Adapting

By Ken Tsui
Director of Soucouyant

It was early on a sunny afternoon when Judith Keenan of Book Shorts called with the exciting news. I was on a bus ride home when she called and amidst the roar of traffic, I managed to hear her tell me that we had won the competition.

We went to work immediately and realized quickly the elaborate process involved with adapting a one page treatment in to five pages of script. The first draft came quickly but felt like a scattershot burst of all the ideas bottled up from the days we waited anxiously to hear if we had won the competition. As we progressed through the drafts, Brittany and I received valuable feedback from peers and supportive members of Book Shorts such as Judith and Paul Quarrington. As we received critiques, we in turn churned out new drafts, removing dialogue, adding scenes and even at one point eliminating a character. After more than a month of constant revision, the first draft feels like a lifetime ago and has become six pages of embarrassing script we retrospectively laugh at.