Exercises:
Just yes – one person talks about something they care about, the other can ONLY say yes. (barry’s generalisation: 80% of bad scenes are bad because one person just says yes and the other does all of the work)
Yes and – scene, each line starts with yes and.. (followed by scenes where the yes and is silent in your head
oddball initiations – first person makes a ‘bad’/oddball initiation, the other has to yes and it, giving context, grounding it, adding feelings (and it turns out there’s no such thing as a bad initiation). With oddball initiations we are often more specific. Being specific is helpful – it answers 7 questions and gives 5 to five other ideas (i have a job isn’t as good as I work in a bakery specialising in French patisseries). Throwing a specific out there means your partner can work with it.
Specific piece –we were given 25 minutes, and ask to create specifics which would recur: weird edits, parallels in plot or character or ideas – essentially creating patterns and echoes – setting the table for what will happen next
Larger yeses exist – if someone mucks up a word, then make that word real (a cook county social club show was set at yale university. Someone fluffed the pronunciation and said Dale Yall, so their scene partner created a 2nd university called dale yall. This only works where you have the luxury of time – probably not good for a 1 minute scene, but cool with longer ones, and especially cool with long forms).
If there’s only one grounded scene between humans, we will want to see that resolved.
Need to cast a wide net from the ask for – if you get sock and do every scene about socks it’s not as rewarding for anyone as it is when socks become about clothing becomes about nike sweatshops in third world countries is about compassion or hard work or getting by…
