I hope this does not sound snotty (I don't want it too), but I would like responses from people who really, really know what they are talking about, not random "What I do is..." type of stuff.

Plenty of people have told me I use too many angles (I believe them), and I will be removing most when I go in (soon) to rework the story I've got here.  My question is, do ALL of them, without exception, have to go?

If you have something like:


"ON TABLE

Something you want noticed.

WIDER

Back to the larger scene."


Completely unacceptable in every single instance?

What about:


"CHARACTERS P.O.V.

Something you think is really good and effective"


Can this never, ever be done?

In short, I want to know (authoritatively) if this can never, ever be done in a spec script, or if it is still OK to do it as long as it's used very sparingly.

Thanks for any help on this.

Save Camera Angles for the Director - Your job as the screenwriter is to tell a story. You create the characters and the situations, but you leave the camera angles and the acting to the professionals. Nothing bugs agents and producers more than the writer who tries to control every aspect of the script by including excessive camera angles, for example, ANGLE ON, CU, ECU, PAN, ZOOM IN, SMASH CUT, etc. and cues for the actors. It interrupts the flow of the story and is distracting. "It should be a reading screenplay. I think the average amateur writer tries to control a whole ball of wax at once and they make a big mistake doing that. Incorporating camera angles and camera shots, unless they are extremely important, is a turn off"

I found this for you from a professional site, I didn't write the blurb, it's by somebody else ha-ha but it's what you asked. It's by a literary agent named Dan Wright if it matters.

Hi Bert. I read The Farm some time ago, and while it´s well written, the number of camera directions is distracting. I suggest you to remove all of them.
As for your specific question, I think it´s totally covered in this article: http://www.creativescreenwriting.com/csdaily/craft/05_06_05.html
Read lesson 1, I think it will help.

Hey, that's a good article.  It lays it on a little thick, perhaps, but it's useful advice.  Thanks.

I've always read that driection is left to the director, and also that not using camera angles forces creativity from you, as a writer, and makes the script easier for a reader to read. Besides how you word stuff makes a camera angle clear anyway.

With angle:

UNKNOWN POV

Jenny walks across the common area.

Without angle:

SOMEONE watches Jenny walks across the common area.

With angle:

ECU of a TEAR rolling down Darlene's face.

Without angle:

A TEAR rolls down Darlene's face.

With angle:

CLOSE ON:

A screwdriver tightening a screw.

PULL BACK TO REVEAL:

John working in his shop. He looks at the circuitboard.

Without angle:

A screwdriver tightens a screw.

John picks up the circuitboard and examines it.

How you word your description will clearly dictate what the camera will do. Oh, and "we see" counts as a camera angle, too. Usually you can pull it out, and change the present progressive tense to present action tense and the problem is solved.

With "we see":

We see a mangificent space ship flying through space.

Without:

A magnificent space ship flies through space.

Which is better? The experts say without.

Avoiding camera angles and we see will improve your script by leaps and bounds form the get go.

Unless your meaning would be completely unclear without a camera note, use description. "Insert" is still okay to spotlight small items. Using "beat" for a pause is now frowned upon. Old methods are constantly being phazed out.

Actors want to know motivation, and should feel helped, if the writer indicates the tone he means. Like: sarcastic, envious, mocking, etc. They can interpret that in their own style. Again, the objective is clarity. If actors get the tone wrong, the character's personality can come off warped, and the interplay mangled. All should be done in the spirit of making a film be the best it can possibly be, egos aside.

A writer gives a blueprint for his vision, exactly as he sees it. If it's bought, it becomes the buyer's vision--to alter any way he wants. Till then, the writer draws the picture solo. It's premature at this stage to worry about  what actors will like.

The tone of the scene should be clear from the dialogue and action. The only reason a wryly should be used is if the reaction of the character is out of character for the scene around it. If the character throws something across the room, is it necessary to specifiy (yelling)? If characters are hiding is a room with the bad guy, is it necessary to say (whispered)? Motivation for the character should be clear from the script and the scenes. Nine times out of ten, a wryly is not needed. I recently went through my Fempiror scripts gauging the necessity of wrylies and removed 90% of them.

INSERT is not a camera direction anymore than MONTAGE and FLASHBACK are. It is a heading and completely allowable.

BEAT is usually unnecessary because a good actor would be able to "feel" the beat in the conversation. If you need a pause, consider what is causing the pause.

Instead of:

DAD
Do you understand what I'm saying?
(beat)
Do you?

Try:
DAD
Do you understand what I'm telling you?

Daughter turns away from him. Looks at the locket from Boyfriend.

DAD
Do you?

Something causes a "beat" in the conversation even if its a "Dad looks into Daughter's eyes. She stares back." It remains visual, but it gets across that something occurs beyond a random pause.

There's my two cents on those.

The second where he says Do you understand what I'm telling you doesn't sound right, the first one you wrote worked better just so you know.

I use beat but a period also is a break in dialogue so I guess you could just do it that way to stay with the times. Sometimes if you're not so hung up on selling a script like others who are obsessed with it you'd add the beat for your readers in a long dialogue scene where they need a break.

It's not all about selling and some people make it sound like it is.

I do not use ANY camera angles in my specs. I write to tell a good story, nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully the director will have the same mental picture in his head than mine.

Also, I do not use BEAT. If I want to break up the dialogue or have a character pause before speaking, I use three dots...like this. It forces the reader to pause.

Yeah 100% I agree MacDuff, I never used those three periods until recently I just thought that was a way myself and a lot of people did on message boards for a certain I don't really know why but yeah.

I am guilty of the three periods, called an ellipse. That method slipped my mind as did rewording the dialogue in my example. That was completely unintentional. The point wasn't the dialogue insomuchas the example, though.

The reason to not use camera angles is not so the director won'tbe pissed off. You are supposed to be telling a story and Camera Angles distract the reader from that story by reminding them that they are reading a script. You should never remind the reader that they are reading a story. Anything that does not tell the story should be removed. Camera Angles are the biggest detractor, so there is a big thing on those, but they aren't the only culprit.

The point of all this is to treat the script like you are currently watching the movie and describing on paper what you see on the screen, doing so in terms the average person would understand, but formatting it so it looks like all the other scripts. It's not all about the sale, but just telling a good story without distractions.

It depends.  Camera angles can be done without distration.

I find the most effective way to do it... without really doing it.... is to start a slug line and then describe below:


A HAND

firmly on the steering wheel.  Gripped so hard the knuckles are white.


You're basically forcing the camera angle but hiding it in the description.

Thanks for the replies folks.  Helpful stuff.

I mentioned this in another (unrelated) thread, but I will also mention it here, as it seems germaine.

I started reworking "The Farm" this weekend, and step one was pulling out every single camera direction (adjusting descriptions accordingly) and all the "CUT TO"'s and so forth.

And when I was done...the f-ing thing was already 10 pages shorter!

10 pages shorter, dang, you pay a lot of attention to detail, not that that is a bad thing, but dang.  Good luck with your writing, I'm sure you can fill those 10 pages with something  good, that is if you are adding.

No, shorter was definitely the goal here.  I had a "horror" clocking in at 112 pgs and needed to trim.

While I was aghast at how much space I had wasted with these, I was also a little relieved to find that reducing the pages would not be as difficult as I had feared.

Oh, ok.  I was thinking maybe you were down some pages and might of wanted to fill them again, my bad.  I need to read it.

Yeah...If you are looking for a good example of what will make people yell at you about camera angles, give it a read now.

Otherwise, give it a month or so.

TC uses camera angles as well so I think in this day and age writers need to use them more often to get points across... In Soapy on the first line of description, yeah I seen it.

I don't know if it gets the story across I can frogive them when reading something, people should be more forgiving when it comes to format... Older writers use a different format than most of us.

I have only seen one script on here that is so full of camera directions and character feelings in the description it's unreadable but the writer doesn't care so neither do I. Other than that person I think at least people are trying.

If you haven't said that I would of never seen that pointed out Wesley, I guess I like to have my vision and the camera done my way.  One of my downs as a writer I'll say.  I'm not too fond of my work on Soapy when Wet by the way.

You should have tried to make it longer or find a staff of people who'd work on the story with you... Could be what it needs.

Not a staff of writers, write your own series but get a staff of story writers so you can just write the scripts... Some writers are better at writing when given an idea to write instead of piecing together an idea from scratch.

It takes me awhile to develop an idea I can say "I want to write that" but when someone else comes along and says write this. It works a lot better.

If I read Soapy's pilot I could probably give you some episode ideas for future episodes, it's easier helping others with ideas than yourself sometimes which sounds weird but hey what can you do.