Health Problem of Local, National, or International Importance

Screenplay (25%) Students will form groups for collaboration on writing a screenplay about a health problem of local, national, or international importance. This task requires students to imagine themselves in the creative act of media advocacy. Your task is to write a storyline that illustrates a health issue and raises awareness through the popularity of film. However, the health topic must be grounded in health research. You are expected to demonstrate that you have researched the issue and that you are knowledgeable about it. You will provide your references at the end of the document. Students will use the Zoom Corporation platform for work meetings. The Screenplay assignment must adhere to a standard screenplay format which can be assured by using the program CELTX, found at http://celtx.com. Groups will produce a full-length draft to be shared for constructive suggestions from another group in the class (worth 10% of the final grade in the course). This draft will be submitted to an Assignment Folder in D2L. The final draft will be graded based on the integration of the health issue into the storyline, formatting, writing quality, and references. Late papers will not be accepted.

Thoughts:

Pitch: Nick Fury is speaking to different leaders of factions within the Marvel Universe. First, he breaks down our factoid requirement, then goes on to ask each leader about what their group is doing. Daredevil represents the street-level heroes, Dr. Strange covers the Avengers, Professor Xavier leads the X-Men, etc. This will allow both for the vignette portioning and for different heroes.

My group will build off this pitch. We will divide the screenplay into three sections, each on a different superhero, and each section will be approximately seven pages. I have the avengers section that we decided will be about Dr. Strange. However, this is not final because if you have a better idea for another avengers member that could work as well. Each section will be about what each superhero is doing to help with the pandemic—kind of like the Marvel “Heroes at home” comics. But instead related to an “issue” brought on by the pandemic. I thought maybe that Dr. Strange could be using his magic to help support healthcare workers during the pandemic. Since he used to be a doctor. The screenplay will also need to include factual sources throughout which will need to be cited. So Nick Fury is going to introduce what our superhero is doing and then cut to a scene of the superhero doing their part to help during the pandemic then end with nick furry summarizing then transitioning to talking about the next superhero.

Other comments:

The screenwriting software has a free week trail so you should be good to use that. My section needs to be around 7 screenplay pages. An average screenplay page has 180 words so 180 x 7 = 1,260 words so that’s why the page count is 4 which is 1,200 words.