Transition | Scripting

I began writing the first draft for 'VET-MAN' after writing up the character profiles:

Dr. Tim Stewart
Dr Stewart is a confident and dead-pan, yet completely incompetent vet.  He believes he is a good vet, but ends up doing a lot more harm than good and most of his patients don't last very long.  He has as strange affection for cows. 

Sheila
50-something year old office worker and lover of animals, especially her dog Coco who has a special place in her heart after her husband died.
Some of these developments came through as I was writing the script and the rest came from how I wanted to convey the tone of the piece, and these elements helped add to it.

From my research, I know that comedy relies heavily on build up and timing so I felt I should try to spend a lot of time setting up the jokes before the punchline.  One example of this is the setup to where Dr Stewart tries to perform surgery on Coco and ends up killing her - I built up the relationship between Sheila and her dog so that when Dr Stewart accidentally kills the dog and Sheila sees him dumping the body in the bin, this has more of an impact than it would without seeing their relationship.

Here is the first draft of the script:

I sent the script to Simon for feedback and he said the script was "pretty funny and sharp", and suggested that the ending could be developed a bit and that I could add some more lines in places.  He also stressed that we will need to ensure that the setting looked authentic so that it felt believable.

I got rid of some parts of the script for several reasons:

• I removed the "discrepancy under the ribs" line as it felt too competent for Dr Stewart and felt a bit too formal for the tone I wanted to go for.
• I also removed the part of his 'diagnosis' that mentioned Coco staying overnight - I felt this was a bit strange for us to cut to another day in such a short amount of time.
• The "stings like fuck" line did not sit right with me after re-reading the script so I removed that as well.

I also added some lines and action, mainly to draw out the awkwardness and deadpan comedy that we want to get from the film:

• I drew out the 'sniff' to make the scene feel a lot more strange and uncomfortable for Sheila.
• I also made the surgery scene a bit longer and added another gag with Dr Stewart where he is looking at the laptop for how to perform the surgery.  This adds another joke and also builds up the tension of the scene leading up to the punchline at the end.
• I also added another joke where Dr Stewart gives Sheila a blood-stained leaflet to add to the dark humour.  I felt that the scene felt a little too sad and some of the humour was lost, so adding this gag helped to relieve this.
• Following Simon's advice, I added another line to the ending which I feel solidified the ending a bit better.

Here is the final draft of the script:

I feel the script-writing process went fairly well and I am happy with how the script turned out.  I feel I could have worked through more drafts to perfect it as much as possible but given the timeframe and that I am also directing the film as well, I will need to ensure I am not spending too much time working on the writing when I need to be directing.  Considering I have not written comedy before, I am happy with the gags and I feel I have conveyed the tone well - I just need to ensure I translate this well to the screen when it comes to shooting.