The 7 Billionth Hero

Writing the film meant that it was my job to come up with the film's concept and turn this into a script, which could then be interpreted by the rest of the team when making the film.

Whilst writing the script, I found that the most important thing was tone, since this had an affect on the rest of the elements needed to make the film, including how I was going to visualise the film as the director. Tone was especially vital for the montage, since it showed the transition from investment banker to becoming more involved in drawing.

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The tone of a screenplay is set through how the writer decides to handle the characters, dialogue, and structure of the narrative, as well as how they construct the world the story is set in (Dancyger & Rush, 2013:349).

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For example, I decided to use current events to come up with our story idea, considering the amount of superhero films which have come out in recent years, inspired by how writer-director Nora Ephron generated ideas for her films. Therefore, I choose to construct the world of our film as a place where there is a lot of crime, which affected how I shaped the characters since the world they live in affects their personalities and attitudes.

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However, looking at superhero films, such as those from The Avengers franchise, I found that these handled tone in a way that they could be considered comedy-drama, with the events (such as heroes and villains battling) creating drama, and the character's personalities creating comedy.

For example, the characters often reference other films/TV shows in a comedic way. This helps them say what they are thinking, without the need for expositional dialogue.

This influenced me to include this in our screenplay, since this also helped me to convey Cathryn's cynical attitude towards things to the audience, but in a comedic way.

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To further this tone, I also decided to add jump cuts during the montage. These helped show the drama of the conflict Cathryn faces through the repetitive nature of the client meetings but make it more interesting for the audience by adding some comedy. These were also influenced by Nora Ephron, since one of her trademarks is to use jump cuts to condense time.

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However, I found that the character's intention and obstacle was the element of a screenplay which can define tone. The character's intention is what they are trying to achieve throughout the film, as they face conflict from the obstacle(s) (Rogan, s.d).

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Therefore, Cathryn's intention to give the world a hero while facing the obstacle of her pushy boss and time-consuming job created the opportunity for the jump cuts, references, and Cathryn's cynicism since this affected the structure of the story.

Overall, tone is vital to a screenplay since it affects all elements of production. Therefore, I learnt that before starting to write the screenplay, a writer should first define what kind of story they want to tell.