Sunny Davis works behind the camera to film her television series “Transcience.” Photo courtesy of Sunny Davis.
Senior Film Student Creates a 10 Episode Television Screenplay for her Honors Project
Senior Film Student Sunny Davis used her Honors Program project to create a screenplay for a 10-episode television series centered around a girl leaving the foster care system with memory loss.
Davis’ screenplay is called “Transcience” and is about an 18-year-old girl named Sera who is in the foster care system and her struggles with short-term memory. She deals with transcience which is one of the seven sins of memory, hence the title of the series. Each episode focuses on a part to her transcience that will lead up to a major reveal in later episodes.
“Something that has always interested me is memory,” Davis said.
Davis wanted the concept of memory to be a focal point to her screenplay, and she did a lot of research about memory to better understand what was happening to herself and what her character would be going through. Davis said that she used a lot of online sources to learn more about memory. She also used her mother as a source when writing about the foster care system as her mom works in the system.
Her television series was originally going to be a short film, but after continuing her plot synopsis, Davis realized that her screenplay would work much better as a 10-episode series. Having separate episodes allows her to break up the story into sections, which fits much better with both her theme, and the ability to have each episode focus on a specific issue.
Davis is completing the treatments to her screenplay for her Honors project by the end of this semester. She wants to continue to finish writing out the episodes even after she graduates. Davis hopes to sell the series to a streaming company such as Netflix or Hulu. Ideally she wants to put her series on the market and be able to work more so she can possibly direct it in the future.
“If it does get sold earlier, or I sell it for enough money I might be asked to be put on as a writer,” Davis said.
She still wants to be a part of it if it does get picked up by a production company. “Transcience” is one of her last projects as a student of the University of Rhode Island.
Davis has been in the Honors program since her first year at the URI. All students in the Honors program have to complete a senior portfolio project by the end of their senior year. It took Davis a while to figure out what she wanted to do for her own project. During her junior year, she came up with the idea.
Davis is not only a film media major, she is also double majoring with writing and rhetoric and has a double minor in both anthropology and English.
“[I] wanted to do something that would combine all of my areas of study,” Davis said.
She ultimately came up with the idea to write a screenplay inspired by the screenwriting classes she’s taken in the English Department, allowing her to incorporate her english minor. She is incorporating film since she is writing a screenplay for a television series. Her writing and rhetoric major is incorporated through her physical writing of the screenplays.
In all of her films Davis always makes sure to incorporate anthropology. She explained that anthropology allows you to study people and understand how people work. She also said that anthropology, “allows me to put myself inside another character’s shoes kind of? So I can get in their head.” Davis does this so she can understand how that character thinks.
She is looking forward to “Transcience” being one of her last projects as a student of the University of Rhode Island.