Analyzing Danielle Harper’s ‘A Slice of Sleep’

The great screenwriter and director Robert Bresson is quoted as saying “Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.” This statement is incredibly true of Danielle Harper’s screenplay ‘A Slice of Sleep’. Harper has created a world full of colour that reads to be a world of bleak darkness as it can be joyfully bright and uplifting. The word ‘journey’ is much overused, but perfectly describes the contents of Harper’s script. The following discourse will be looking at how Harper has followed screenwriting conventions, such as the ‘where’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ and using popular screenwriting theorist texts such as Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ (1999) and Syd Field’s ‘The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting’ (2003)as guides to analysing Harper’s script. The script is split into three parts; each part is identifiable by a number of factors, the use of the starry night’s sky, the change in room colour collections, the sleeping patterns of the characters and the change of tone in the voice-over. Harper’s screen play is a theoretically unconventional collective of scenes, which primarily focus’ on the sleeping behaviour of its habitants’. Characterisation is dictated throughout by the colour schemes of the various abodes. ‘A slice of Sleep’ offers a sociological view of a cross section of society, which is enabled by the use of abstract characterisation.

The first two sections of the screenplay take place within single rooms, mainly bedrooms. These rooms have all carefully been colour coordinated to differentiate between the different scenes; this also allows the tone of the scene to be set. Harper states in her covering letter how she wanted to create “pronounced distinction instantly between the different segments of the scrip...

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...that is strengthened by the use of a narrator, whose changes in tone match the production design revealing an intimate and thought provoking tale.

Reference List

Books-

McKee, R, 1999. Story. 1st ed. London: Methuen Publishing.

Field, S, 2003. The Definitive Guide to Screenwriting. 1st ed. London: Random House Publishing.

Journals-

Rodman, Howard. “What a Screenplay Isn’t.” Cinema Journal, [Online]. 45.2. Winter 2006.86-89.Available at http://www.jstor.org [Accessed 02 April 2012.

Websites-

Screenplayology.2012.screenplayology.[ONLINE]Available at: http://www.screenplayology.com/.[Accessed 31 March 12]

Screen Writers Utopia. 2012. 127 Hours Three Act Structure. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.screenwritersutopia.com/2012/03/18/127-hours-3-act-structure/. [Accessed 01 April 12]

Films-

Pulp Fiction.1994 [DVD] Quentin Tarantino. USA: Miramax