Breaking down the scene

The next stage is to figure out what the characters are thinking in particular points in the scene. I will first breakdown the patients thoughts and actions in the scene:

• He starts off just waking up as the doctor comes in. For this part he will be feeling tired, he won't know how his procedure has gone and as a result will be fairly relaxed and laid back. Below is an image that portrays the characters mood at this stage:

• Then, when the doctor tells him that his leg has been removed he quickly becomes more alert and looks at his leg to see if it is true or just a mistake.

• When he sees that it is true he focuses his attention on the doctor and tries to tell him that it's a mistake but can't get the words out. He can't believe that this has happened.
  

• When the doctor asks if he is Mr Smith, he leans forward in a slightly aggressive mannor and says "NO!". He is still in shock but is starting to become a bit angry as well and obviously aiming that anger towards the doctor.

Now I will breakdown the thoughts and actions of the doctor in the scene:

• First the doctor is upbeat, putting on his jolly attitude. However he doesn't pay much attention to the patient as he is looking at the chart to tell the patient what has been done. This says a lot for his character as he needs the chart to know who the patient is and what is wrong.

• When the patient says "what?" he doesn't notice that he is puzzled, instead he reinforces that the leg is gone and won't be a bother anymore. He seems very pleased to tell him that it was successfully removed.

• When the patient starts to panic, he finally notices that something is not right and he asks to make sure that he is the right patient. At this moment he is hopeful that this is the right patient and there hasn't been another mistake. He is listening intently for the patients answer.

• When the patient snaps at him he briefly moves back away from the patient. This is because the patient has invaded his personal space very quickly and quite aggressively.

• The penny drops that a mistake has been made. Because of his personality, he doesn't stay with the patient to reassure him or take responsibility, instead he is quick to blame the mix up on the nurse. He totally ignores the patient at this point and aims his anger at the nurse.

At this point I would normally have used a storyboard to plan out my scene but I chose to breakdown the thoughts and actions instead to see if it worked any better for me. I think it has some really good benefits and I would probably use this technique again.

One of the main benefits is that it forces you to breakdown the scene in to beats, i.e. the characters actions and what causes that action. This in turn forces you to think about what the characters mood is and how they would react to a moment. This is very important because to create a believable character performance, you need to animate the characters thoughts rather than just having an action because it's funny or because it goes along with the stereotype for that character. By doing this I hope to create characters that are funny but also easy for the audience to relate to.

Sound Recording

After finalising the script, we then recorded the sound with 2 actors (James and Bill) in the sound studio. First we recorded it using James as the doctor and Bill as the patient. The movie below showed how this turned out:



I really liked this recording but we decided to swap roles and record Bill as the doctor to see if that worked any better :



I liked both recordings a lot. James was very jolly which is the attitude that I want the doctor to have but I feel that Bill's had a bit more character with the reaction at the end, blaming it on the nurse where as James seemed like he was just telling the nurse that there had been a mistake. Using this one would also reinforce that the doctor is the dominant character in the scene and the patient is really just reacting to the doctor at times. I also felt that James played the shocked patient very well, there was a lot of genuine surprise in his voice which I thought was great.

The video that we got from the recording will be very useful as well for the movement of the characters because we can see the moments that they move up and down when they talk along with the expression on their faces when reacting to eachothers comments.

Here is the reference footage that we gathered using my rough script:




The first attempt shown in this movie is me having a go at the scene myself. I think it works ok but it wasn't particularly funny and I hadn't really though about the character of the doctor whilst acting it out and as a result, it feels very generic.

However the footage that I got when James does the scene (the second attempt shown) was really good. He had the idea of making the doctor seem like he is forcing a jolly attitude for the patient which I really liked because I could show a lot of character in the animation taking this approach.

I also would like to use the part where he shouts after the nurse as if it is somebody elses fault and not his own. These two ideas combined really tell the audience a lot about the doctors personality.

Another nice little touch that came out of this footage was that Margunn, who played the patient, seemed genuinely shocked and surprised that the leg had been removed. I really liked the little pauses which made it seem like the patient didn't know what to say and was in a state of shock. I think this is better than having an aggressive reaction because it is very hard for people to relate to a person who would react in a physical way.

I have created a rough script using the ideas and footage above:

Scene : A patient is waking up in a hospital room after having an operation. A doctor comes in to check on him.

Doctor : Ah awake already I see….

…Well, we’ve successfully removed the leg.

Patient : What!?

Doctor : The leg, gone, incinerated, will not trouble you again.

Patient : But.. but… you weren’t supposed to….

Doctor : You are Mr Smith aren’t you?

Patient : No!

Doctor : Oh for gods……. NURSE!, IT’S HAPPENED AGAIN!

I will be showing this to a few people and will talk about the feedback that I recieved in my next post.

Reworked Scene

After the discussion I had about my scene idea, I came up with a slight variation that will fit to time. The scene starts in exactly the same way with the doctor greeting the patient as he wakes up after his procedure.

Doctor : Good news, the leg was removed successfully.

Patient : What!?, Where's my leg? What Have you done?

Doctor : You are Mr Smith aren't you?

Patient : Ah.....right........I'll be back in a moment.

As you can see, the diagogue is much less and leaves much more time to animated the thought processes of both characters, particularly the patient when he realises that his leg is missing, he would be looking back and fouth at his leg and the doctor and would probably be a bit speechless.

The area where this scene needs to improve is the ending. I will act the scene out with a couple of deifferent endings because it would end differently depending on what sort of character the doctor is. For example if the doctor was very confident, almost arrogant, then he would probably blame it on somebody else because in his eyes, he could do no wrong. I will make another entry when I have got this reference footage.

Second Idea

My second idea also involves a doctor and a patient. The doctor is nervous, newly qualified and is prone to making mistakes. The patient is short tempered and he is a doer rather than a talker.

For the doctor character, I have been looking at one existing character in particular for a bit of inspiration. The character I'm looking at is the very nervous doctor Doug from the tv show "Scrubs". He is always giving the wrong treatment to the wrong patient. Below is a clip tha shows Dougs behaviour:



It starts off in the same way with the doctor entering the room of the patient. The patient has just woken up and the doctor can't wait to tell him about the amazing job that he has done with his operation.

Doctor : Hello there, how are we doing today?

Patient : Ok I suppose, did everything go well?

Doctor : Yes, we've successfully amputated the gangrene affected area and you seem to be recovering nicely ("thank goodness", he mutters under his breath)

Patient : What? Gangrene? Amputation?.....(looking at his leg and the doctor back and forth getting more and more angry) I only came in to have my toenail removed!

Doctor : Oh no (he breaks down), It's happened again! I so sorry sir but we seem to have made a mistake.

Patient : Well, what is it, what have you done!?

Doctor : You may want to have a look at your leg(he starts to move out of the room as the patient looks at his leg)

Patient : MY LEG! WHERE'S MY LEG?! I'M GONNA KILL YOU YA LITTLE SHIT, I'LL CHOP YOUR LEG OFF! (He says this while getting up from the bed and hopping after the doctor who is escaping out of the room).

This scene would work much better than the previous idea. I think that it is much funnier because the doctor has actually done something wrong to the patient physically rather than just mixing up his diagnosis with another patients. I also think that there is a lot of opportunity to show the change in behaviour of the doctor. He goes from being pleased with himself because he has done something right to being really nervous and scared because he has realised that it's gone wrong again and he has to deal with the consequences.

However, when I discussed this idea with the masters group and we started to act out parts of it, we realised that there was too much dialogue to fit in to the 20-25 seconds that we have. If the scene had all of the above dialogue and it lasted 25 seconds, there would not be space to add in any of the thought processes that the characters go through and that is where the acting will come from so this can't be sacrificed. Therefore we discussed how to shorten the scene enough to keep to the time limit but also deliver the same punchline. The resulting idea will be in my next post.

Initial Idea

For this task we had to come up with a scene in which one character gives the other character some good or bad news.

My first idea is that a Doctor enters a patients room and tells him that he has some bad news.

He tells him that he is going to die and he has only got 2 days to live. The patient then breaks down and goes way over the top in his reaction.

The doctor then refers to the patient as Mr Smith and the patient tells the doctor that he is not Mr Smith. The doctor is very embarrassed by the mistake and tries to apologise and make a fast exit.

I think this idea is ok but it is not particularly funny. Also, when I started to write a rough script I realised that with all the setup for the scene, there was too much to fit in to the time given. Part of this scene was that the patient was going to be a flamboyant, artistic person and because of this, the humour in the scene was coming mostly from his over reaction which took a lot of dialogue and left very little time to get across the character of the doctor.