Way Out

Way Out is a project I'm not actually involved in. It is written and directed by Warun Chanat and is about a man trying to escape the recent past of living on a council estate while pursuing a girl in a flower shop.

I was sent this script to look over and give feedback.

There was a Goliath sized portion of missing action, scene headings and badly formatted scenes but that's not what I will focus on. The story is what's important!

The original screenplay focussed on two stories: The main male character and the girl he is pursuing. His story is about how he is trying to find out about her then gets mixed up in his brother's drug selling which climaxes at his brothers murder in front of him. Her story, is about her abuse by her flat mates who literally condemn her for just being herself.  She ends up being  a target for them and ends up throwing herself off the balcony.

The first issue I saw was that I didn't care about the female lead (Amy) at all. It's tragic what happens to her but I don't know anything about her nor do I care for her at all. She was just there, a plot device to show suffering and a tragic suicide. There was no character to Amy so there was no character development.

My next issue was that we were introduced to a character via a phone (Dana) who is our male leads brother's girlfriend. By their exchange, I found the character of Dana interesting. We don't see her despite being married to a man who dies. His  brother. We see our heroes grief but that's it. There is a wonderful relationship between Dana and his brother that we don't get to see.

My next issue was that the plot was a plot for the sake of being the plot. The character of Amy was nothing but a chess piece, and some dialogue and actions seemed unrealistic to me and didn't fit in with their characters  we had seen.

My final issue was that of the flashback sequence.  I felt it was in the wrong place. We see (as far as I recall) a man, nervous and anxious standing by the two brothers after his brother  beat the guy up because he owes him money. We get a flash back of the anxious man telling some gang members who tell him to stab him. We come back to normal time and he stab him. This flashback was too early. We needed to see the knife in my opinion and let the tension rise. The original way's system of questions and answers was: What's he doing? He's going to stab him? He stabbed him. The way I proposed would have: What's he doing? He has a knife? Is he going to stab him? He was told to stab him? Will he do it? He stabbed him! The way I suggested, I feel was a much better way of doing it for dramatic purposes.

After our meeting, the writer/director did what I suggested and thinks the script is far better of for it. The changes are:
-Amy's storyline is now down to a minimum so it adds to the heroes story and doesn't detract from it
-Dana has been added in to show the relationship between her and his brother
-Amy is no longer a target for abuse but a symbol of hope for the hero
-The flashback scene has been moved to where I said to make it more dramatic, tense and better suit a questions and answers style

With version 2, I haven't seen it but should I, I will do a second entry on this blog. As it stands now, I think their script is much better, all focusses around the central hero and the B story is that which intertwines with the A story, instead of being two stories that happen to be in the same kind of place.