Senior Thesis- Part One

There are several reasons I chose to do the topic I’m working on. Screenwriting has been a passion of mine for a while. Movies, to me, are the most powerful form of art. In almost every situation I’ve ever been in throughout my life, I’ve been able to relate that situation to a movie or TV show. It’s not as strange as it sounds though. After all, any screenwriter will tell you that they get their best stuff from everyday life. But as far as movies go, there are literally hundreds of jobs that are responsible for making the movie. What attracted me to screenwriting specifically was the role of the screenwriter. The screenwriter is the god of the particular universe that everything takes place in. He controls who lives and dies, who falls in love, and who delivers the best lines. Essentially he’s the puppet master. He’s the one with all the answers; he’s the only one who fully understands the logic behind every character. On a certain level, if a screenwriter is unsatisfied with the “real” world around him, he can just grab a pen and create a new one. Unlike a regular author however, a screenwriter gets to see that world come to fruition, to unfold in reality and take shape beyond the words on the paper.

The way we view fiction is unclear though. What is fiction? The ability to assign it definitions is a creative task on its own. Traditionally, fiction is viewed as something fake, not fact. According to the dictionary, fiction is “An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented; A lie”. But imagine if we had it all wrong. There are billions of stars out there spread throughout our galaxy, and billions of galaxies containing them. Each star is like a solar system of its own, which would mean that life may not be unique to earth, to say the least. Whose to say that those galaxies aren’t inhabited by creatures just like us, and that every story ever written hasn’t already taken place on those planets already. That would mean that there is a planet out there where “Alice in Wonderland” was fact; as real as gravity is to us! This would mean that we are able to tune in to these stories, much like an antenna to a radio. Or that there is some sort of cosmic memory that everyone in the universe shares; that anyone can tap into.

Crazy, eh?

As far as my research, I’ve already started looking to big names in the field, particularly focusing on the Sci-fi genre. I’ve looked to authors, particularly Phillip K. Dick, for an idea of the type of story I want to construct. Aside from that, I’ve supplemented my reading with a few “how to” books on screenwriting as a craft. And finally, as far as the screenplay/story I’m constructing, I’ve done a lot of specific research dealing with anatomical characteristics dealing with the players in my story (I am writing about clones).

P.S.

On a more external level, I chose this senior exploration because screenwriting is a field that I have a passion for, and I doubt I’ll ever get to study it in its entirety and spend quality time working on a screenplay. In a way, for me, this senior exploration is sort of a last hoorah.

More about my actual story in the next post!