Narrative short film. 13 Minutes
Story outline: GILLIAN, ANTONIO and ROBERT take part in a management training day. The learning objective for the day is to practice delivering bad news with actor-facilitator NICOLA. The task for the day is to come up with a scenario whereby they have to fire a co-worker and explore the worst possible reactions they might receive to eliminating another person’s livelihood.
BAD NEWS is a semi-scripted fiction film based on structured improvisation. The narrative is generated from documentation of a longform performance. BAD NEWS redeployed techniques used in drama-based training to explore simulations of complex and difficult workplace interactions.
Written and directed by Cecilia Stenbom. Produced by Ben Young.
June 2023
Bad News and accompanying statement has been published in Volume 13.1 of Screenworks, the peer-reviewed online publication of screen media practice research:
“Bad News, by Cecilia Stenbom and Ben Young, a short film developed as part of a wider creative practice research project that seeks to explore role-playing and simulation as an institutional and corporate training device, and how this might be utilised in fiction filmmaking. The film succeeds in capturing the banalities of corporate middle-management, nailing the awkwardness of delivering the bad news of the title in a “sacking scenario” role-play. This original experiment offers a new twist on improvisation, drawing on applied theatre techniques used in drama-based training to create an unscripted narrative short film that combines fiction and documentary, which is a pilot for a feature-length fiction film currently in development.”
https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive/volume-13-1/bad-news
Cecilia Stenbom 