I think our final
script sticks fairly well to the outlines of the brief as it would be a
suitable drama for Amazon Prime and I think the style of the programme means
that the audience could ‘binge’ watch the series or watch an one episode at a
time and it would still work well. The brief stated that it should be a 10 part
series and therefore we haven’t given too much away in the first episode and so
the narrative is quite slow which I think would make it appeal more to the
older end of the target audience.
We faced some
problems during the script writing process, which was finding a realistic
excuse for Masons character to go to the coffee shop. In the end we decided it
would be best to change the café to a corner shop and have Mason go to it first
instead of work. Overall this reduced the number of scenes needed to film and
so makes the production a little easier. In terms of strengths in this process,
I think we all worked well together in discussing changes and issues with the
script as we were all on the same level in terms of what we had visualised for
the production. This made it easier for a final draft to be written up and
completed fairly quickly.
The original
target audience of the series was quite broad so there wasn’t really a
particular area of age that we were concentrating on when writing the script.
However I think due to the narrative being quite slow and the age of the main
characters that the older generation would probably enjoy it more. The recurring
flashback scenes (with a younger Mason and Ellie) and the realism of the
problems faced in the series could also draw in a younger audience.
Since the original
draft of the script there have been quite a lot of changes. For example in the
first scene, we have changed the setting from night-time to daytime. We also
thought carefully about the dialogue here and changed some bits to make it more
realistic that two drunk teenagers would be talking. (These changes came after
we originally had to change Mason and Ellie from very young children playing in
the garden). We also changed the idea of Mason going to a coffee shop to a
corner shop as we thought it would be more realistic for him to buy tea for everyone.
We also cut out the part of him going into work then leaving again.
