Dialogue

I am currently re-writing a lot of dialogue. I finished the last rewrite of this script about this time last year, and at that point I was 99% satisfied with how it turned out. Amazing what a year of perspective will do.

Reading back over the script in detail, a lot of my dialogue is very one-sided, and I have some pretty blatant information dumps. I have been re-writing the dialogue to make it more conversational, and to make the secondary character seem like less of an idiot. I wanted to portray a bold and intelligent female lead (Kozue), but in doing so, the male secondary character (Tsuneo) comes off in places as a dimwit who is just along for the ride. I'm changing that a bit. Kozue still maintains her character, but is a bit more receptive to Tsuneo. Tsuneo on the other hand, now behaves as someone thrown into his situation would. Immediately a problem solver, trying to formulate theories on what is going on. This plays nicely with Kozue offering the information she already knows, and Tsuneo filling in the blanks.

This also makes for a bigger impact when we realize as the audience that she's being deceptive on certain things.

One thing I think regarding dialogue is that you can never call it completely "done." Not until it's recorded, and maybe even re-recorded. Maybe not even until picture lock. Dialogue seems to be one of those things that just takes a lot of revision. And going over it one more time might be the difference in it being decent and being excellent. At this point though, I think once this rewrite is done, I'll be ready to record.