Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, 2nd Edition

15

Cool Breeze and Buzz

Sciandra, Lani

Introduction

Lani Sciandra wrote Cool Breeze and Buzz in my screenwriting class in 1994 and directed it for a B.F.A. Thesis Film in 1995. When I asked her how the screenplay changed during production, she said:

We really didn’t have a solid ending for the story throughout production—I had to communicate with and discover it through the actors—within the guidelines of the written scenes we re-invented as we went along—we all had to believe it was happening—I was never really convinced of my own dialogue and drew upon the silence more than the words for meaning—in fact, it was Sally (Aunt Barbara) who came up with the non-dialogue exchange between her and Buzz in the last scene that represents the crystalline ...