Pre-Production- Chapter Analysis

While reading the book of Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet I decided to make notes on what happened in each chapter. This should help me determine what I need and don't need from the book.

In parts of the book they have long speeches that may need to be cut shorter. Such as the murders explanation of why, how and when they did the murders is around 2 pages long, this either needs to be shortened or be broken up by images to keep the audiences interest.

Along with the chapter analysis it has lead to me write out the plot lines, main characters and point of no return.

Main plot- Vet is murdered, who did it?
Sub plot- Jack Pomfrey trying to get money off Agatha. Agatha's relationship with James Lacey
Point of no Return-

Characters-
Protagonist- Agatha Raisin
Her Help-

• James Lacey
• Bill Wong 
• Mrs Bloxby 

Suspects- 

• Miss Mabbs 
• Miss Webster 
• Miss Mason 
• Mr and Mrs Parr
• Mrs Josephs 
• Freda Huntington 
• Miss Simms 
• Mr Rice (murderer)
• Greta (Ex-wife) 

Here are the basic notes from each chapter- 

Chapter 1- 

• Agatha is coming home from holiday 
• Picks up her cat from the cattery 
• Comes home to be asked to go to the Ladies society by Mrs Bloxby, at society heres of new vet (Paul)
• Decides to go see Paul, who asks her on date, date does not go ahead due to her crashing in snowy weather, James Lacey rescues her from the side of the road 
• Her friend Bill Wong visits, she gets her car towed 

Chapter 2- 

• Agatha sets out to London for a business meeting, in PR. 
• Finds another cat in London and brings him home with her 
• Brings new cat to the vet, he asks for another date. 
• Bill calls, is not to keen on new vet.

Chapter 3- 

• Agatha has an awful date with the vet, he wants money off her but she leaves before handing any over.
• The vet is murdered the next day in the stables 
• Bill Wong and James talk to Agatha about the murder, this leads Agatha wanting to investigate it herself. 
• She visits the stables with James, they later have a drink at the local pub 

Chapter 4-

• Funeral of the vet, many women appear 
• James and Agatha go to Mircester together to see who they can talk to 
• Bill Wong sees them and asks them to come to his for dinner
• Visit Vet's business partner and ex-wife, ex-wife is not home but helpful neighbour is 
• Goes to Bills for dinner and then pub (not to sure what the dinner at Bills adds to the story)

Chapter 5-

• James Lacey lunch (removed)
• Mrs Bloxby comes by, Ladies society 
• Mrs Josephs implies she knows more about the murder 
• Tries to involves James but he does not respond but is able to talk to Bill
• Finds Mrs Josephs dead at home
• Bill and James come to the home to talk about what may have happened
• Agatha and James set of to find evidence of a crime, succeed but by the time the police get there the evidence is missing 
• Bill tells Agatha the investigation has now become a murder investigation 

Chapter 6-

• Drugs have been stolen from the vets 
• James and Agatha decide to see Miss Mabbs (receptionist at the vets) 
• Find her in local club, pay her to give them information 
• They decide to interview more people 
• When home Jack calls Agatha- not impressed she hangs up on him (this may be a sub plot but is not interesting)
• James comes back they decide to see Miss Webster 

Chapter 7-

• Jack calls and James decides to scare him off 
• Visit Bunty (neighbour of Greta) gets Greta to talk to Agatha and James 
• Visit to Peter Rice, who has destroyed all of the bank information of the dead vet 
• They decide to break into the bank and Paul's home, find bank information 
• Dog walker sees them leaving the house around 1 in the morning 
• Have a disagreement with Freda, which leads them to try look like they have obtained the documents legally

Chapter 8-

• Talk to Miss Mason who is helpful till money is brought up
• See's Miss Webster then goes to kennels 
• Pretend to be social workers to get information on Miss Mabbs 
• Go to see her at the flat but the boyfriend tries to get them beaten up 
• Miss Simms tells them why she gave him money 
• Goes home to find Agatha's cats have been taken 
• Police interview, James stays the night on the couch 
• Locals come over in the morning to help with trying to find the cats, Mrs Parr stays behind to tell them about the money 
• James and Agatha make a plan to follow people around separately 

Chapter 9- 

• Agatha decides to follow Mrs Webster for hours 
• Goes to vet surgery to search for her missing cats 
• Killer is revealed and tells Agatha all that happened Peter Rice.
• He shoots himself when James and Bill turn up 
• James, Bill and Agatha talk about the case. 

Chapter 10-

• Agatha tells people about her adventure with the vet but soon is scared to be alone, Mrs Bloxby stays the night 
• She soon decides to clean up the garden and enjoys time with the cats 
• Freda confides in her (not sure is a good ending) 

Pre-Production- Research, Screen Adaptation

To help get tips on how to change the novel into a screen play I decided to read this book and take notes.

Screen Adaptation- Dr Kenneth Portney, Focal Press, 1998, Woburn.

Structure- Adaptations always change the structure. A novels structure is sometimes considered to speed up the story.

Characterisations- Characterisation is key to novels and screen plays. But a screen play has less time to sympathise with the character.

Similarities with the source material- all sources require the same imaginative processes as developing original ideas.

Approaches;

1.  Sticking to the source material as much as possible. (This is the method I will chose)
2. Approaching with a loose attitude. 

Scope the chapters- 

• Initial chapters= Characters
• Later chapters= Specific problems 

Structure- 3 part act 

1. Set up- Meet protagonist and supporting characters. Establish conflicts 
2. Start to Solve- Come against more issues escalating into crisis at the end of the act.
3. Solving- Trying to solve issues causes large conflicts. Surprise issues. 

Backstory- write out back stories 

What is the character actually like. 

Character growth- important protagonists to have a change from the beginning of the story to the end. If no change then nothing has been learnt. 

Structure- 

1. Find starting point 
2. Eliminate scenes- decide what to omit. 
3. Condense scenes 
4. Combine characters- combine smaller characters 
5. Reword the start and end 

When going through this book I have decided to use a lot of the information from the book while reading the fiction that I will be adapting. 

Pre-Production- Research, First 10 pages

As part of writing the script for the Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet, I decided to look at script writing and do some research I started with;

The First 10 Pages by Frank Catalano, 2014, Lexington Avenue Press, San Diego.

(pg61)

1. Does the title of your screen play reflect the main story line?
2. Set up the kind of story and characters you are sharing with the reader?
3. Let the reader know your major character. Introduce them in an interesting way.
4. Set up your story and major conflict.
5. Lastly, do you have a message to your story and characters. 

(pg60)

1. What is the true ending of your story? Point of no return?
2. What is the most exciting event in your story line?
3. What is the point in the story that your characters reach a point of no return?

First 10 mins need to capture your attention, look at other programs and how they grab your attention. 

(pg31)

We want to create a hook in the first 10 pages so they can't turn it off. 

From this book I decided to read the first 2 chapters of the book and see what the best opening will be as well as looking at other programs and how they start. 

Work Experience- ITV 5

The last day of my work experience I went out and filmed a story about a girl whose house and electric wheelchair was destroyed in a fire. We went down to Margate and did 3 interviews with, Holly (her room burnt down), Lydia (the mother) and Amy (sister that set up the fundraising group). The cost of the chair is £7 thousand in which they have been able to raise since Monday. Most from the online group set up by Amy (£2 thousand) and £5 thousand has been given to the family from one person. This story was made for Saturday's news cast. ITV News- story edited for the Saturday broadcast.

From the week at ITV news Meridian I learnt a lot more about how fast everything in a news room moves, just because there is 6 stories in the morning meeting does not mean that all 6 will be going out. Some stories are cut due to issues in the stories.

I also learnt about self-shooting, interviews and quick editing, all of these things that a reporter will do in an average day.

I'm grateful that ITV News Meridian let me come into their news room for a week, it was an unforgettable experience that has given me a lot to think about for the future.

Work experience- ITV 4

Today I went for a shoot that has 3 interviews, I helped with the interviews and setting up the camera. The story was a follow up from the explosion in Ashford a month before, we managed to track down Tracy who was interviewed the day after the explosion and her son who is currently fund raising for the families affected by the fire.

For this story I also spent time and transcribed the interview clips on to the script for the reporter while she recorded her voice over. This story was a follow up of the original story.

I also spent some of the afternoon ringing around to local MP's and asking if they have decided to take the 10% pay rise that went through today. I was then asked by the news editor if we should run the story but I didn't think it was a good idea so we decided to call the producer and suggest running it tomorrow.

Pre-Production- Producer or Script Writer

As part of this unit I need to decided if I'm going to become the producer creating treatments, ideal actors and title sequence or if I want to be the script writer and just create the script.

I think I would like to write the script for my work as the adaptation is something I am passionate about but if I want to do this and be the producer I need to make sure that I do this before I get back to university otherwise I will be behind on the work.

This adaptation would be a one off story, with the ability to be made into a series but be a 90 min long special, I would therefore only need one script but it will be 90 pages. But will need to do case studies to compare what would be a good idea.

I will need to go through the book and look at the overall story arc, the characters to keep from the books and the characters that don't really fit into what I'm going to create.

Work Experience- ITV 3

Today was day three of my work experience where I spent some of the day contacting the local NHS trusts for FOI's on information about the nurses.

I sent the questions to 4 NHS trusts, it was asking for back dated information about temporary nurses.

I was then able to practice on more NIB's (News In Brief).

Amanda is the person I have been sending my work to, she has said today that my writing style has massively improved in the last day as to day the NIB's have been better and usable.

This morning I did research for an follow up story about an explosion in Ashford and my research led me to a phone number that has enabled Lydia to arrange an interview tomorrow morning. I will hopefully be going out tomorrow morning to be doing the filming of the interview with a reporter and a camera man.

Work Experience- ITV 2

Second day at ITV and I was asked to shadow the Program assistant. Part of the job is to sort out the news bulletins for the lunch hour as well as helping towards the main program at 6pm. I was sat with Amanda all day, she had me work on my own version of the bulletins by sending me the information she has and asking me to make one.

This was a story from the Sussex police, in which they are appealing for the public to help find someone who had taken money from an elderly women, unfortunately there is nothing on the website.

My version- 

Police are appealing for the identity of a man who persuaded a 78-year-old women from Horsham to hand over her credit card, thousands of pounds and her bank details, the CCTV footage shows the suspect buying champagne in a Sainsbury’s at Euston on the 7^th May. He has been described as an Asian man in his twenties police are keen to talk to anyone who may know the man or of his location. 

Actual-

Police are appealing for information about a man who stole thousands of pounds from a 78 year old women in Horsham, the man was caught on cctv buying champagne, using the women’s credit card. Police believe the women lost more that 7 thousand pounds after she was persuaded to withdraw money from her bank accounts.

This is after the morning's news of people being injured after trying to enter the country. 

My First Version;

Delays on the Channel Tunnel this morning, as a number of migrants break into Calais, leading to three being taken to hospital. This is to be the second incident recently as a migrant died last week on a freight shuttle trying to enter Britain.

The home secretary will make a statement later today about the migrant crisis in Calais.

This is after the news of a body being found in Brighton. A crew went to Brighton and were able to get images for the lunch program that I then watched Amanda edit. 

My version;

Police in Brighton are investigating a suspected suspicious death in Chesham Place, from the early hours of today. 

Police are calling a suspicious death in Brighton.

In Brighton the police are investigating a suspicious death.  

Actual:

An investigation has been launched after what police are calling a suspicious death in Brighton.

Officers were called to a home in Chesham place in the early hours of this morning.

This was sent in by the Fire and Rescue Services, there was not much information; 

My version; 

Around 5am a collision occurred on the A229, Blue Bell Hill, Maidstone. Four vehicles were involved due to an oil spill on the road. Fire and Rescue Services crews cleared the road making it safe for other vehicles. 

Actual; 

There were delays in Maidstone as 4 vehicles crashed in Maidstone A229, Blue Bell Hill at about 5 am firefighter cleared the spill and the road has since been re-opened.

A armed robber was sentenced to jail but the information about the trail and what was found has been released.

My version:

A convicted armed robber has been sentence to nearly 8 years in prison after firearms were found in his home in Pembuy.

Police believe that Castle was planning another ‘serious offence’ after finding sawn-off shotguns, walkie-talkie’s and Halloween masks in his loft. 

Castle pleaded guilty on two counts of possessing a firearm on the 9^th July in Maidstone Crown Court.

They then sent me a short version that they had put together. 

Their  mock  version:

An armed robber has been jailed after police found two shotguns, post office uniforms and masks in his loft. Stephen Castle from Pembury had already been sentenced for robbing a jewellers in Tunbridge Wells. He pleaded guilty and will serve 8 years behind bars.

This is the version that I then came up with, it's a massive improvement on the rest of my work;

A armed robber has been sentence to nearly 8 years in prison after two sawn-off shotguns, post office uniforms and Halloween masks were found in his home in Pembuy. Stephen Castle had already been sentence for robbing a jewelers in Tunbridge Wells in 1997. Pleaded guilty on two counts of possessing a firearm at Maidstone Crown Court.