The document provides advice for short screenwriting. It discusses focusing the narrative on a protagonist and their central incident or defining moment. It also advises including an antagonist that opposes the protagonist and forces them into action. The point of view and theme of the story should also be considered to efficiently convey necessary information within a short runtime. Establishing an engaging tone is important as well to effectively tell the story and engage audiences within the limited time of a short film.

1. Short Screenplay writing
What advice is given about short screenwriting in the Screen online article?
Article Used: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tours/shortfilm/tour1.html
Introduction
 The steady rise of story-driven narratives, and the increasing attention placed on the
screenplay, has been one of the striking features of the last decade of short film making in the
UK.
 The character’s story,which is at the heart of all films, prompts many questions, such as;
o Who is the protagonist?
o Who or what opposes the protagonist?
o From whose point of view is the audience being shown the story?
The Protagonist: 1
 The person who is centralto the storyline is the protagonist. Finding this centralcharacter
is critical to any story-driven narrative, as they usually dominate the narrative.
 Despite this, the protagonist may not be the person telling the story of the film; there
could be a narrator telling the story, whether they are involved in the storyline, or not.
 What the protagonist wants is also critical to the narrative, but this limits the options
when starting out with an idea. What the audience follows and is interested in, and what
the action of the film is, is more useful to think about. For example, the audience can
share a protagonist’s curiosity, or a shown obsession; through this, they are interlinking
with the protagonist.
 The key answer to this is to decide on an incident which will form the basis of the film’s
climax, and/or its narrative action. This can be through focusing on a single defining
moment in the character’s life, a series of events ultimately forming the climax, with a
certain amount of narrative time it focuses on.
The Protagonist: 2
 Developing an engaging story-driven narrative involves knowing why a character cannot deal
with a situation, or being forced to do something different to their norm, and developing this
antagonistic image into the storyline. Antagonism takes many forms: it can either be an
antagonist’s public enemy, or even a family member.

2.  The length of the film largely affects how influential multiple-antagonist’s are to the
storyline. If the film is less than ten minutes, there is too much to be packed into such a short
space of time for the audience to fully appreciate the antagonist as that particular character. In
cases where the film is over ten minutes, the multiple-antagonist scenario is critical to its
success,with a much larger space of time allowing final confrontations to be developed
through the narrative.
 Certain films are heavily reliant on their underlying themes, and the desire for order, if the
forced opposition is not so clear.
Point of View& Theme
 After dealing with the protagonist, the key question is whose point of view the story is
coming from. Audiences can be placed in omnipotent positions to watch the event, thus
drawing their own conclusions, or the narrator of the film can be someone who is essentially
only an observer of the main character’s stories. The reason this question is centralto short
films, is because there is a dire need to address background information, character’s
motivations, and the scale of exposition, all in a very small narrative space.
 Although it may be easy to say what the subject of the project is, for example, a power
struggle between a young girl and her new boyfriend, the underlying theme is difficult to
define. This is central to the unity of all the characters and the centralemotional core of the
work, and finding it gives the film a dramatic unity, relating directly to the audience’s
emotions. Finding this theme can be done via writing a draft screenplay, although
occasionally the theme is clear in some of these; for example, writing a romantic-comedy, the
theme is clearly more often than not, the desire for love.
Style & Tone
 The style and tone of a work is a central aspect to address when developing any film,
especially a short film. As there is a lack of narrative time, tonal shifts are very difficult to
pull off, and building towards a big emotional climax slowly is difficult to pull off when you
have such a short period of time. Other approaches are possible, through camera work,or the
expressionist point-of-view.
 The tone of the work critically engages with the emotions of an audience. For example,
humour can be used to offset the central character’s potentially tragic situations, and also
tension can be created by ensuring the audience does not know what will happen next, just as
the centralcharacter is uncertain, and the audience’s fear of uncertainty/chaos is engaged.
 The power of tone to affect how an audience engages is critically important. This is ultimately
captured in performance, and in direction, but the screenplay lays the foundations for the tone
to be found by the director, actors, and cinematographer.