learner, there are few things in life I appreciate as much as learning.


    Kiss you Pennie, take care and smile. =)

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  2. That's not a excuse at all. Movies do inspire me a lot on philosophy. I used to analyse movies philosophically a lot, but I barely do it anymore due to laziness. The last one I did was Fight Club. In fact, I had to write a paper on it for my Aesthetics class.

    You already swore in some of your posts in this blog, I am afraid!

    W

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  3. I love Scrubs, and I thought the new format and everything was going to fail terribly, but I actually like it.

    P.S. "A lot of the time, movies that don’t follow the rules, fail." - yes. There has to be at least some objectivity in everything, even in art.

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