Historical Story

Writing the historical piece was a great lesson in teamwork, and also an interesting new way to receive story ideas. The initial idea for ‘Fighting the Tiger’ came from a small article that Ian located in an historical newspaper in the BYU Special Collections. The newspapers were from a small town called Candelaria in Nevada, which does not exist anymore, and had a lot of fascinating information. The first piece we used was an advertisement for a saloon, that proudly advertised that there was an ‘Elegant club room...attached where patrons can fight the tiger at all seasonable hours.’ This information was teamed up with a separate newspaper from the same town, which had an article about a huge project they were putting on to build a town well. With those two articles in hand, plus a little research on Rensselear Institute(the first civil engineering school in the country)we were ready to go. Unfortunately the newspapers have not been processed yet, and so cannot be referenced, and the engineering information came from Rensellear Institute’s own webpage.

It was amazing to us how quickly the story came together once the basic research was in place. The articles gave us the backbone for the entire plot, and over that we were able to insert characters who we thought were interesting. Like the animated short in class about the King of Norway, we decided it would be fun to make the accuracy of the story questionable. Though our research informed the setting, conflict, and also the motivation for the characters, we took a lot of creative liberty with the characters themselves and certainly embellished a lot of details. It was enjoyable to think about how a grandpa might tell this story to their children, and it helped us to examine the importance of stories in our own lives.

In addition to the research process, it was interesting trying to write a story collaboratively. In so many classes previous, students are assigned to work on essays and papers and scripts alone, and trying to lend efforts to this story without overpowering it was definitely the biggest challenge. On one hand, one doesn’t want to force too much work on their partner, and on the other, you don’t want to monopolize the story or come across as pushy either. We came to an agreement that worked pretty well. As it was Ian’s story, he wrote a quick outline for the plot, while Ethan wrote the first full script, with both dialogue and scene direction, printed out the copies, and brought it to class. Then, Ian took one last good look at the story, made revisions and fixed issues as he saw fit, and the final product was produced.

It was definitely beneficial to get some experience writing collaboratively. Especially in TV and Film, more often than not scripts and screenplays are the product of a handful of people, not one individual with complete power. There are going to be differences in creative process, even mildly, and there were things that were cut or changed by one person that the other may have not agreed with, and vice versa. That doesn’t mean we were disrespectful towards one another’s interpretation of the story at all! We’re both adults, largely, and were able to compromise without anything even approaching argument. It’s important to be able to take and give criticism, especially when working on something like this. That’s just the process, and it works well.

Follow this Link to our PDF: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0Bz1eG58sdC3ISUxPMUZJTmJiUWM

I am not sure if this URL will work, if not, shoot me and email, and I will be happy to send you the PDF: ihawkesbot@gmail.com