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I don't post much round here these days but when I do pop in it's usually the same old topics being discussed in the review threads. Only write what can be seen, lose the flowery prose, never, EVER, use the word "we", cut those witty asides, don't use transitions, don't direct the camera, don't write emotions, or anything beyond "the visual" in your descriptive passages.
Now, I know these rules are important to for the beginning writer, and they definitely helped me to develop a writing style that's at least half decent, but I think there comes a time when strict adherence to the rules does little but hold you back.
I've read scripts for an agency, spec scripts from repped writers, most of them bad, some of them good, and a few hidden gems. Not one of these scripts followed all the so called rules people are preaching to spec writers. Also, not one of them lived or died by their formatting quibbles or style choices. Scripts live and die by the quality of the writing and, most importantly, the quality of the story.
Great writing is great writing and it will always stand out from the crowd.
I can't help feeling that writers are being held back by the myths that propagate screenwriting forums. No producer is going to throw your script in the trash because you mentioned an emotion in your description, or because you used the word "we", or because you felt a match cut might be appropriate for a scene transition.
They're going to throw your script in the trash because the writing sucks, or the story sucks, or the characters suck.
One way to ensure your writing doesn't suck is to develop a strong voice. And this is where I think the "rules" are holding people back. People follow them to a T, and spend more time worrying about what's allowed, than whether what their writing is actually any good. The writing becomes mechanical, lifeless, insipid.
Some of the best specs I've read while working as a reader were the ones that took liberties with the rules, where the writer their voice shine through, rules be damned.
Here's an example first page of a script I'm reading at the moment:
-------------------------------------------------------------- EXT. PRIVATE AIRPORT -- DAY 1
Dark, gray day. TWO CORPORATE JETS idling on the runway. Big jets, engines whining, faced-off across a hundred yards of blacktop.
TWO LONE FIGURES -- one from each plane -- marching toward the empty middle in SUPER-SLO-MOTION...
ON THE LEFT -- THE BURKETT & RANDLE JET. The famous blue- onred B&R logo tattooed across its frame. AN ANXIOUS GROUP OF EMPLOYEES -- ASSISTANTS, VICE PRESIDENTS, FLIGHT CREW -- all gathered near the step-ramp, watching HOWARD TULLY, their beloved CEO, striding off into the breach. TULLY the legendary titan. The mythic boardroom shogunate.
ON THE RIGHT -- THE EQUIKROM JET. Slick and aggressive. Silver and green. ANOTHER WORRIED ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watching RICHARD "SICK DICK" GARSIK rushing forward into noman's- land. GARSIK the buccaneer CEO. A corporate carnivore in his prime. Hypervisionary. Hypereffective. Hyperactive.
CREDITS ROLLING as this slow-motion encounter ripens. And no, this will not be a cordial union of peers. Both men yelling -- screaming -- as they draw closer. Words lost beneath the roar of the turbines. Arms waving. Toe-to-toe. The Finger In The Face. The Belly Bump. The Huff and Puff. The Touch-Me-One-More- Time until...
A punch is thrown.
Even the majestic influence of slow-motion can't pretty this up. It's an instant, ugly, awkward playground brawl. And as TULLY and GARSIK begin rolling on the runway, as those TWO TERRIFIED ENTOURAGES break ranks and start their slow-motion sprint toward the battle, as the CREDITS CONCLUDE...
PASSENGERS. Filling most of the seats. Office workers on their morning commute to the city.
Turning the other way, he's confronted with a window. Trees flash by, splitting the rising sunlight into a hypnotic strobe pattern.
Colter looks to be thirty years old. A military buzz cut. A disciplined physique, lean and spare, almost gaunt. Skin burnished by years of desert sandstorms and equatorial sun. His expression, prematurely aged by combat, is perpetually wary, sometimes predatory, accustomed to trouble.
Despite his military bearing, Colter wears a button down shirt and navy sports coat. On his wrist is a digital watch. It reads 7:40 a.m.
Less rule breaking here but I'm sure some people would have a field day with the character introduction. Can't argue with the quality of writing though. Who wouldn't keep reading after that first page?
So, is it time to stop preaching the rules and start preaching good writing?
I agree and I admit to have been complaining about people not following the rules when posting comments on scripts. After having read your post, I believe I resorted to make those comments, because the stories were often bad themselves...
I've read some awesome scripts that just made the pages fly by and if I had been asked afterwards how the format was, I wouldn't have been able to answer, because it didn't matter to me.
You are so right about a reading a good story. They suck you in immediately and things like format rules becomes a non entity (hope that's the right word). I've also been talking to a bunch of filmmakers lately (even been asked to write for some) and ALL of them has told me they couldn't care less about format... As long as they understand and can follow the story. This makes it hard though for us newcomers (love bert btw) because we're constantly told to stick rigidly to the rules otherwise no one will read our tuff.
Anyway, good post and I agree with you, but I might still offer some suggestions if I feel it can help the writer.
I think you need to know the rules and why the rules are there before you can break them. If you know the rules then you know how to break them. That's the way I feel.
Back on topic. A writer needs to know and understand the basics before he can experiment. I know those two scripts weren't written by a 15 year old kid in twenty minutes. They were written by experienced, smart writers, who know their craft.
Sometimes a script will be posted here and it's covered in mistakes, but there's a good story. So, we do what we can to help. We tell them, "Maybe you shouldn't do this, or that", etc, and, if he's serious about the work, he'll rewrite it, using those guidelines.
Nine out of ten times, it'll be a better script, because, with the basics covered, he can write the story and we can read a good script.
So, is it time to stop preaching the rules and start preaching good writing?
That would be great if this were a board full of experienced writers, but the fact is, there are plenty of people throwing up their work without so much as a clue.
Part of the reason the board exists (I think, at least) is to force-feed the so-called "rules" to those folks. I mean, there is a clear difference between bending the rules -- or even flaunting the rules -- and a gawd-awful mess on the page.
I would also point out that none of your fine examples has a single "we see" buried in its prose. Sure, I'll use 'em once in a great while, but you can recognize over-reliance on that phrase when you see it.
But who is against good writing? I always have the most fun when I am breaking the rules, and enjoy spotting it in the works of others. And people will criticize occasionally, but so what?
I read an opening fade just a few days ago that broke a zillion rules and was just brilliant. And I told him so.
The first words of the script were, "FADE M*****F*****!", and I laughed my ass off at its sheer audacity. It is a shame the remainder of the script failed to deliver on such a clever grabber.
But I do agree with your broader point, Martin, and I too grow weary of reviews that have nothing to offer but, "read some scripts and learn format".
There has been a plague of those recently, and I will consider deleting those if they have nothing more to offer the writer than that tired cliche.
There should be a mix of the two: rules and no rules. Like the convential way of writing a scene should be kept but the description should have some flexibility. Gone to the Wind was written in past tense but it held the convential scene writing.
Gabe
Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
**If you don't like swearing, don't even bother reading my post, because it's going to contain some**
Amen, brother, and frankly, I'm tried of reading these pieces of feedback. I think some people need to get their heads out of the fucking screenwriter's bible and concentrate on writing a good, compelling script. All too often I see these format Nazis harping on about shit that in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean a whole lot, but then when you go in to read one of their scripts, what do you get?
A perfectly formatted, boring as hell, cookie cutter script.
"Oh, well, I didn't use "we" or write what couldn't be filmed, or blah blah blah."
Who gives a shit? Your script almost made me want to hang myself. For fuck's sake, if you had half a brain, you may have broken some of the rules in the hopes that someone may have found your script mildly interesting because you chose to write one of your descriptions in a colorful manner.
Honestly, I really don't know how else to put this, and I could truly give two shits and a stroke about what some of the "pro" writers on other boards say, because I think they're full of shit as well.
IT DOESN'T MATTER.
As long as you're not a complete jackass about it, everything should be aces. Moderation is key.
Whatever, write how you want. If I happen to read your script, take comfort in the fact that I'll do my damnedest to concentrate on just the story, unless you throw out a really bad formatting error. Then I'll try to be as tactful as I can about it, because I used to be one of those people that called out format stuff, but realized it was ultimately useless. Either you're a good writer and you figure out what you can and can't get away with, or you hang out, read other people's scripts, and give them your opinion about what they can and can't get away with. What's the old saying? "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach?"
Other than that, fuck it. Those contests you don't win, don't mean shit, and just about every student filmmaker that passes up your script because they don't care for your writing, well, they just end up breaking the heart of some other schmuck when they ultimately don't follow through.
I could literally harp on about this for days, and point out a few things that strictly adhering to these so called rules cost me, but I won't, because I'm sure that I'm not quite done in this thread yet.
**If you don't like swearing, don't even bother reading my post, because it's going to contain some**
Amen, brother, and frankly, I'm tried of reading these pieces of feedback. I think some people need to get their heads out of the fucking screenwriter's bible and concentrate on writing a good, compelling script. All too often I see these format Nazis harping on about shit that in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean a whole lot, but then when you go in to read one of their scripts, what do you get?
A perfectly formatted, boring as hell, cookie cutter script.
"Oh, well, I didn't use "we" or write what couldn't be filmed, or blah blah blah."
Who gives a shit? Your script almost made me want to hang myself. For fuck's sake, if you had half a brain, you may have broken some of the rules in the hopes that someone may have found your script mildly interesting because you chose to write one of your descriptions in a colorful manner.
Honestly, I really don't know how else to put this, and I could truly give two shits and a stroke about what some of the "pro" writers on other boards say, because I think they're full of shit as well.
IT DOESN'T MATTER.
As long as you're not a complete jackass about it, everything should be aces. Moderation is key.
Whatever, write how you want. If I happen to read your script, take comfort in the fact that I'll do my damnedest to concentrate on just the story, unless you throw out a really bad formatting error. Then I'll try to be as tactful as I can about it, because I used to be one of those people that called out format stuff, but realized it was ultimately useless. Either you're a good writer and you figure out what you can and can't get away with, or you hang out, read other people's scripts, and give them your opinion about what they can and can't get away with. What's the old saying? "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach?"
Other than that, fuck it. Those contests you don't win, don't mean shit, and just about every student filmmaker that passes up your script because they don't care for your writing, well, they just end up breaking the heart of some other schmuck when they ultimately don't follow through.
I could literally harp on about this for days, and point out a few things that strictly adhering to these so called rules cost me, but I won't, because I'm sure that I'm not quite done in this thread yet.
Keep on keepin' on, and Happy Hanukkah.
Well said, Mike. Your spelling and grammar was spot on, but you probably should have broken up the dialogue with a bit more action.
But seriously, here's a relevant passage from the book “Me and You and Memento and Fargo”
Quoted Text
As Steve Steve Buscemi suggests, the manual approach can be inhibiting as well as constricting through an over emphasis on plot structure at the expense of character. In addition it only guarantees that your screenplay will end up being conventional. All truly independent films manage to provide some element of novelty (whether in terms of form or subject matter) that can't be reduced to a set of rules. As Jaramusch puts it, "There are no rules. There are as many ways to make a film as there are potential filmmakers. It's an open form" This is not to suggest that screenwriting is better mastered by fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach. Screenwriters need to have a broad understanding of the entire spectrum of narrative procedures available to them. Real innovation in screenwriting, as the various American independent films in this study boldly attest, comes not from ignorance of narrative film conventions, but from being able to see beyond their limitations.
I am not going to add anything more to this conversation, I would rather hear what the experienced writers think, so looking forward to more posts on this thread, so please people let's hear yer'.
A perfectly formatted, boring as hell, cookie cutter script.
Wow, who woke up Shelton haha.
Yes, as another reformed junkie that has recently pulled the formatting needle from my arm, I will chime in and agree with just about everything Mike has put forth here.
But with the caveat that there are some instances where correction is warranted. There are still tons of people on here who center thier dialogue and use crazy fonts -- and that is the kind of stuff I am talking about.
Endless arguments about the small stuff have become tedious, however.
If you have absolutely nothing to say about a script other than "bad formatting", then let the script languish without posts.
Should the author eventually emerge from the shadows to ask, "Why is nobody reading my script?", then, maybe it is time to give him something specific, and not just "read some scripts."
It's one thing to experiment with format, if it brings a unique and desired flavor of the script. But it's another thing to format something because of ignorance. The Fade motherfucker heading would've been great if the scene opened up to something like the firefight scene in Smokin' Aces. Unfortunately, it opened to two people talking on a beach.
If you're going to break the rules, learn them first. Know what you're breaking and have a reason for breaking them. If you're sending your script to Hollywood and they see bad formatting, that's a big strike against. He'll know what's experimental and amateur writing.
But with the caveat that there are some instances where correction is warranted. There are still tons of people on here who center their dialogue and use crazy fonts -- and that is the kind of stuff I am talking about.
Ah yes, the Times New Roman rainbow. This is one of the bad formatting errors I was talking about that would warrant pointing out.
I think I get what Martin is saying and to me it has less to do with writer’s breaking rules and more to do with writers learning to breathe a little. I read scripts intermittently on this site. I rarely finish those features that I do start. My main problem is that most scripts on this site are composed. Not written but composed. It’s a lot like reading a 9th grade essay. You’ve got your references, your page count and your font size. But there’s little that qualifies as writing.
Technical elements are designed to aid the storytelling. You set up your sluglines and then you try to write something amazing between FADE IN and FADE OUT. You can talk about story all you want but a two-year old can tell a story. It’s how you write the story that matters.
The whole rule that you only write what you can show onscreen has been taken to the point that any sort of figurative language has been tossed. Characters aren’t described; they’re just inventoried as “20s and handsome”. Locations are just like something from a real estate advert.
You’ve got roughly 6000 lines in a feature. You’ve got to feed your actors and your art department and your DP and your director. And you’re not going to do it by offering up workmanlike and lifeless prose.
“The extensive grounds of the school are surrounded by high hedgerows. Nothing seems to connect it with the rest of the world except a single grey ribbon of road.”(Alex Garland) or “The school which is surrounded by a high hedgerow is the only building in sight”. Which would you rather read?
You’ve got roughly 6000 lines in a feature. You’ve got to feed your actors and your art department and your DP and your director. And you’re not going to do it by offering up workmanlike and lifeless prose.
“The extensive grounds of the school are surrounded by high hedgerows. Nothing seems to connect it with the rest of the world except a single grey ribbon of road.”(Alex Garland) or “The school which is surrounded by a high hedgerow is the only building in sight”. Which would you rather read?
You can stil be colorful in your descriptions without breaking the rules.
JANICE places the bowl of stew in front of TOM. He looks at it, frightened.
can also be written:
JANICE places the bowl of stew in front of TOM. He looks at swirling pool of sickly color and immediately goes pale. Sheer, primal horror can be seen in his eyes.
but it shouldn't be written this way:
We see JANICE place a bowl of stew in front of TOM.
CLOSE UP--
on his eyes as horror pierces his soul and this bowl of crap stares his down. He thinks back to the time when he got sick eating that Philly cheese steak from that kosher deli. WTF was he thinking? Kosher deli? Jesus Christ!
Another thing that people should remember is that the majority of us are trying to go pro with this writing-thing. For the most part, we recognize the rules of script format. Going against them is like purposely blowing a red light during your driver's test because you want to stick it to the man. It's still wrong.
Reading and learning from professional screenplays is a tricky thing.
I believe it’s true that there are some things that the pros do that we can’t.
But I also believe that this can blind us from the fact that there are also things that we can do and should be imitating.
That’s part of the reason why pro scripts read like a movie, while it often requires a painful amount of effort to picture amateur scenes in your mind.
An example from “Dead Silence” script:
Code
INT. LIPTON’S ROOM, ´COME ON INN´HOTEL – SAME
This ain’t the Hilton.
Enter the format nazi to ask “How can the camera record that ´this ain’t the Hilton´?
Duh.
Literally, it can’t. But the description, with few words, paints a clear visual in my mind: a crappy hotel room.
Another example from “Matrix Revolutions” script:
Code
RAMA
I went to the Frenchman to save my daughter.
Neo struggles with the idea of a Machine loving another Machine.
Enter the format nazi: “How can the camera record Neo’s inner thoughts”.
Duh.
Even Keanu Reeves can put a confused face. The description line is just telling that the character looks confused because of what he just heard. Much more interesting to read it this way, than read a dry amateur description of the specific physical changes in the actor’s face.
I’m glad you brought this up, Martin. It’s been bugging me for a while.
Oh, and welcome to the site “me”. You look hot familiar. Do I know you?
Nice to see a good debate getting started here. It seems like most of us are on the same page. Tierney summed it up quite nicely. It's less about rules and more about letting your writing breathe without fretting over which faux pas you might be commiting.
Quoted from dogglebe
Another thing that people should remember is that the majority of us are trying to go pro with this writing-thing. For the most part, we recognize the rules of script format. Going against them is like purposely blowing a red light during your driver's test because you want to stick it to the man. It's still wrong.
I call BS on this statement.
We're not talking basics like courier font and sluglines, we're talking about style choices and voice.
My argument is that unless you start writing like the pros, you'll never become one.
The notion that there is a different set of rules for pros and amateurs is a MYTH.
That's what I'm really saying here. Spec writers are limiting themselves by a set of rules that aren't really rules. They're just guidelines.
If your writing is great, it'll shine through any formatting quirks you might have. In fact the quirks often contribute to the quality of the writing i.e. they are a part of the writer's unique voice.
If your writing is insipid and your story is dull, nobody will consider your script because you ticked all the format boxes.
So, it's similar to literature. Writers need to take risks in screenwriting. But I think it takes a long time for that writer to develop that voice and style choices. And they learn these is by following the rules in the beginning. It invovles alot of pratice in screewnriting. Rules should exist, in the beginning, but once the writer feels comfortable with them then he or she can say fuck the rules. But I do agree that screenwriting should have some flexibilty in the description field. But I think this done so becuase of the 1 pg is 1 minute of film rule. Money affects the creativity.
Gabe
Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
We see JANICE place a bowl of stew in front of TOM.
CLOSE UP--
on his eyes as horror pierces his soul and this bowl of crap stares his down. He thinks back to the time when he got sick eating that Philly cheese steak from that kosher deli. WTF was he thinking? Kosher deli? Jesus Christ!
Yeah, that's horribly wrong. Seriously, who's going to think of a cheese steak when stew is put in front of them? Where's the tie in, where's the subtext? Other than the cheese steak, there's no meat to it.
Anyway, to get back on track, there are some things that I see flagged as not being filmable, when in fact they are. An actor can interpret words on the page, just as easily as a writer can put them there. An annoyed person can be filmed. I use that example because I saw that in feedback recently.
There's a fine line between "blowing a red light" and just not knowing what you're doing. A good example is a line from Bert's "Starbuck Starr".
"I mean, this guy is like lightning."
That's a description of how fast he is on the draw. I remember this because he got a lot of flack for it. Hell, I even think I joined in on that one. Looking back, it was probably a waste of time to go on and on about it. Why? Because the rest of the script was spot on, and I know that Bert knows what he's doing.
Sure, it probably could have been worded a little differently, but to condemn the entire script to the trash bin based on that one line, is probably going just a little bit overboard.
The notion that there is a different set of rules for pros and amateurs is a MYTH.
That's what I'm really saying here. Spec writers are limiting themselves by a set of rules that aren't really rules. They're just guidelines.
Exactly.
This is a sample from two unproduced screenwriters whose spec Pierre Pierre was bought by Fox Atomic for Jason Reitman as a follow up to Juno.
--- Then something unexpected happens: The film turns into vibrant Technicolor! (Note: From this point, Pierre Pierre remains in color until the end of the third act.) PIERRE looks around, noticing the sudden color.
FAIRBORN (grinning knowingly) The world appears different with money. Doesn't it, Pierre? --- The entire screenplay is full of stage direction, embedded music and rule smashing. It's also a funny and fun read.
And that's what Hollywood buys from first time writers. They buy things like Juno and Pierre Pierre. Something fresh and fun to read. They don't buy straight to dvd horror or action. They have that stuff in bulk. They want voices and just enough quirk to not frighten the movie going audience in Nebraska.
Nice to see a good debate getting started here. It seems like most of us are on the same page. Tierney summed it up quite nicely. It's less about rules and more about letting your writing breathe without fretting over which faux pas you might be commiting.
If your writing is insipid and your story is dull, nobody will consider your script because you ticked all the format boxes.
The last time we had this conversation (or maybe the time before that), I brought up a day in the life of a Holywood script reader. He has to pull fifteen or twenty scripts out of the slush pile every day and find a reason why these scripts shouldn't be forwarded to his bosses for consideration.
If the first script is as thick as a phone book, it goes in the garbage without even being opened. A real screenwriter knows better than to submit a four hundred page script.
If the second script is printed on coral-colored paper, that also goes in the garbage without being loked at. Professionals know what color and type of paper.
The third script is stapled. The fourth is accobound. The fifth has artwork on it so incredible that it could hang in a museum. Not packaging a script the way it should be is the sign of an amateur. Garbage. Garbage. Garbage.
The script reader has just rejected five scripts without even turning to page one. A quarter of his day's work is done in a matter of minutes.
Script number six is entitled "The Phoenix V Clone Wars." The reader works for a studio that doesn't do science fiction. Garbage.
Script number seven is entitled "Star Trek: McCoy's Last Days." Paramount has the rights to the Star Trek fanchise. Garbage.
Script number eight, "Freddy vs. Leatherface." Fuck me. Garbage.
Script number nine, "The Last Widow." Pencilled on the title page are the words, "Not my best work. Call me." The reader will read this--no he won't. It goes in the garbage!
Script number ten is mssing a title page. Garbage.
Half of the way through and the reader's been at his desk only twenty minutes. Atleast he got past the cardstock covers before he tossed them.
Script number eleven is formatted with left justification. Dialogue is not centered. The writer doesn't know what he's doing. Hook shot to the garbage!
Number twelve uses a smaller font than usual. And the left and right margins are only half an inch. This 100 page script is probably closer to 160-170 pages. Garbage.
Number thirteen fades in on eight army helicopters crashing into each other over Times Square at the clock strikes twelve on New Years Eve. Sorry but the agency doesn't produce films with budgets exceeding fifteen billion dollars.
Number fourteen, "The Truck." Hmm, the first fifteen pages show six teens--a jock, a princess, a nerd, a goth, a deadhead, a poet, the school brain, and a fat slob talking about how their lives suck. We don't know what the story is about yet and have no idea hoe a truck plays into it. Garbage.
Number fifteen. A lot of camera angles and WE SEEs. Sign of an amateur writing. Nothing but net!
Number sixteen. Chock full of spelling and gramatical errors. Atleast six mistakes on the first page alone. Garbage.
Number seventeen. "The Evil Mister Jones." Script opens with the title character raping a retardedten year old girl. Very graphic. If this is how you show the villain is a bad, then you can't write. Garbage!
Number eighteen. "A Christmas Wish." Opens with a funeral of an old man, a beloved family figure. The main character, ten year old Billy, has to come to terms with his grandfather's death only three days before Christmas. Reads well. Properly written. I'll put this one aside for now.
Number nineteen. "Simplyscripts: The Movie." Three hundred wannabe writers sit in fron of their computers and write...or argue about writing. Visually, it's very dull and our target audiences won't go for it.
Number twenty. "The Goonies Return." JFC! How many times has that girl submitted this script? Thirty? Forty?
Number twenty-one. Wow! The first four pages consist of one long paragraph of a character climbing into his car and driving to Pennsylvania. No dialogue at all! Guess what? Garbage!
If you figure that each script averages 100 pages, this poor schmuck would have to read 2000 pages a day. I'll repeat that: 2000 pages a day.
Most script readers read only the first ten or fifteen pages of a script. If he's not hooked by then, the script lands in the garbage. The one that intrigues him (if there is one) is read to completion....unless something in the script turns the reader off. If he thinks your an amateur writer, he'll put you down before he can discover that your script is the next Juno. It doesn't matter how good it is if it's not read. Is it fair? No! Is it fair that he has to read shit day in and day out, looking for the that one pearl? Actually, it is. It's his job. But it doesn't mean he has to read an entire script if he thinks it was written by an amateur.
Don't give him a reason to think it was written by an amateur.
A lot of those things you pointed out (font size and type, colored paper, artwork, etc...) nobody is disagreeing with. That's not really what this thread is about.
One that intrigued me though, is script # 7, the Star Trek one...
Why would the company even request a copy of it if they didn't own the rights?
90% of your post is arguing points that haven't even been mentioned in this thread.
Also, I think you have a somewhat skewed view of what a script reader does. I've been a low-level reader for an agency. If the agency requests a script, they'll get a low level guy to read it, and write coverage, which means reading the whole damn thing regardless of how bad it is.
Scripts won't get passed up the chain to mister trash can producer guy unless they pass all the basics and show some merit.
I'll call you on a couple of things though.
"Number fifteen. A lot of camera angles and WE SEEs. Sign of an amateur writing. Nothing but net!"
BS, see elsewhere in the thread. Nobody cares about this crap.
"The one that intrigues him (if there is one) is read to completion....unless something in the script turns the reader off."
This is the attitude I'm talking about. It's a misconception that readers are looking for any old excuse to toss a script. The reality is that Mr. Jaded Script Reader is sick of reading the same old generic, lifeless drivel, and he just wants to be blown away by something dazzling.
Great writing will do that.
Great writing will do that on the very first page. See the sample pages in the first post in this thread. If you were a reader, would you throw out either of those because of the "errors" on the first page? I sure as hell wouldn't. In just a page both writers have demonstrated their talents as writers, and producers are looking for talent, not formatting experts.
Striving for mediocrity won't get us anywhere.
We have to show our talents. Why should the "rules" hold us back? Especially when the pros don't even consider them rules.
If they don't do sci fi, why would they accept a sci fi script?
Who said this agency asked for them? Some writers are just idiots who will mail in a script because they have someone's address. They submit a script without even asking if they could. I remember reading, somewhere how an agency (or production company) has a 200 page script faxed to them. Two hundred pages of an unsolicited script faxed in!
Many people submit a script thinking, "They don't normally accept science fiction, but how can you go wrong with Harry Potter 2525?"
90% of your post is arguing points that haven't even been mentioned in this thread.
I'm showing how little it would take for your script to be thrown in the trash. When you're starting out, you shouldn't be changing decades-old formatting rules.
Also, I think you have a somewhat skewered view of what a script reader does. I've been a low-level reader for an agency. If the agency requests a script, they'll get a low level guy to read it, and write coverage, which means reading the whole damn thing regardless of how bad it is.
Scripts won't get passed up the chain to mister trash can producer guy unless they pass all the basics and show some merit.?
And if the reader has a script that makes his sphincter tighten up after two pages of reading, he's not going to pass it along. And if those two pages are so filled with formating errors--thus, making it a difficult read--he's not going to keep reading it.
How many times do scripts get better after the first thirty pages? A number of writers, here, have said that theirs does. I sincerely doubt that they do.
We have to show our talents. Why should the "rules" hold us back? Especially when the pros don't even consider them rules.
You have to show your talent using the guidelines that are used in the industry. Can you bend the rules a little bit? Yes. You can! Can you completely toss the formatting rules aside, making it difficult to read? No. You can't!
In homebrewing competitions, beers are judges by flavor, aroma, mouthfeel, and what the beer looks like in the glass. No points are given or taken away because the bottles that the entries come in. However, when an entry arrives in a sticky, dirty bottle, the judges' opinion are immediately swayed and the entry will lose a point or two because the judges' first opinions have been jaded by a poor first impression.
Finally, of all to things to learn about scriptwriting, isn't formatting the easiest part?
The third script is stapled. The fourth is accobound. The fifth has artwork on it so incredible that it could hang in a museum. Not packaging a script the way it should be is the sign of an amateur. Garbage. Garbage. Garbage.
A little off topic but what exactly is the proper way to package a script? The only time I ever print scripts is when I'm having them copyrighted. I think a long time ago, I might've had a script bound at an office building but other than that, I rarely see scripts on paper.
Back on topic, I think there's a good discussion going on here, not to mention way past due. I agree with Martin that's it's important to find a voice as a writer. I don't think you have to break a lot of rules to find a voice though and the ones that tend to get broken usually aren't all that important (Bert's "fast as lightning" description can absolutely be filmed). For me, I think it's all about having a well-rounded vocabulary so you can, for example, find a more descriptive word for a color rather than going with a straightforward red, blue, green, etc. That's one way you can paint a picture without eating away too much at the white on the page.
Who said this agency asked for them? Some writers are just idiots who will mail in a script because they have someone's address. They submit a script without even asking if they could. I remember reading, somewhere how an agency (or production company) has a 200 page script faxed to them. Two hundred pages of an unsolicited script faxed in!
I had a feeling that was going to be your response.
If that's the case, the script is going to be shit-canned whether it's Freddy vs. Leatherface or the next Casablanca, on white card stock or covered with money, simply because it's unsolicited.
James,
Correct packaging is three hole punched, with brads in the top and bottom holes. 1 1/4" or 1 1/2" brads, I believe. White or gray card stock covers on front and back, with nothing printed/written on them. All that info goes on the title page.
As Shelton says an unsolicited script ends up in the trash regardless. It won't even make it past the mail room.
That's not what we're talking about here. There's a process to getting your script read.
It starts with a dynamite query letter. A good way to filter out idiot writers and material the prodco isn't interested in.
If a company requests a script they've already established that the writer can a) string a decent query together, and b) has an idea for a story that interests them
When a script ends up in a reader's lap, they have to read the whole thing and write coverage, including a synopsis.
As for formatting being the easiest thing to learn. You're right, basic formatting is easy to learn, but that's not really what this thread is about. Read my earlier posts.
Back on topic, I think there's a good discussion going on here, not to mention way past due. I agree with Martin that's it's important to find a voice as a writer. I don't think you have to break a lot of rules to find a voice though and the ones that tend to get broken usually aren't all that important (Bert's "fast as lightning" description can absolutely be filmed). For me, I think it's all about having a well-rounded vocabulary so you can, for example, find a more descriptive word for a color rather than going with a straightforward red, blue, green, etc. That's one way you can paint a picture without eating away too much at the white on the page.
It is one thing to find your voice. It's another thing to ignore the rules.
Once, I had someone here criticize me for describing a character as 'the girl next door.' While it's not a die-hard description of the character (you couldn't pull someone out of a police line-up with it), it described the essence of the character.
This is not the same as a character remembering 'the girl who got away.'
If that's the case, the script is going to be shit-canned whether it's Freddy vs. Leatherface or the next Casablanca, on white card stock or covered with money, simply because it's unsolicited.
How many excellent scripts, do you think, were trashed because of something like this? Something that could easily be corrected? Wouldn't that upset you if you learned that your script wasn't even look at because you stapled the pages together?
Or because you submitted a shooting script instead of a spec script?
Or because of misspelled words?
Every job requires you to follow someone else's rules. Why not screenwriting?
If I opened a discussion about whether second-person present-tense is an effective form of prose, you'd probably respond with "writers should be able to spell their own name"
Go back and read the first post. I'd love to see you pick apart the examples I posted and show me how you'd "fix" them.
This is an interesting debate going on, especially for someone who has only learnt what he knows so far from this site and people on it.
I think the main thing for a site like this is for people not to discourage people due to format issues or breaking the rules. If you've told someone once about something they are doing wrong and they do it again, simply don't read another script by them.
Personally, I take on board all format comments about something I post, simply because I don't know enough about it myself. I am going to be buying 'The Bible' soon though so will have a better understanding of it hopefully.
Little football(soccer) analogy - If you have a poor football player, you tell him to keep it simple. Don't do anything too fancy. If you've got the next Pele on your hands you tell him to do whatever he wants.
Martin, Thank you for starting this thread. It has been a great read and I am worried it is starting to fall apart now just when it was getting good. I too have been questioning on whether what I am doing is really the best way to learn to be a screenwriter, But maybe as James and others have said It was worthwhile taking the time to learn the rules before having a serious crack at a feature, and I guess with that in mind probably lessons worth learning.
But I have begun to get a bit disillusioned with screenwriting recently, it is just all feeling too formulaic as though I were painting by numbers and this site sometimes really does seem to value formatting over content. I really want to learn how to find my own voice, how to write a screenplay that will have a chance of being sold and I really want to soak in as much from other writers as possible but the more I read on here the more I realise how many scripts on here seem like they were written by the same person. (Maybe they are, maybe apart from the usual crowd the rest are all written by Don!! )
Of course don't get me wrong there are some great scripts on here and some great writers, there are some individual voices peaking through the pages but there could be more. Threads like this should be much more commonplace on this forum, these are the debates that are helpful to us newbies and will help me better my craft. I know I am as guilty as anyone in getting bogged down in pointless debates and arguments about genres or the merits of Michael Bay and I have already decided to stop contributing to such debates. If there were more threads like this it would be easier! And just looking at the replies to this thread is proof enough that this site is exactly what I first thought it was. So hopefully we can start to redress the balance in our reviews, as well as helping the newbies get the formatting right can we not start to look at ways of reviewing that will really help us find our voices, write better stories, make a screenplay that is as individual as we all are?
Janney says: "Diablo Cody's script for Juno was very, very special. It struck me in the first two pages her dialogue and rhythms. At first you wonder, is it believable? [[ But then I met her and yes, that's pretty much how she talks.]]" How rare is it to find such a distinctive voice in a new writer?, "really rare. There are so many writers and storylines that are too familiar."
Now the minute I read that I asked myself "How can I get someone to say that about my screenplay?" Not through fonts and margins, not through never saying 'we' or 'ing'. And the truth is I still am unsure, I have a pile of books that talk about structure, format and acts but nothing that talks about being different, individual or finding a voice.
This is from page 2 of Juno..
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Juno marching down various street, pumping her arms like a jogger and chugging intermittently from the huge carton of juice. We watch her breathlessly navigate suburbia, clearly on a mission
Lots of 'ings' and even a 'we watch', "how do we know she is on a mission, Cody told us, she never showed us " etc...
If there is anything I want from this site is to learn how to write a screenplay that sounds like me!
If there is anything I want from this site is to learn how to write a screenplay that sounds like me!
That springs from loving what you are write, Gary. Writing for yourself, and trusting your audience to "get it".
You can try to write the next souless blockbuster -- hell, you might even succeed -- but if that is why you are writing, most of it will probably ring pretty hollow.
Loving your characters and the story you have fashioned -- having fun instead of calculating which page should contain the next plot point -- that is where your voice will come from.
When you wrote "National Pride", that had its share of "voice". I think you knew it would not be the most popular script on the boards, appealing to only a few, but it was obviously a script you wanted to write. And it is arguably your best work.
Too many authors around here write about psychopathic killers and motiveless hitmen because they think that is what people want to read. And that is why they are virtually carbon copies of one another -- because they are writing to an audience, not for themselves. The stories have no voice of their own -- they are just echoes.
That is, in part, what the OWC was about. It has grown too large now, but in the early days, many of the authors were identified long before the names were revealed. There were voices and styles that one could identify.
If you want to develop an identifiable voice, you have to write what you love, write for yourself, and trust that your audience will find you.
And I have moved to the camp that believes bending a few rules can help with that. Starbuck Starr was mentioned a few times on this thread (thanks guys), and those scripts are actually filled with stuff you ain't supposed to do -- on purpose.
Not all of it worked, but frankly, it was the most fun I ever had while writing something that was eventually posted on these boards.
Try it sometime. Pick a story you are working on, toss caution to the wind, and see what happens. You might fail miserably. But that, too, is part of finding a voice.
That springs from loving what you are write, Gary. Writing for yourself, and trusting your audience to "get it".
I think you are 100% correct here Bert, this must be it.
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When you wrote "National Pride", that had its share of "voice". I think you knew it would not be the most popular script on the boards, appealing to only a few, but it was obviously a script you wanted to write. And it is arguably your best work.
Thanks Bert, I really appreciate that because it is without doubt my clear favorite of the scripts I have written.
I have taken a step back recently and apart from my Scarefest experiment (which i did not enjoy writing) and a silly little 5 pager for the Movie Poet site I have not written anything since January. I felt I was just writing for the sake of it and not really improving or getting anywhere. I am going to be starting something this weekend and will be thinking about this thread when I do.
When Tierney mentioned that some writers don't allow their work to breath, I was reminded of an article by Phillip Lopate that I posted on the General Chat board.
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Workshops like those offered by Robert McKee, taken by thousands of wannabe scriptwriters, break down the screenplay into bite-sized formulae. Manuals like Syd Field’s Screenplay dispense wisdom such as “The days of ambiguous endings are over,” and where the first major “plot point” should occur. Tom Laughlin, of Billy Jack fame, offers a newsletter subscription guaranteeing you mastery over the nine plot points which will make a successful movie. Actually much of what Syd Field and others like him say makes sense. The problems occur when their prescriptions are applied too literally: the movie develops a homogenized, mechanical, predictable pace. Too many studio executives in Hollywood take Field’s or McKee’s ideas religiously: we were better off when the world was wired to Harry Cohn’s A**. The prevailing mantra in film schools is that movies are above all are a visual medium; therefore dialogue must be kept to a minimum, or you risk sounding “literary”; a voiceover is a “literary device” and a form of “cheating”; “literary” is bad. Translation: words and ideas are bad. The result is a fearfulness that creeps into the screenwriter’s intestines whenever his characters start to speak up for more than two sentences. One important result is that the scenes are getting shorter. Sometimes very short indeed: in action movies, one character may say “s***!” and another say “Duck!” and that is all she wrote. The shorter the scene, the less chance there is for that tension between characters to reach danger point where true communication can break out between them. As scenes grow shorter, too much pressure is put on the wisecrack, inserted between expletives and hot pursuit, to carry the load of character shading. The art of writing movie dialogue has become less a matter of constructing scenes than of coining one-liners that can be quoted as marketing slogans in trailers and advertising campaigns. Dirty Harry’s pioneering “Make my day” has become “Schwarzenegger’s “Hasta la vista” and on down to “That guy can make a bomb out of Bisquik.”
I think the best way to sound like you -- to find your own voice – is to expand on the repertoire. Try things that you never have before.
I’m obsessed with character description. How can I tell a reader everything they need to know about this person in 2-4 lines? So, here’s a mini sort of unsanctioned writing exercise/challenge. Write a description of a character where you actually have to describe your character’s character.
Here are two examples of character description from 2007:
1. JUNO - JUNO MacGUFF stands on a placid street in a nondescript subdivision, facing the curb. It’s FALL. Juno is sixteen years old, an artfully bedraggled burnout kid.
What do you now about Juno? She lives in the ‘burbs, she’s sixteen and she’s wearing the burnout uniform as only kids from the suburbs can. She’s not really a burnout. It is just a pose.
2. MICHAEL CLAYTON - MARTY BACH looks up from his papers. He’s seventy. It’s his name on the door. Big power. Sweet eyes. A thousand neckties. A velvet switchblade.
You know everything you need to know about this man based on the introduction. Anything you learn about him in the script will confirm and expand on these sentences.
I encourage everyone to try it who is interested in finding their voice. Good and revealing character description forces you to write like a writer and not a technician.
There's only so much you can learn from rules. You're writing so you can tell the story that came to your head the way it came. If you're not doing that, something is inhibiting you that needs to go. Endless rewrites are a waste of time. Three should be the limit, unless someone's paying you for another. Filmmakers will change things to suit their purposes anyhow, so put the script in as good shape as you can, then rest your case. Move on to the next project.
The reality of the situation and the theoretical ideal.
Breaking the rules will not stop you selling a script, in fact the reverse may well be true, it may help to sell your script.
As Martin points out, it gets very boring reading scripts. If you as a writer introduce flowery descriptions, it is easier to convince a reader that it is a good script. But a script that is interesting to read is not necessarily the same thing as a script that will make for an interesting FILM!
David Mamet (who for me is one of the very few decent screen writers currently working in "Hollywood") addresses this issue very well in Bambi vs Godzilla.
He points out that the presence of unfilmmables is perhaps the biggest reason why so many crap films get made, the writers manage to convince readers (who write coverage for the Producers who HARDLY EVER read the script ) using pointless, but interesting to read description, to give them good coverage.
It's one of the great ironies of the Studio system, that the lowliest people in the company are the first gatekeepers of quality.
The greatest is perhaps that the people who give you the money to make a film usually haven't got the first clue about writing, story sense, character development etc They are accountants and lawyers.
The reality of the world is that it is not necessariy the best scripts that get made, it is just those scripts that persuade people that they are good scripts. Or persuade people they could sell.
I get sent scripts all the time. I've read thousands. I would never turn a script down because it broke the rules BUT equally I have never read a script, no matter how well written, that used unfilmmables in such a way as it would make the final product, the FILM, better in any way.
The format rules allow an infinite variety of audio and visual information to be presented. If you cannot present an interesting story within the confines of them, then you cannot write a script that will make an interesting film.
As a Director, if I come across something that is unflimmable and think is interesting, I then have to re-write the script to incorporate the idea in a visual form. In other words, I have to re-write the script as it should have been written in the first place. Either that or strike it out, as it has no bearing on what gets on the screen.
For a good story, would I be willing to do that? Absolutely. The point remains however.
Screenwriting is an art that very few people actually master. The vast majority of paid professionals included. Some of the greatest novellists can't write scripts. Why?
Because they use words to evoke emotional responses when a screenwriter should be using images and sound. The words are just an abstract language to describe the things we see and hear.
Another Writer is correct and rightly quotes Derek Haas as saying it doesn't matter what you write. Clearly it doesn't. Derek Haas has only written terrible scripts like Invincible, 2 fast 2 furious. His only success was to be involved in a re-write of 3:10 to Yuma. The only reason that was a success is because of the direction of Mangold (Cop Land, Walk the Line etc). He still has 4 huge budget films in various stages of production however. The scripts he has written have been turned into financially successful films. So he gets more money.
Here's the rub. If you are a great writer, you don't need to break the rules. If you aren't, there could be something to be said for deliberately breaking them. A few power phrases here and there could turn your mediocre script into a more sellable script than the clone next to it. They'll be the same film though.
And always remember that in the real world the test of quality is not critical reception, it is how many people pay to watch it.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are writers on here who, were they more canny with their networking and more business like in their outlook, could sell scripts.
Now having said all that, I will address the more "artistic" rules ie those mentioned about Mckee etc. All artistic rules can be broken, and are frequently. But you should absolutely know the rules in the first place so that you can break them to create a desired effect. You can't be Avant-garde unless you know what you are avant to.
I'll break down this script as a Director/ Producer to highlight the problems with breaking the rules.
This is a script that Martin was hugely impressed by. I personally would agree that the fella can write, but argue that he is a terrible screenwriter.
I'll show you why. Hopefully it may be of use to some of you.
EXT. PRIVATE AIRPORT -- DAY 1
[b]Dark, gray day. TWO CORPORATE JETS idling on the runway. Big jets, engines whining, faced-off across a hundred yards of blacktop.
TWO LONE FIGURES -- one from each plane -- marching toward the empty middle in SUPER-SLO-MOTION...
ON THE LEFT -- THE BURKETT & RANDLE JET. The famous blue- onred B&R logo tattooed across its frame. AN ANXIOUS GROUP OF EMPLOYEES -- ASSISTANTS, VICE PRESIDENTS, FLIGHT CREW -- all gathered near the step-ramp, watching HOWARD TULLY, their beloved CEO, striding off into the breach. TULLY the legendary titan. The mythic boardroom shogunate.
Problems already.
1.Ask yourself this. How do I as a director show that someone is a Vice President? There are two options a label on jacket or someone says it in dialogue.
Neither are in the script. As a director I have to ask myself if this information is important to the story. It appears not. So scratch it. It's pointless. If it's pointless why is it in the script?
2. How does the audience know he is called Howard Tully? Answer, they don't.
In the film as written he is just an anonymous man.
The writers intent is to show that this man is loved by his employees, but he has failed to include anything that would suggest this.
As a Director I have to ask whether this info is important or not. I would conclude that it is CRUCIAL. So I would have to re-write the script. Show his employees wishing him well (and calling him boss). Perhaps a secetary kisses him on the cheek.
Perhaps a luggage guy says "Who's that". "What do you mean who's that? That's Howard Tully the legendary business guy".
Hopefully you see the point. It's not a script. It's prose in a script format. All you have is a tall, anonymous guy getting off a plane in the way it is written and a worried looking entourage, but we have no way of knowing why they are worried as the scriptwriter has omitted it from the film.
We're a paragraph in and already I'm having to completely redesign the film from the ground up to make it into a FILM.
ON THE RIGHT -- THE EQUIKROM JET. Slick and aggressive. Silver and green. ANOTHER WORRIED ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watching RICHARD "SICK DICK" GARSIK rushing forward into noman's- land. GARSIK the buccaneer CEO. A corporate carnivore in his prime. Hypervisionary. Hypereffective. Hyperactive.
Meaningless guff. Again we don't know who he is, he has not been introduced by anyone on the screen. The writer is trying to establish him as the greedy bad guy but has failed to include ONE SINGLE ACTION that demonstrates this on camera.
Hypervisionary
How do I show this? I'd have to have a separate montage showing him creating great plans or have someone say it IE "Go get him Dick. You're Sick Dick, Hypervisionary, corporate cannibal" blah blah "You'll kill this guy".
Either that or scratch it.
I as the Director again have to completely re-write the script to stick with the writers intention.
I already know that this guy can't carry a script. He's got no concept of filmmaking.
CREDITS ROLLING as this slow-motion encounter ripens. And no, this will not be a cordial union of peers. Both men yelling -- screaming -- as they draw closer. Words lost beneath the roar of the turbines. Arms waving. Toe-to-toe. The Finger In The Face. The Belly Bump. The Huff and Puff. The Touch-Me-One-More- Time until...
Fine on the surface, but what is the writer trying to get across here? Who is the aggressor? Who does what? This is crucial information that the audience will use to make it's first and lasting impression of the characters and the writer has completely omitted it.
Dreadful writing.
Clearly as a Director, i have the impression that the writer wants to show Tully to be the good guy. Does that mean that Garsik should be the more aggressive? The script has only just opened and already the writer has lost control of his two characters.
They are behaving in an indeterminate fashion, both are indistiguishable. Isn't one of them supposed to be beloved and the other a corporate carnivore?
A punch is thrown.
[b]Even the majestic influence of slow-motion can't pretty this up. It's an instant, ugly, awkward playground brawl.[/b]
Contradiction. Is it instant or in slo mo? Majestic slo mo suggests a twee love scene. What is happening in this scene. A punch is thrown, does it connect? Who threw it? What happened? Absolutely no information again.
As the Director I have to make up the entire scene. I have to choose the aggressor, choose everything that happens.
Clearly the writer wants Garsik to be the bad guy. So he should be throwing the punch. Why isn't that in the script?
Even the tone of the piece is offputting. Is this supposed to be comedic? I'd have to say so, so the word ugly seems incongrous.
At this point I'm thinking the writer has not got a clue what he is doing. He's just throwing words around without any cohesive idea of the point he is trying to make.
This little segment reads well enough, but it isn't even the basis for a storyboard, let alone a film.
He has left every creative choice up to the Director.
That in a nutshell is the difference between being a writer, and being a screenwriter.
Writers often write awesome stories. Stories that Directors/Producers want to make.
They fix these things you mention in numerous rewrites.... at least that's what I've been told to do...
If you are going to fix them, why make the mistake in the first place?
Maybe I've missed something, but there is a distinct lack of "awesome stories" being written. This is a common sense and integral part of screenwriting, if you can't get it right (and it's basic stuff: Is it on the screen or not?) then the chances are you won't be able to handle the nuances of character development, plot etc
By all means develop a voice, but don't leave character information and actions out of the script. That's the whole point.
I guess what I tried to say is that we all try to do our best. When someone writes an awesome story (yes I've read several here) and a director/producer finds the script and wants to shoot it, they don't seem to say "nah, this one wasn't written visually enough. Too bad because I really liked the story. Next!".
Usually what the directors do is a lot of major rewrites when this happens. And what happens at the end is that the script is no longer what the writer wrote.
I'm not criticising anyone. There are numerous writers on this site whose work I respect.
I'm just pointing out that if you want to write a truly great script then there is absolutely no reason not to stick to the rules. Breaking them adds nothing to the story. It can only present problems, as I demonstrated.
The reality is that you can convince a director or producer to develop a script with you based on an idea written on the back of a cigarette box.
You can also write short stories and have them turned into features, look at Philip K. Dick.
The thing is, if you want to write a script, write an actual script.
Just like you, I read a shiteload of scripts. A lot of those are written by people who previously have written novels and are new to screenwriting. Often their scripts are far from resembling screenplays. However, as a "wanna be" filmmaker, if I read one of those and the story itself blows me away, I'm not going to toss it in the trash and say "what a shame it was written like a novel". IMHO, the story will always trump the writing. GOOD stories are a lot harder to come by than a crummy boring story visually written.
Martin may have loved the script mentioned and been able to visualize it in his mind even if you did not feel the same way about it.
Film is an art and as such subjective. Obviously you and I differ some in our thoughts. I don't believe that makes either of us wrong...
At some point that story is going to be have to turned into a script.
For me it's not a matter of subjective opinion. It's not a question of whether the story was good or not. It's simply a question of what is and what is not a script.
Any director would have to alter the script to be able to film it and get the writer's intention across as I showed. That means there is a technical flaw with the script, whether you like the story or not.
Most of the stories that get turned into films are novels or short stories. Indeed in the old studio days most writers were encouraged to write prose before they turned it into a screenplay. It's easier to develop plot and character in prose and then translate those ideas into visual actions.
As you yourslef have noticed, many excellent writers struggle to write good scripts. Here's why:
Script writing is about telling a story through visual and audio means.
It's not about writing prose. You can jazz up any script with a thesaurus, and it will fool a lot of people. But once the fancy words have gone and the film is in production all you have is the picture on the screen.
The point is a screenplays function is to be a blueprint for a FILM. If it has to be altered to function in such a manner then there is clearly something wrong with it.
"IMHO, the story will always trump the writing. GOOD stories are a lot harder to come by than a crummy boring story visually written."
The problem here is that the quality of the writing is disguising a crummy story.
Look at the second example. All it is is a guy with a buzz cut waking up on a train.
That's the film. That's all the audience will see. The quality of the writing is being used to disguise the fact that he has started his film with one of the oldest cliches in the book.
You can't hide behind colourful description on the screen. So you shouldn't do it in a script.
Keep in mind, also, that the more you describe something, the more likely you will say something that a filmmaker doesn't like. It may go against how he sees the story. A great example of this would be to include songs in the script.
I think Tony Gilroy is an interesting writer and director. I guess he didn’t feel the need to rewrite himself to make this qualify as filmable by Decadence's standards.
I’ll just poke at a few things:
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Problems already.
1.Ask yourself this. How do I as a director show that someone is a Vice President? There are two options a label on jacket or someone says it in dialogue.
The writer has assistants, flight crew and vice presidents. You don’t know the difference between those three? You don’t think wardrobe (suit), props (corporate security badge and a Rolex) and make-up (killer haircut) knows how to make someone look like the vice president of a company standing near a corporate jet with a big logo on it?
Quoted Text
2. How does the audience know he is called Howard Tully? Answer, they don't.
In the film as written he is just an anonymous man.
The writers intent is to show that this man is loved by his employees, but he has failed to include anything that would suggest this.
So, you want all characters to be introduced without names? You can’t use a character name until someone says it in dialogue? Huh?. I can only imagine how confusing you just made the production manager and casting director’s lives.
You have a bunch of extras all clustered around the ramp of a plane gazing up at Howard. Pretty adoring to me. The imagery in fact is almost religious. Who would waste page count having extras who aren’t important to the story speak? Who would waste the money giving lines to background. A director’s job is to direct background. Tell them to adore. They’re actors. They’ll adore.
As far as the story I’m hooked. These two corporate bigwigs get off a plane and start wailing on each other. I want to turn the page and find out why.
I won’t even go into the stuff about the action scene. Gilroy with his Bourne movies has pretty much reinvented action films. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.
I would back-up what Tierney is saying. When I started screenwriting (all those months ago! lol) I was writing scripts for movie audiences, and still do to a degree. I try to write a script that explain everything in a visual style or through dialogue, but the end result being informing the audience what the story is, "show don't tell!".
I much prefer reading the "professional" scripts, they flow better, they are easier to understand and follow. They are written for directors not for audiences, they contain lots of "we see's" which when we are writing a script that is designed to be filmed I think "we see" is a perfect way of describing the action. But it is the general feeling that not a word is wasted when reading these scripts. They are not scared to use lots of words ending in "ing" that makes for shorter, punchier sentences. Descriptions are short and none are given unless they are needed.
I often find reading that reading a script such as Michael Clayton for example is a lot easier affair than reading a 15 page short on here sometimes, which is weird. It is why I try to stay away from reading any unproduced features on SS too, they are just too hard going. But I can pick up a script from the produced section and comfortably read it within two hours.
Of course the answer is usually that we are not writing spec scripts for directors but script readers, I can understand that fully. I can see the logic in writing it differently for readers as opposed to directors. But the more I read and hear the more I think things are changing, readers do not seem to bother so much anymore, they are looking for the story more than anything else.
Just like you, I read a shiteload of scripts. A lot of those are written by people who previously have written novels and are new to screenwriting. Often their scripts are far from resembling screenplays. However, as a "wanna be" filmmaker, if I read one of those and the story itself blows me away, I'm not going to toss it in the trash and say "what a shame it was written like a novel". IMHO, the story will always trump the writing. GOOD stories are a lot harder to come by than a crummy boring story visually written.
Martin may have loved the script mentioned and been able to visualize it in his mind even if you did not feel the same way about it.
Film is an art and as such subjective. Obviously you and I differ some in our thoughts. I don't believe that makes either of us wrong...
I think some of us here, including me, think that if you want to be a succesful scriptwriter it is probably unwise to try and do stuff differently then the industry standard.
Of course there are examples of people who have broken the rules and still have succeeded, but those are few. I'm pretty sure there are thousands and thousands more who have broken the rules and failed. That's the thing in the entertainment branch: You only hear the succes stories.
If you have a brilliant story, why not write it the way everyone does it? It's still gonna be your brilliant story, and even better, it won't be rejected on format.
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
If you have a brilliant story, why not write it the way everyone does it? It's still gonna be your brilliant story, and even better, it won't be rejected on format.
That's the issue though Avian, "the way everyone does" generally does not apply to the most successful people in the business. The really great scripts that I enjoy reading and have been made into succesful movies are usually not written "the way everybody does".
This is an debate that can rage and rage and people of course have their own ideas on it, and I can see both sides of the debate and agree with parts of them both. But it is true that the strangest thing about screenwriting is that in order to be like the Pro's, the successful people who we all (should) aspire to be, we are actually told not to write in the same style as they do, which is weird really.
That's the issue though Avian, "the way everyone does" generally does not apply to the most successful people in the business. The really great scripts that I enjoy reading and have been made into successful movies are usually not written "the way everybody does".
Are you reading spec scripts or shooting scripts by these people?
There are several ways to tell the audience that Bob is a butcher.
A Introduce Bob in a bloodied smock chopping up a side of beef in his store.
B Write 'BOB (45) climbs into his car. He's a butcher by trade, for most of his life.'
C Introduce Bob on the phone, arguing with his meat supplier about the last order he received.
D Show Bob arriving at a neighborhood picnic where all of his neighbors thank and praise him for the steaks he brought from his shop.
I've explained the problems as clearly as I can, if you want to ignore the advice, then that is fine.
As regards the plane film, the writer was attempting to establish one character as a good guy and one as the bad guy in his opening salvo. Because of the way he wrote it, he failed to do so. He has left all the character action off-screen.
The writer is the one filling the page with pointless chitter, chatter not me. It's either in the film or it isn't. Anything that he wants the audience to know, has to be on the screen.
That is a problem that has to be fixed before the film is shot. If the story is so good then it is possible that the film will get made anyway, as I've said, but there are clear problems with the writing as a blueprint for a film.
All a writer has to do is ask himself one simple question: Is everything that I want to get across on screen?
That's it. If a writer doesn't have the pride in himself to do that, then I would question why.
You are putting yourself in the situation that your script has to be re-wriiten to be turned into a film. Why would you want to do that?
If you do, that is fine. But don't complain if the work is changed beyond all recognition.
That's not a question of style, that's just bad screenwriting IMHO.
I've seen enough of this script to know that it is going to descend into a story full of stereotypical characters.
As regards the strawman argument at the end about Tony Gilroy.
Ultimately Gilroy is an accomplished director. I don't think much of him as a writer personally. Michael Clayton was the only decent thing he's written himself (The vast majority of his work he has just adapted from novels) everything else like the Cutting Edge, For better or worse, Bait was bollocks.
Ultimately Gilroy is an accomplished director. I don't think much of him as a writer personally. Michael Clayton was the only decent thing he's written himself
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one, Rick. I shut Michael Clayborn off after forty minutes because I had no friggin' idea what was going on. George Clooney and Tilda Swinton's characters hadn't even met yet. All I knew was that it was something about lawyers.
That's the issue though Avian, "the way everyone does" generally does not apply to the most successful people in the business. The really great scripts that I enjoy reading and have been made into succesful movies are usually not written "the way everybody does".
Filmmaking is about money.
You break into filmmaking by making a film that sells. There's no great mystery. Write a story, convince a director to make it. Sell it. Then you are a screenwriter.
If you write a script that is made into a successful film, you will get work again. You have proved that your ideas can sell. Whether you can write or not. Look at Derek Haas.
I'm just pointing out what it takes to write a script well. A way that stops you making mistakes (which professionals do all the time, most films made have terrible story lines, plot flaws, weak characters etc Let's not lionise them here.)
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one, Rick. I shut Michael Clayborn off after forty minutes because I had no friggin' idea what was going on. George Clooney and Tilda Swinton's characters hadn't even met yet. All I knew was that it was something about lawyers
It was a pointless film, with no message I'd agree. But he did write it himself and it seems to have been received well by the audience.
That's the issue though Avian, "the way everyone does" generally does not apply to the most successful people in the business. The really great scripts that I enjoy reading and have been made into succesful movies are usually not written "the way everybody does".
Hmmm... the scripts I've read are mostly the same, technically.. At least the formatting, use of terms and such are pretty much the same. Sometimes there's a way of describing a scene or setting that has a writers mark, but on the whole (from what I've read) those are a few sentences, not a wholly different way of setting up a scene.
The structure of the STORY is another thing. The Syd Field Dogma of plot point 1, midpoint, plot point 2 is a very nice blueprint, but this structure is in no way the only way to go... And lots of examples of writers doing it differently with great success.
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one, Rick. I shut Michael Clayborn off after forty minutes because I had no friggin' idea what was going on. George Clooney and Tilda Swinton's characters hadn't even met yet. All I knew was that it was something about lawyers.
Phil
Yeh I don't know what it was with that film but it was... mmm.. boring. Which is pretty bad for a supposed thriller. You could see where it was going from miles away.
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
Hmmm... the scripts I've read are mostly the same, technically.. At least the formatting, use of terms and such are pretty much the same. Sometimes there's a way of describing a scene or setting that has a writers mark, but on the whole (from what I've read) those are a few sentences, not a wholly different way of setting up a scene.
Scripts are easier to read when they're properly formatted. People in the business know the rules and accept this formatting. When you write a script and change things around (like changing the margins, or using left justification for dialog), you're making the reader work harder. This pulls him out of the story he's trying to submerge himself into....
DecadenceFilms so far has criticized Derek Haas and Tony Gilroy. Those hacks! Oscar nominations and huge worldwide grosses with Haas at 320 million and Gilroy at 750 million. You can not like the writing all you want but Hollywood buys their “unfilmable” screenplays and turns them into movies that make money. If you don’t like their work -- or don’t understand it -- maybe it says something about your ability to write a feature that can sell.
Word choice, sentence structure, line breaks = camera positioning and movement. If I describe a character as hyper-anything that says that I want a fluid camera with fast cuts. If you don’t understand that the individual words you chose dictate the pace and look of a shot then don’t write for film. The useless chatter in the Gilroy script tells your actor where to start with the character and helps the various departments buy his clothes and his car and furnish his home. If you don’t understand that you have to do that then don’t write for film.
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There are several ways to tell the audience that Bob is a butcher.
Blood under his fingernails, BOB turns the steering wheel and guides his car down Langdon Road. It’s where the rent boys walk.
A butcher by trade, he watches from behind the safety of the windshield glass as they show their haunches and lean muscles for his benefit. -- Here is the self-analysis of the snippet about what I tried to accomplish with Bob. He’s got blood under his nails and he’s cruising for boys. I call him a butcher. The reader makes the assumption one way or another about what kind of butcher. I layered in something else – I made sure in my description to put Bob behind glass like a butcher in a supermarket. And which side of the glass are the boys on? Are they the meat for sell or are they salesmen with the product? Where is the balance of power? Will the reader get that? Hopefully, on some level.
Do I have Bob in a smock? Talking about meat? Nope. Maybe in the next scene I’ll have him at work cutting some pork tenderloin. Maybe not. I’ve got time to show the reader that Bob really is a butcher. I know what I’m doing. I can layer and refer and build.
I just have to make sure that everything I promise about a character (or a plotline) I fulfill by the time I get to fade out.
Besides the Oscars are about who throws the most money about behind the scenes and are hugely weighted in favour of U.S writers/directors.
List of films from 2007 that are far better written than Michael Clayton:
Control, Silent Light, the Lives of Others, Zodiac, Climates, Away from Her, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Syndromes and a Century, the Painted Veil, Beyond Hatred to just name a few.
Of course, you won't have seen any of them. (maybe Zodiac).
Everything that Haas has been involved with, with the exception of a remake of 3:10, has been shite.
Oh no! The shawdowmen are coming!
I challenge anyone to read Haas's dialogue without laughing.
Gilroys best films are adaptation of already existing materials. When he writes himself he is poor IMO. He is a very accomplished director. Very accomplished.
We're talking about writing ability though.
I can understand why you like him. He's not to my taste, but that's a subjective matter.
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If I describe a character as hyper-anything that says that I want a fluid camera with fast cuts
Explain how that concept fits in with the script that I dissected.
Tell me the shots that you would choose for hypervisionary, hyperactive and hyper-effective in the context of what that writer was trying to establsih in that scene.
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The useless chatter in the Gilroy script tells your actor where to start with the character and helps the various departments buy his clothes and his car and furnish his home
I've seen Michael Clayton. The old man behind a desk is no "velvet switchblade" that's for sure. He's just an old guy behind a desk. If even a writer/director is unable to use his own unfilmmables what's the point?
Maybe it's the reason why almost all the characters in Gilroy films are one and two dimensional plot devices?
Perhaps he thinks by writing unusable character descriptions that he is creating fully-rounded characters. That is the trap and it's one that you should be careful not to fall into.
Understand, this is a site where there are a lot of new writers. I don't have a problem with Tony Gilroy writing unfilmmables per se. Maybe they help him direct. He puts enough visual information in his scripts that he can bend the rules. There is enough in what he wrote to visualise a character. However, the "velvet switchblade" thing did not make it into the film. If it was his intention that it should, he should have written it differently.
The problem is a lot of people put NO visual information in their scripts and BREAK all the rules. Once you can construct fully rounded characters without resorting to describing them, then you can do what you like.
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Seriously, I do wonder what goes in people's heads when they give Hollywood's elite writers the thumbs down and give the nonsensical preachings of screenwriting teachers/gurus (that can only make their money by giving false hope to wannabes) the thumbs up.
For every Hollywood writer that proposes that you can write any old shit and no-one cares (which I've said is the case) there is one who is concerned at the collapse of intelligent films being written and made. I quoted David Mamet who has also been Oscar nominated. As I said, he was very clear about "unfilmmables" and why they are contributing to the amount of rubbish that is being shovelled out. I completely agree with him.
They add nothing to a film, they are just a way of faking that you can write well in order to impress readers.
When all is said and done, the only things that end up on screen are character actions and dialogue. Yes the actors have input, but you can't create something that doesn't exist. If you write that someone is neurotic in the character description, but the character doesn't do anything neurotic, then it simply won't come across.
That is why you get so many cartoon like characters in films, because people don't create believable characters using dialogue and actions. It is precisely because people write in these character descriptions that the actors are forced to invent silly little mannerisms that aren't backed up by the plot.
I also don't believe in a "Hollywood elite". 99.9% of films coming out of Hollywood are tripe. The filmic equivalent of MacDonalds. But if you think Catch that Kid is a testament to the ability of the Hollywood elite, knock yourself out.
Why should I defer to someone who has made exclusively bad films?
Good luck to the guy, I'm glad he's making money from the system but let's not pretend that he is some sort of super-writer.
At the end of the day, I don't hold Hollywood in much regard when it comes to scriptwriting. There is a huge lack of imagination. The films are almost universally formulaic and controversay free, they don't deal with issues in any depth.
What Hollywood does well is technical competence. The Production Values are immense, but the stories and characters are usually soulless, lifeless devices.
The best writers, unfortunately in terms of how popular and how powerful Hollywood is, are to be found elsewhere.
List of films from 2007 that are far better written than Michael Clayton:
Control, Silent Light, the Lives of Others, Zodiac, Climates, Away from Her, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Syndromes and a Century, the Painted Veil, Beyond Hatred to just name a few.
Of course, you won't have seen any of them. (maybe Zodiac).
But thank heavens we have you to point the way to those of us not as enlightened.
13 feature scripts, 2 short subjects. One sale, 4 options. Nothing filmed. Damn.
Currently rewriting another writer's SciFi script for an indie producer in L.A.
DecadenceFilms so far has criticized Derek Haas and Tony Gilroy. Those hacks! Oscar nominations and huge worldwide grosses with Haas at 320 million and Gilroy at 750 million. You can not like the writing all you want but Hollywood buys their “unfilmable” screenplays and turns them into movies that make money. If you don’t like their work -- or don’t understand it -- maybe it says something about your ability to write a feature that can sell.
When you earn some nominations, and earn those numbers, you can write your scripts on toilet paper with virgin's blood. I don't think any director or producer will turn down scripts by these guys.
List of films from 2007 that are far better written than Michael Clayton:
Control, Silent Light, the Lives of Others, Zodiac, Climates, Away from Her, 12:08 East of Bucharest, Syndromes and a Century, the Painted Veil, Beyond Hatred to just name a few.
Of course, you won't have seen any of them. (maybe Zodiac).
Okay, so everything you wrote after that I couldn't be bothered reading. How to make friends and influence people hey? That was an incredibly patronizing thing to say.
And by the way 'The Lives of Others' was a 2006 film, hence why it won best Foreign language award at the 2007 Oscars.
You are allowed an opinion but don't get sniffy at other peoples choices of what represents a good script to them. I actually think Michael Clayton was one of the best scripts of last year and I have seen some of the other films you mentioned.
When you earn some nominations, and earn those numbers, you can write your scripts on toilet paper with virgin's blood. I don't think any director or producer will turn down scripts by these guys.
We, unfortunately, are not these guys.
Phil
Have you read Juno?
Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying I think Juno was the best script of last year or anything but the facts are it was a first time script from an unknown, it got produced, it was a financially successful and Oscar nominated film and won best original screenplay Oscar, not bad!
Read it, it is full of examples of breaking the rules that had it been posted on here it would have attracted many comments on that fact.
Not saying at all that we should throw the rule book out the window but really, as an aspiring screenwriter who should I be looking up to and trying hard to emulate? Syd Field who does not seem to have written very much of any good or Diablo Cody? Logically speaking it is a no brainer surely?
Check out Redbelt that's an interesting film and script from Mamet.
Edmond was a deeply interesting script. The film never got a widespread release because it dealt with some controversial topics (God forbid that film writers should ever deal with any serious issues).
The script for Spartan was also excellent.
IMO he is the best writer of dialogue currently working.
And, please, do tell us all the "great" movies Mamet has written...
Glengarry Glenn Ross is another good one for dialogue.
What is funny is watching this go round and round without anybody being convinced of anything.
But I have been kind of sold on the idea, though, of bending some rules without fear of repercussions, after listening to some of you guys.
So it is not completely falling upon deaf ears. For whatever that is worth.
The way I figure it is -- as a reader of many scripts, and as a writer -- how much does bending a few rules bug me? Not much, and if it adds to the story, I actually enjoy it.
So I will bet that most readers and writers of many scripts probably feel the same way. Not all. But most.
I'll bet that as long as you demonstrate that you know what you are doing otherwise, it is fine to tweak the conventions now and then.
I just wish some of you guys would stop being so darn vehement about it. Respect each other's opinions.
Absolutely everything in the script goes straight onto the screen. Her actions are described in detail.
When she uses charcater description, she backs it up with dialogue e.g the eccentric storekeeper.
It's pretty much by the book.
Sorry, I can't be serious about this thread anymore, Phil's picture is freaking me out!! I am not sure whether I am repulsed or aroused (it can be a fine line sometimes! ) )
Think I have said enough on that.
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Juno marching down various street, pumping her arms like a jogger and chugging intermittently from the huge carton of juice. We watch her breathlessly navigate suburbia, clearly on a mission
If that had been written by a newbie on here and posted for feedback we would have had so may comments that sentence not being written as a script.
"We watch her" - sorry no, you cannot say that.
"Pumping" - No not that either, you should say "she pumps".
"Chugging" - Ditto
"Clearly on a mission" - How do we know that, show don't tell.
Sorry, I can't be serious about this thread anymore, Phil's picture is freaking me out!! I am not sure whether I am repulsed or aroused (it can be a fine line sometimes! ) )
If everyone follows the rules, I'll change the avatar back to Soccubus.
They are good at writing fast moving, adolescent drivel. The kind of stuff that Hollywood loves.
What do you want me to say? That they are geniuses?
Thing is this:
There's no use in arguing what's a good script or film and what isn't, because it all comes down to taste, which is everyone's own.
There's only the stuff that's produced in Hollywood (or anywhere for that matter) that makes money. If it makes money, it earned its right to exist. It's evolution, it's simple. You might not like it but that's the way it works.
Then there's writers. If you wanna earn a living with writing, you have to write scripts that make money. Depending how filthily rich you want to become, you decide how commercially succesful your scripts have to be.
If you are a writer that has lots of principles, opinions, taste, whatever you call it: That in itself is no problem. If you are lucky, you are on par with what the studio's want. If you're not, however, you may have to make a concession or two. You may not like it, but to earn a living, you probably have no choice.
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
There's no use in arguing what's a good script or film and what isn't, because it all comes down to taste, which is everyone's own.
Yes, you are quite correct. The only reason I brought Mamet into it was to point out that it isn't just screenwriter gurus and teachers who hold that you shouldn't use unfilmmables, but it descended into a bit of a subjective rant.
Anyway, lets leave Haas, Gilroy and Mamet out of it. Each one currently has at least one film in production, so they are all examples of people whose script-writing is acceptable to professional producers.
Haas is worth checking out as an example of a writer who can write pacey, exciting scripts. More geared towards sensation seeking type films. If you have a concept that is like that, a high powered action flick, then check him out by all means.
Mamet is quite a laborious read, but he is excellent at creating deep characters using dialogue and subtext. His films are excellent blueprints for shooting a film straight off the bat. All the important information is on the page and on the screen.
Gilroy is somewhere between the two.
The thing is this:
This is simpyscripts, it's not a professional forum. There are some people here who I don't think are very far from being as adept as Hollywood screenwriters. There are a lot more who are still developing.
In my opinion, the vast majority of writers work would be improved far more if they stuck to the rules to start with. Staying away from unfilmmables means they will learn what it takes to create a successful film using images and sound.
That is all. Once you can write an exciting script within the rules, you can then quite easily adapt that script to make it a more exciting read, without losing anything from the film.
The problem is if people look at professional scripts, see them bend the rules at some points and then think they can write the whole script like that. They will end up with literary stories masquerading as scripts.
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Juno marching down various street, pumping her arms like a jogger and chugging intermittently from the huge carton of juice. We watch her breathlessly navigate suburbia, clearly on a mission
That's fine IMO (obviously it's fine, it was well received). Clearly on a mission qualifies the very specific visuals that she has created. She's pumping her arms, chugging juice.
The danger is if a novice writer leaves the crucial visual info out and just puts: "Marching down the street, clearly on a mission. "
There is no visual reference to what she is doing. You get a sense of what is going on as a reader, but the director has to create the script himself and introduce visual images to make it ready to film.
The other point is that film is not solely the domain of hollywood. You don't have to be paid millions to be a filmmaker. There are festivals the world over for independent filmmakers. You can have your own website, your own TV channel these days.
The advice I'm giving is for people on SS who may well want to create their own films. I don't necessarily see that they are in any way less important than Hollywood ones. I've read scripts on here that had more to say than many Hollywood films. It's also for the people who are just starting and aren't necessarily at the level where they feel they are able to make their points as successfully as they like in films.
Let me use this excerpt from Tierney to demonstrate the problems you can create for yourself if you try and bend the rules to your own liking.
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There are several ways to tell the audience that Bob is a butcher.
Here is Tierney's way:
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Blood under his fingernails, BOB turns the steering wheel and guides his car down Langdon Road. It?s where the rent boys walk.
A butcher by trade, he watches from behind the safety of the windshield glass as they show their haunches and lean muscles for his benefit.
--
Below his his analysis of what he is trying to get across:
Quoted Text
He?s got blood under his nails and he?s cruising for boys. I call him a butcher. The reader makes the assumption one way or another about what kind of butcher. I layered in something else ? I made sure in my description to put Bob behind glass like a butcher in a supermarket. And which side of the glass are the boys on? Are they the meat for sell or are they salesmen with the product? Where is the balance of power? Will the reader get that? Hopefully, on some level.
Do I have Bob in a smock? Talking about meat? Nope. Maybe in the next scene I?ll have him at work cutting some pork tenderloin. Maybe not. I?ve got time to show the reader that Bob really is a butcher. I know what I?m doing. I can layer and refer and build.
I just have to make sure that everything I promise about a character (or a plotline) I fulfill by the time I get to fade out.
You read the script then listen to Tierney talk about it and you think it's a decent script, with good depth and layers.
Then you take your camera out, film it exactly the way it is written and what do you get?
A guy with bloody hands on a steering wheel, looking at young boys. The audience connects the blood with the boys and thinks "Here is a killer looking for his next victim" That is all. There is no mention of butcher anywhere in the film. All the layers have been stripped away because he never incorporated the image of a butcher in the script.
What is happening is that he is using a LITERARY DEVICE to implant the WORD butcher in the READERS mind. The READER, then armed with that IDEA interprets the script in a certain way. All the layers are there.
Unfortunately FILM is A VISUAL/AUDIO medium. To plant the seed of the BUTCHER for a cinematic audience you have to put it on the screen. No ifs or buts, questions of styles can change that. It is a matter of universal certainty.
Your first shot is of the BUTCHER hacking away at meat. That is the only way you can implement the LITERARY IDEA of the butcher into a VIEWERS mind. Then when you see him in the car, looking at the kids all the layers that he tried to implement suddenly come flooding back.
That is the difference between being a good WRITER and a good SCREENWRITER.
By putting unfilmmables in the description you run the risk of leaving important information off the screen.
This is so silly. If sticking to some narrow conception of filmable is helping your writing then great but what has it done for you lately?
And I think you missed the point. You don't get everything at once. That's my argument. If you don't understand how to build then you're never going to get someone to turn past page three. One of the things with screenplays on this site is that they lack the connective tissue that makes them into page turners. They go from point A to B because the writer makes them. A lot of it is because thematic stuff and imagery falls to close to "unflimable" for their comfort.
And of course I put the idea of the guy being a butcher in their heads. Yes, a literary device! Why wouldn't I? In this case I used a the word butcher -- it's a job, it's a hobby. I want to make them wonder. Yep, just the reader. And why? Because it's going to dictate the feeling of the scene. The lighting, the choice of camera and the way the actor behaves behind the wheel. It all starts with word choice and ends up on screen.
That way we can see how her style of writing works within her genre and see for ourselves how and if it translates well to the big screen.
Isn't that what this site is about? Helping people to write better scripts?
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That's my argument. If you don't understand how to build then you're never going to get someone to turn past page three. One of the things with screenplays on this site is that they lack the connective tissue that makes them into page turners. They go from point A to B because the writer makes them. A lot of it is because thematic stuff and imagery falls to close to "unflimable" for their comfort.
I'd agree with most of that. I just think that the thematic stuff and imagery has to be on screen. In the butcher example you are attempting to make a thematic link between looking through a car window at some kids and meat in a display case.
The way you'd do that is to set a point of reference. So, for instance, you see him preparing the display case and then see the man's reflection in the glass.
When you see him in the next scene looking at the kids you have a similar shot, where his face is reflecting in the glass.
That cinematically makes the thematic connection between the two images in the audiences mind.
I honestly don't understand why you would do it in a literary sense, so then it has to be adapted for use on the screen? What benefit does it have?
It just seems to create an extra process in the conversion of the printed page to the finished product. It doesn't make it read any better, it just means it needs to be altered by the Director.
Wow, this thread really took off again. No time to read through every post but I will add a couple of points:
- Art = Subjective so it seems this debate will never end - The examples I posted are from two of the hottest unproduced spec screenplays in Hollywood last year. Both made it onto the blacklist, voted for by the biggest agencies and production companies. - Juno certainly has examples of what some people (Phil) would call unfilmables, see Juno's introduction. The fact that it's backed up in dialogue is irrelevant to the issue. Nobody's arguing that it shouldn't be backed up in dialogue
And I appeared to have really annoyed Decadence. Enlighten you? Sorry, for writing for a living. I didn't bring it up. I wouldn't have.
All I can say is that no one I know writes like what Decadence seems to demand. That's pretty much it. Many of the scripts on this site are written for an audience of readers who have a limited film vocabulary. Every detail cataloged. Emotions are written like physical ticks. Every physical thing imaginable is described. It's all very obvious but it doesn't flow.
The writer is taking on every job. In my real life I know I can trust my actors and my dp and every other skilled person on set to take care of my words. I know how to chose words that will tell a dozen people what I want them to do. Sometimes they're literary words and sometimes they're camera words. But I know how to use the palette.
I can say that Julia is the saddest person ever and it's a like a cloud is always over her head. And what's going to happen is that the wardrobe is going to put her in muted colors, makeup is going to decide on a look for her and the actress is going to shuffle through scenes. She's going to be lit in a certain way and shot in a certain way. It's like magic. You say one little thing and it ends up on the screen.
And poor Bob behind the glass? You don't get why I'm doing it. That's fine. But if I were to write that script there would be a lot of Bob separated from the world behind glass. It would be thematic and a motif and maybe not obvious but I know my director and dp would understand it. And the person watching the movie would always find Bob a little offputting because he's one step removed.
ON THE RIGHT -- THE EQUIKROM JET. Slick and aggressive. Silver and green. ANOTHER WORRIED ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watching RICHARD "SICK DICK" GARSIK rushing forward into noman's- land. GARSIK the buccaneer CEO. A corporate carnivore in his prime. Hypervisionary. Hypereffective. Hyperactive.
Meaningless guff. Again we don't know who he is, he has not been introduced by anyone on the screen. The writer is trying to establish him as the greedy bad guy but has failed to include ONE SINGLE ACTION that demonstrates this on camera.
Hypervisionary
How do I show this? I'd have to have a separate montage showing him creating great plans or have someone say it IE "Go get him Dick. You're Sick Dick, Hypervisionary, corporate cannibal" blah blah "You'll kill this guy".
Either that or scratch it.
I as the Director again have to completely re-write the script to stick with the writers intention.
I already know that this guy can't carry a script. He's got no concept of filmmaking.
I find it really funny that you can say that Tony Gilroy cannot carry a script, and has no concept of filmmaking. I think that is a pretty amazing thing to say.
So the example is from Duplicity, the character above is being played by Paul Giamatti, as actor who I am sure you will agree has a little acting experience. Do you not think that Paul Giamatti when asked to can portray a character that is perceived as hypervisionary would be able to pull it off? Especially as like Tierney says he would have the entire wardrobe, make-up and props department to help out, along with the extra's and other cast members playing their part in showing us their characters perception of Richard Garsick, not to mention the directing and editing.
I think you seriously underestimate an actors ability to take small clues and visual aids from a script and turn it into a convincing performance. If you have a character drinking milkshake, you just say he is drinking milkshake. You don't write a long description of which hand he holds the straw in and how hard he sucks. So I fail to see how character description can be any different, say someone's a mean sonofabitch and the actor will play someone who looks, walks and talks like a mean sonofabitch, the audience does not need a flashback of him pulling legs of chickens when he was 5 years old in order to know that. They will get that from the actors performance and the dialogue that you as the writer would of course write for a mean sonofabitch.
The dialogue of course needs to confirm the initial perception you have given the reader of the script, i.e. you say someone is a hypervisionary then you had better make sure he is one through your dialogue and his course of actions throughout the movie. But there is nothing wrong with making it clear to the director right from the start who this guy is. The Audience will get this from watching the movie, they will get the visual clues that the actors performance will give them. But somebody reading your script will not have these visual clues so I cannot see how telling them upfront is not a good thing at all.
Well clearly I'm mistaken in saying he has no concept of filmmaking. I'm already on record as saying that he is a very accomplished director.
I stand by what i said before though, I think he is a poor writer. Maybe now, at 52 years of age, he has finally written something excellent. We'll see when it's out won't we?
Give's us all a little extra incentive to go and see it at any rate!
My whole point on this thread has been to warn people of what can happen if you include character descriptions like these and then don't follow it through with either dialogue and action.
My whole point on this thread has been to warn people of what can happen if you include character descriptions like these and then don't follow it through with either dialogue and action.
Nothing you have said contradicts that.
That's fair enough, but you gave the impression that it needed to be done at the same time or immediately after. I don't think that is the case, as long as the character is that person you have described him as then there is no problem.
The biggest issue with new writers (and course I am very much in this camp) is that we would more likely to introduce a character as a mean sonofabitch but then completely fail to develop the character enough and make sure his actions and words throughout the rest of the movie are those of a mean sonofabitch.
I am currently starting work on a short and I have decided as an experiment to try and write it in the style of a pro screenplay, i.e. use short character descriptions as above, if "we see" is suitable then I will use it etc.. etc.. If nothing else it would be interesting for me to see what feedback I get and if it makes my writing any better.
*Of course I still need a decent story to tell, that never changes!
Every detail cataloged. Emotions are written like physical ticks. Every physical thing imaginable is described. It's all very obvious but it doesn't flow.
That's exactly the kind of thing I was geting at in my original post. The sad thing is when people actually enourage this kind of writing.
I can say that Julia is the saddest person ever and it's a like a cloud is always over her head. And what's going to happen is that the wardrobe is going to put her in muted colors, makeup is going to decide on a look for her and the actress is going to shuffle through scenes. She's going to be lit in a certain way and shot in a certain way. It's like magic. You say one little thing and it ends up on the screen.
Exactly.
I work in videogames so I get to see the scenes I write animated and built into the game.
If I write directions like "shrugs" or "wrinkles nose" or "scratches head" I'll have animators coming to me and asking why. Sure, they can infer certain things from the actions and dialogue in the script and they're usually pretty close, but why should they have to infer and interpret. Screenwriting is about clarity, so why not throw in an emotion or two as shorthand. You make the character's reaction absolutely clear to the reader while giving the actor and director the license to convey that emotion however they see fit. They're going to do that anyway, so why not give them a clear emotional direction, rather than have the actor wondering how exactly they wrinkle their nose in anger.
This is an interesting thread. I always found it very hard to figure out what good directions in a script should look like, but especially Tierneys example is clarifying. It occurred to me that, as with other situations in life, it's about control and fear of losing it.
When you write, it's a very unsatisfying idea to give your script to someone else, and then someone else, and lots of someone elses who will take over control and decide how to execute your ideas. I've caught myself many times thinking 'I'll just do it myself, so I know it will be done right'. Which is the road to stress and anger.
In writing a script, you have to accept the fact that your lines will be interpreted by other people who might have a totally different idea of how to frame it, film it, act it, or who may even want to change the actual line. But you have to accept it, otherwise you will probably never achieve anything. And it might just be an improvement
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
I just wanted to offer up 5 samples from the first pages of 5 different screenplays currently in various stages of pre-production.
They are all from the Blacklist for 2007 (the most talked about/referenced scripts of the year). Some will be produced and some won't. But they are examples of spec scripts that are on people's minds and on their assistant's desks.
This is what Hollywood reads and produces. This is the kind of writing that is expected. There is a lot of freedom there and don't fall back on the whole new/inexperienced writer can't do this business. A producer doesn't care if you've only ever written a short film about oboes and the feature you're handing over. He only cares about what's on the page.
******* A gust of wind... the leaf breaks free... flutters down, landing in the slow current of the Missouri. The last leaf of the fall, taking its final journey south.
*******
STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20’s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him.
******
WALTER, 40, the chipper coordinator/emcee, rushes in waving his clipboard. The man's been in the closet so long he smells like mothballs.
******
-- TEN CIA PARAMILITARY OPERATORS, hustling out of a dusty tent. Known as 'Badgers' within the Special Forces community. Uniforms bear no identifying marks -- but their leader sure sounds American as he BARKS into a SATPHONE--
****** Peter Nielson was once handsome.
Not anymore. He's dead.
We hang above his body. He is splayed like an open flower below us. Early 50's. A bullet hole in his expressionless face.
I'll give all sorts of writing advice but career advice? Yike.
Step One: Be a white male under thirty-five who looks a lot like Mike Shelton. If Mike has a pair of Converse All-Stars he could probably get a meeting somewhere.
Step Two: Graduate from Harvard or Brown or USC.
Those are the two normal steps to be successful in Hollywood. There are other ways. Most of them involve socializing and/or golf. You could also get a job as a writer's PA or a script coordinator on a television series. You work with the writer's staff and if you suffer long enough they give you a script.
If you don't want to move to Los Angeles then you have to figure out your own way into the maze. Stripper? Ex-con?
As far as getting an agent, the big contests can be good. Nicholl and Sundance can get you noticed by an agency. A friend did really well in the Final Draft contest and got a great agent out of the deal.
Mostly, just be good at talking with and meeting people. Be it online or in real life. It is ultimately about who you know.
Cheers for that Tierney. Thought it might have been helpful for a few of the writers on here.
I often hear of the Nicholl contest as being the most beneficial to writers, but don't recall anyone on here saying they entered it.
Martin, one thing I want to pick up on:
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Every detail cataloged. Emotions are written like physical ticks. Every physical thing imaginable is described. It's all very obvious but it doesn't flow.
That's exactly the kind of thing I was geting at in my original post. The sad thing is when people actually enourage this kind of writing.
There are more problems with writers craft than following the rules or not following the rules. I've never seen anyone encourage boring writing.
Following the rules of screenwriting does not mean that you should create characters through emotional ticks. That is a complete misunderstanding if anyone thinks that.
A man's character is conveyed by what he does. If he's a coward you show him doing cowardly things like running away when someone needs his help for e.g.
Writing cinematically does not prevent people from creating convincing characters, quite the opposite actually.
It's a question of cinematic storytelling.
Let's say you want people to feel sorry for a character.
The best way of doing is is to establish the character and then show something bad happening to that character that the audience can relate to, say for instance the loss of her mother. We can then empathise with the character and feel genuine sympathy.
The way Hollywood does it very often is this (and I'm not having a pop at Tierney here):
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I can say that Julia is the saddest person ever and it's a like a cloud is always over her head. And what's going to happen is that the wardrobe is going to put her in muted colors, makeup is going to decide on a look for her and the actress is going to shuffle through scenes. She's going to be lit in a certain way and shot in a certain way
They use every trick in the book to create signals that we're supposed to feel sorry for this girl. They lay it on with a trowel. Sad music, subdued lighting to try and artifically enforce emotion. It works on a superficial level, but the moods created like this won't last once the lights go off in the cinema. Real storytelling simply doesn't need that.
If you want the audience to know she's sad, let's just see what is happening to her to make her feel this way and how she reacts.
Her dad beats her and then she goes into the forest and rescues a bird with a broken wing. What does that say about her.
Her dad beats her and then she goes into the forest and finds a bird with a broken wing, twists it's wing around and tortures it to death.
Without a single word being uttered you can create compelling action that reveals everything about a character.
All those silly unfilmmables are quite unneccessary.
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Screenwriting is about clarity
I agree. The problem with the kind of descriptive writing that seems to sell in Hollywood is that it is very often unclear what the writer intends.
E.G:
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STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20?s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him
.
In your opinion, what does the writer want to get across here?
Does he want me, as a Director to maintain the action of the piece or the tone?
I can't do both.
The way it is written, I can film it so the audience sees a soldier, minding his own business and then BANG. We are shocked as the bullets tear into him unexpectedly.
I've maintained the action he has written, but at the expense of the dramatic tension that he had invested the script with. As readers we know something he doesn't know, he's about to get killed. This creates anticipation. If you film his action, that is lost.
To maintain the sense of suspense I have to re-write the script.
Perhaps show him sitting there laughing and joking, blissfully unaware of the two red dots on his back.
Or start the film from behind a sniper, clicking his magazine into place, crane into a shot of the soldier minding his own business etc etc
There are an infinite number of ways I can maintain the dramtic tension, but none of them are in the script.
Scripts that contain numerous passages like this present these problems. Do I choose to get across the themes and character descriptions that the writer has introduced and re-write all the action to do this or do I strip most of the meaning away and stick with the action they've created?
We've established that this type of writing is characteristic of a Hollywood style, but are not most Hollywood films categorised by having shallow storylines, characters, banal, formulaic plots? This style of writing encourages that IMHO, because a lot of times the director will just stick with the action and ignore, or fail to see the deeper layers.
I'm aware that most people disagree with me, but I'm passionate about the future of Cinema and passionately want to see a greater quality of writing being produced.
Do a test yourself to see the realtive merits of what I'm talking about. Find some scripts that have been produced, but you haven't seen the final film. Read the script, mark the bits that moved you the most, then watch the film. How did those scenes translate to the screen?
Is the film worse. If so why? What didn't they put in that was on the page? What's better and why?
That way you can really get a feeling for the merits of styles of writing.
It's also a great directing exercise. Read the script, choose the shots you would use to tell the story and then compare them to the actual film. You'll find some things you could have done better, you'll find some directors deal with things in a way maybe you wouldn't have thought of. Either way it's a useful experience.
There are more problems with writers craft than following the rules or not following the rules. I've never seen anyone encourage boring writing.
I've seen it happen, especially on this forum. Compelling prose is discouraged in favour of mechanical actions and descriptions. You get a lot of people nitpicking character intros, telling the writer they should introduce a character as "John, thirties, dressed in a suit" and be done with it. As far as I'm concerned this advice is damaging to writers who are trying to develop their own unique voice.
Funnily enough, the forum critics who jump on these unfilmable errors rarely go on to talk about what's really important i.e. story and character.
The fact is that every great writer develops their own style. You mentioned Mamet earlier in the thread, which I found funny because in many ways he's the other extreme. If someone posted a Mamet-style screenplay here, they'd also get ripped apart by the format police. Why all the beats? You can't write "beat"! You have to break up your dialogue with action! Never go over four lines of dialogue! Don't write actions in parenthesis!
Frankly, it's all bullshit. The gurus sell you their "rules" because they couldn't make it selling screenplays.
A man's character is conveyed by what he does... etc
Thanks for the 101, but this is a different discussion entirely. We're talking about writing style - how a writer communicates those actions and images to the reader. Nobody's arguing against visual, cinematic storytelling an characterization.
Consider the example from Duplicity:
"ANOTHER WORRIED ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watching RICHARD "SICK DICK" GARSIK rushing forward into noman's- land. GARSIK the buccaneer CEO. A corporate carnivore in his prime. Hypervisionary. Hypereffective. Hyperactive."
Now see it after an encounter with the format police:
"ANOTHER ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watches RICHARD GARSIK, dressed in a suit, rush forward across the asphalt."
I don't know about you but the first one gives me a much clearer mental image of what's on screen. I can see the character in my head. From the brief "unfilmable" description I can picture his face, how he looks, how he moves.
Without the descriptive flair, the rule abiding rewrite falls flat.
In your opinion, what does the writer want to get across here?
For the record, that example isn't the kind of writing I'm lobbying for. I agree, it's purely for the reader and it needs to be rewritten to be filmed. Having said that, we're not writing shooting scripts.
Some people will tell you a script will get binned for that "unfilmable" alone. That's simply untrue.
There are more problems with writers craft than following the rules or not following the rules. I've never seen anyone encourage boring writing.
I don't see anyone disagreeing with this.
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The best way of doing is is to establish the character and then show something bad happening to that character that the audience can relate to, say for instance the loss of her mother. We can then empathise with the character and feel genuine sympathy.
That's one way, but not the only way.
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In your opinion, what does the writer want to get across here?
Does he want me, as a Director to maintain the action of the piece or the tone?
I can't do both.
The way it is written, I can film it so the audience sees a soldier, minding his own business and then BANG. We are shocked as the bullets tear into him unexpectedly.
I've maintained the action he has written, but at the expense of the dramatic tension that he had invested the script with. As readers we know something he doesn't know, he's about to get killed. This creates anticipation. If you film his action, that is lost.
True. But I think adding something like "unaware of two bullits" is for another purpose: To intrigue your reader. Also important. You are right in that in that it is unfilmable. However, I think sober descriptions will give the director, dp and actors the opportunity to interpret and fill in the blancs, which you seem to think is a bad thing. Additionally, I think with very elaborate descriptions you run the risk of insulting the director, dp, actor, or reader ever so slightly.. And you don't want that.
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We've established that this type of writing is characteristic of a Hollywood style, but are not most Hollywood films categorised by having shallow storylines, characters, banal, formulaic plots? This style of writing encourages that IMHO, because a lot of times the director will just stick with the action and ignore, or fail to see the deeper layers.
Wow, that's a big big leap, blaming the accepted writing style for the existence of bad movies. What about all the great movies?
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I'm aware that most people disagree with me, but I'm passionate about the future of Cinema and passionately want to see a greater quality of writing being produced.
I don't think there's anyone on this forum who is NOT passionate about the future of cinema or who doesn't want to see the highest quality in writing.
I think you're on a pretty high horse here.
.:An optimist is nothing but a badly informed pessimist:.
I don't know how to address the details because the interpretations change from post to post. This thread has taken so many turns. Rules, what rules? It is a strange thing in that the initial bit of this thread it was all about people just writing a great story and not being strangled by ideas about "unfilmable" and now it's all about one person's ideas about what he can or cannot direct (not write but direct). Not to be unkind Decadence but why should everyone here be writing to meet your skill level? Based on your comments you don't really understand how to read a Hollywood screenplay (and since they all suck who cares).
This snippet of a script is the first scene from an adaptation of a Nicolas Spark's novel called Dear John. It's not a war story. It's a romantic drama. It is written with a little bit of fable mixed in. It is a choice that I imagine is meant to establish tone.
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STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20?s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him . In your opinion, what does the writer want to get across here?
Does he want me, as a Director to maintain the action of the piece or the tone?
I can't do both.
It is part of the job description of a director to be able to maintain tone and do an action beat all at the same time. In this case you've gotten one sentence and you've already said you cannot film it. Huh? Based on how you've commented on Gilroy's work I get that you want everything on the page. Literally mapped out for you. That's not how Hollywood screenplays are written. One of the big reasons is that Hollywood directors hate to have their shots blocked for them. They want a story and they want to shoot it as they see it playing out in their heads.
A screenwriter's job isn't to write shot lists masquerading as prose. It's to write a story with great characters and imagery that someone wants to spend three to six months of his life turning into a movie. That's it. Write like what you're putting on the page matters enough to pull hundreds of people away from their families to work twelve hour days for months at a time.
This thread has taken so many turns. Rules, what rules?
Just to clarify.
A lot of people's introduction to screenwriting naturally comes from the likes of Mcklee and Syd Field. Both of these (and most other screenwriting "gurus") suggest that people write cinematically.
It can basically be broken down to into a simple concept:
A screenplay is a written version of what will go on screen, therefore one should take care to ensure that everything you intend to get across should be understood by the VIEWER. IE All important information regarding character, action etc should take place on screen. Through action, diaolgue or narration.
A screenplay is a blueprint for a movie, not a literary story in essence. Though you use words to write, you are using them to convey images and sounds in a way that reflects the medium that you are writing for.
Martin was also specifically referring to the fact that often on here people advise against flowery character descriptions and pointing out (quite correctly) that Hollywood Producers will not reject work written in such a way, despite what people may say.
All I have attempted to do is to widen the discussion to not only include the reality of the situation, but to discuss some of the reasons why it is the case that people write like this in Hollywood, and why it may not necessarily be the best way of ensuring that the final product, the FILM, is as good as it could be.
It is, after all, a discsussion board and the thread is specifically about screenwriting.
Yourself and Another Writer pointed out examples of writers who write in a certain way. I pointed one out who went into great depth in his book Bambi vs Godzilla, why he believes that type of writing is responsible for the decline of American Cinema and also why it has resulted in the undervaluing of writers in Hollywood, resulting in their need to strike every now and again.
I am merely pointing out that though the initial point seems like it is only a matter of common sense not to be strangled by "rules", the issue touches on deeper levels.
All I am seeking is to ensure that people are writing in a way that best gets their vision onto the page and more importantly onto the SCREEN.
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and now it's all about one person's ideas about what he can or cannot direct (not write but direct). Not to be unkind Decadence but why should everyone here be writing to meet your skill level?
It's nothing to do with my level of skill. I'm talking about Objective Reality.
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This snippet of a script is the first scene from an adaptation of a Nicolas Spark's novel called Dear John. It's not a war story. It's a romantic drama. It is written with a little bit of fable mixed in. It is a choice that I imagine is meant to establish tone.
[quote]Quoted Text STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20?s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him
.
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In your opinion, what does the writer want to get across here?
Does he want me, as a Director to maintain the action of the piece or the tone?
I can't do both.
It is part of the job description of a director to be able to maintain tone and do an action beat all at the same time.
[/quote]
I've already explained why this can't be translated to the screen without it being significantly altered. Replace the I, with Steven Spielberg and it is the same result.
Steven Spielberg, will have to introduce action that is not in the script to maintain the tone because the writer has included an unfilmable concept.
I am questioning why any writer would want to write in such a fashion. Why would a writer not want to introduce his concepts in a way that can be immediately converted to the screen without a process of conversion?
David Mamet would say it is to make the script read better than it actually is, to convince the lowly readers to give it good coverage and to disguise the fact that they can't think or write visually.
Maybe you agree or maybe you don't, but as writers it's always good to think about the craft isn't it?
Daniel Day Lewis cannot act like he is unaware of the bullet appraoching and at the same time convey that he is. It's impossible. A paradox.
No DOP can light the film in such a way as to convey the idea that this man is about to be hit by two bullets.
They can convey the idea that something bad is about to happen. Not the specific concept.
If Steven Spielberg wants to maintain the dramtic tension introduced by the writer, he will have to introduce new action. He will have to re-write the script.
Film is about what you see and hear, nothing more. So what are the advantages of writing in such a way? What are the disadvantages?
I've pointed out several disadvantages of using unfilmmables: Lack of clarity, the need to re-write literary concepts in filmic form, the fact that unskilled directors may miss them, the incongruity between the experience of the reader and the ulimate consumer, the viewer.
The only advantage is that it may make the "flow" better. But that is not necessarily true either as it means you fill the script with extra words. A man introduced with flowery description will either act and speak in such a manner anyway, rendering the descriptions redundant. Or he will not and render them pointless (E.G The velvet switchblade example).
It may be a useful starting point for the actors as well. That seems a fair point, particularly if you are trying to sell the script to an actor. Those kind of words may give them something to immediately bite upon. That's something I'll bear in mind.
Do you agree with the phrase Cinema is Dead? How does this style of writing relate to those issues? Why do some people maintain that film has deteriorated since the advent of sound? Why do so many of the better Hollywood films these days seem to be adaptations of novels?
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Based on how you've commented on Gilroy's work I get that you want everything on the page. Literally mapped out for you. That's not how Hollywood screenplays are written. One of the big reasons is that Hollywood directors hate to have their shots blocked for them. They want a story and they want to shoot it as they see it playing out in their heads.
I think that is a good point about Hollywood directors. Maybe they prefer less specific scripts.
In terms of that script, I was being overly pedantic in order to convey what I consider an important point. That in film every thing that you want to get across to the viewer has to be on screen.
The vast majority of people will experience the film by watching it. A script is made to be filmed. All that lovely description and turn of phrase will disappear in filming (unless you stick it in narration or dialogue or action).
So I think it is important that people understand that.
A script that reads well is not the same thing, necessarily, as a script that will make a great film.
The ironic thing is that the people reading and replying on the thread aren't the ones who need the advice.
Ultimately I can fathom no reason why screenwriters would want to write in the way that you did when introducing Bob the Butcher. Why would you want the reader to know something that the viewer won't?
In terms of an ideal script, I think that there should be visual images that convey this idea.
In terms of reality, it wouldn't be a deal breaker. If I like the story and later in the script I can appreciate your use of imagery to create the feeling of isolation of poor Bob, then I'd simply call you up and ask what your intentions were in the first segment. Why you chose to write it like that and what you were hoping to convey.
"ANOTHER WORRIED ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watching RICHARD "SICK DICK" GARSIK rushing forward into noman's- land. GARSIK the buccaneer CEO. A corporate carnivore in his prime. Hypervisionary. Hypereffective. Hyperactive."
Now see it after an encounter with the format police:
"ANOTHER ENTOURAGE gathered at the ramp, watches RICHARD GARSIK, dressed in a suit, rush forward across the asphalt."
I understand where you are coming from. Gilroy's version reads a lot better. If it's a choice between those two then I'd take the former any day.
As a filmmaker though, I also look behind the words. What's actually going to be on the screen? That's the story.
At the end of the day, the "no-mans land" IS going to be asphalt on the screen.
The thing is though, the phrase no-mans land, qualifies an already exisitng image. By definition he's going on to the ground at the airport, this gives you a visual sense of the type of mood. It adds to what is there.
My problem is with things like this:
Garsik is not going to appear as a "hyper-visionary" (We'd need to see him doing something like building a space shuttle) or as "hyper-effective" (we'd need to see him doing something effectively and damn quickly) at this juncture. These words need action to give them meaning on screen. Though, I accept Tierney's argument that perhaps a description of someone as "hyper-effective" suggests a certain groomed style or whatever, good for wardrobe.
Hyper active will probably come across in the way Giamatti moves, licks his lips etc but then doesn't this create the situation that worried you before, in terms of character coming through like emotional ticks? He's got to create a specific charcateristic without anything to relate it to...
How much of the anticipation of this scene is created through unusable words and how much through what the audience will see on screen?
As it happens, it's a very strong opening to a film. It's exciting, unusual and immediately engages the audience.
So as it turns out, my only real problem with the whole of that snippet, was the word hyper visionary. (and I suppose if you take that out, the line doesn't read as well.).
Anyway, all I was trying to point out was that I think it's important for people to get across everything that they intend by getting it on screen. IE to highlight the potential pitfalls of writing intense character description, but forget about actually showing us acting that way in the film.
Decadence, I think we're creeping towards some kind of agreement.
I can certainly see your point of view - that writers can disguise a poor story with compelling prose. I don't contest that at all.
I think it's about finding the right balance. We all want to write scripts with great writing AND a great story. I started this thread because, in my opinion, some writers let their writing become mechanical because they worry too much about rules which are open to interpretation.
Sure, I can do that, but if I do, will you have to rewrite it in order to meet your vision?
I mean, will you see the word "awesome" and suddenly realize that you can't possibly portray awesome on screen, switch it to "cool", and portray the artist formerly known as Mr. Awesome with a leather jacket and a smoke hanging from his mouth so that he's now Mr. Cool and thus filmable?
Here's the scene that's taking all the abuse if anyone is interested in something other than one sentence. It's by Jamie Linden.
-------
FADE IN
JOHN’S VOICE There's something I want to tell you.
OPEN ON:
STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20’s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him.
John looks around the ramshackled room he’s in, then turns and says something we cannot hear to someone we cannot see.
JOHN’S VOICE After I got shot, you wanna know the very first thing that entered my mind, right before I blacked out?
A BULLET slices into his left shoulder, inches away from his heart. John’s eyes widen, but he’s too stunned to cry out.
JOHN’S VOICE Coins.
Despite the EERIE SILENCE, a second BULLET hits him in the gut and sends him to his knees.
His hand flies to his stomach. In no time at all his fingers are coated with blood. John falls onto his back. His eyes search the dingy ceiling above him. All is still SILENT.
Sunlight pours in from a large mortar hole, and as John stares at it, the light ENVELOPES THE SCREEN, AND --
"A lot of people's introduction to screenwriting naturally comes from the likes of Mcklee and Syd Field. Both of these (and most other screenwriting "gurus") suggest that people write cinematically. "
Robert Mckeey has argued the art over the craft. In fact his book is not a how to do writers manuel, but what to understand about story structure.
A screenplay by trade is a blue print for the movies, but by nature is a literary work, like the novellas and novals.
The only difference is the formatting the amount of white space on the page. That's it.
Martin has it right. The reader is not getting paid to find well written prose. He is getting paid to find great stories for the studios.
" Daniel Day Lewis cannot act like he is unaware of the bullet appraoching and at the same time convey that he is. It's impossible. A paradox."
What do mean? I am not sure I see an unexperience writer fall into this trap.
"No DOP can light the film in such a way as to convey the idea that this man is about to be hit by two bullets." A bullet travelling through the air does not require special lighting.
However a fireball falling from the sky toward a specific object can be light to convey the event before it happens.
"Film is about what you see and hear, nothing more. So what are the advantages of writing in such a way? What are the disadvantages?" Because good writing is about invoking sense memory. If the writer makes us believe he understands the picture he paints the director will comprehand.
"I think that is a good point about Hollywood directors. Maybe they prefer less specific scripts." On the contrary, a well written script is always specific. Some writers will choose to use few words.
"The vast majority of people will experience the film by watching it. A script is made to be filmed. All that lovely description and turn of phrase will disappear in filming (unless you stick it in narration or dialogue or action)." No it won't. The picture of the script is on screen, however the director takes creative licence to what the most important part of the picture is the most important.
"A screenplay by trade is a blue print for the movies, but by nature is a literary work, like the novellas and novals.
The only difference is the formatting the amount of white space on the page. That's it."
Completely untrue. That is the whole point of what I am saying. A film script is not a literary form, it is the first process in the construction of a film.
It is a verbal representation of an audio/visual medium.
Here is an excerpt from Hemingway's For whom the Bell Tolls: (I chose a book at random from my study).
"Now that his rage was gone he was excited by this storm as he always was by all storms. In a blizzard, a gale, a sudden line squall, a tropical storm, or a summer thunder shower in the mountains there was an excitement that came to him from no other thing. It was like the excitement of battle except that it was clean. There is a wind that blows through battle but that was a hot wind; hot and dry as your mouth; and it blew heavily; hot and dirtily; and it rose and died away with the fortunes of the day. He knew that wind well."
That is prose. A literary form. You can't just put writing like that in courier 12 and space it out to turn it into a film script. You have to think of visual ways to get that same thought process across. Or choose some images and have a narrator or have the same ideas put across through dialogue or action.
"Martin has it right. The reader is not getting paid to find well written prose. He is getting paid to find great stories for the studios."
The studios want one thing above all, marketable scripts that once made into a film will return a profit beyond the rates of returns that they could get by investing it in anything else. At no point have I disagreed with anyone about Martin's original point that studios won't buy something that contains character descriptions.
My point is merely that screenwriting in its truest sense does not require them. The characters in a film can only be built by what they say and do and not by the way you describe them in the description.
What I have been trying to do in the thread is widen the discussion from the initial point in order to explain the reasons why things are the way they are.
Why is this a feature of Hollywood writing? Why do some people maintain that it is bad screenwriting?
The question; How do you sell a script to Hollywood? is very different to How do you write the best script?
Writers who use literary techniques all the time are going to quickly lose control of their ability to tell a visual story. Everything in a script should be very specific. What do you want the audience to know and when? How do you get that across to an audience?
Using literary techniques means that the director has to either re-write the script or cut the unfilmmable parts out. That's a fact. An indisputable fact.
"No DOP can light the film in such a way as to convey the idea that this man is about to be hit by two bullets." A bullet travelling through the air does not require special lighting.
However a fireball falling from the sky toward a specific object can be light to convey the event before it happens. "
???? If you want a bullet travelling through the air in your script, write that there is a bullet travelling through the air. If you want the ground to light up, write it in the script. If you want to see a comet approaching from space, write it in the script. When and where you want the audience to know it is happening.
"" Daniel Day Lewis cannot act like he is unaware of the bullet appraoching and at the same time convey that he is. It's impossible. A paradox.""
"What do mean? I am not sure I see an unexperience writer fall into this trap. "
Consider this:
"STAFF SARGEANT JOHN TYREE -- who is in his mid-20’s, who has a shaved head beneath his GREEN BERET, and who is completely unaware that two bullets are seconds away from entering him."
This is the example that Tierney posted.Read the whole example. Do you see how the phrase "unaware that two bullets etc" is redundant? He tells us he is about to be shot in the narration.
In the script the reader becomes aware of it before it happens on screen (ie before the viewer will find out). It creates literary suspense that cannot be incorporated into the film without changing the script.
It's a very obvious point and one that I can't stress enough, because it can change the whole meaning of films.
Why write stories that have to be changed? Surely as a screenwriter you want to keep the final vision as close to your original intention as possible?
In this actual example it is almost immaterial because the time between the two is very small and it doesn't affect the central dramatic question (who shot him and why?). It's a redundancy rather than a flaw in the drama. He's is qualifying the fact that the central character is unaware he is about to be shot. (Ie so the opening shot is not of a man pleading for his life).
My fear is that inexperienced writers read things like that in professional scripts and use techniques like that continuously.
A man who is completely unaware of something can only do what he is currently doing whether that is reading a book or whatever else. An actor can only act either that he is unaware of something or act that he is aware of it. If you as the screenwriter want people who watch the film to know something that the charcaters don't, you have to show it on the screen.
A writer can write this:
EXT. Restaurant. Day
John Smith sits sipping a coffee, completely unaware that in two hours he will be dead.
It looks like a script, but it isn't. Its prose. It's unfilmmable. You can start a short story like that and it will create suspense becasue we instantly wonder what is going to happen to him. But film it and all you see is a guy drinking a beverage.
To make it a script you would either need a narrator telling us what is going to happen or create a new scene showing that John Smith is under some threat and then show that he is unaware of it.
Do you see?
"Film is about what you see and hear, nothing more. So what are the advantages of writing in such a way? What are the disadvantages?" Because good writing is about invoking sense memory. If the writer makes us believe he understands the picture he paints the director will comprehand.
There is a difference between screenwriting and writing literature that you just aren't grasping. See the above example of Hemingway. Very evocative, but unfilmmable in it's present form.
The original point of the thread is this: Can you sell a script that contains florid character descriptions? Yes, you can.
My point. These kind of descriptions can make it more likely to sell as it reads better and therefore gets better coverage. The problem is you will often find that the resulting films are not actually that good. For reasons I've expressed throughout the thread.
Derek Haas uses literary techniques to make sure non-filmmakers (Ie studio producers, who tend to be businessmen) understand exactly what he is doing. But it doesn't make the script any better. As he admits himself on the same thread that anotherwriter used to try and disprove what I was saying.
This is what John Turman said on the same thread as Haas saying a good story trumps everything (which I have always maintained and agreed with!): John Turmans filmography can be viewed here
"Lots of successful writers set a tone and do their best imitation of Shane Black by telling the reader what the character is thinking or stuff about the tone, or other things that have no place in a screenplay. It works for some, it works better if used sparingly. It involves the reader and makes a document that is hard to read easier. But my personal bias is that I hate it. I think it's terrible writing. It's deceptive, it implores the reader and offers up things that the movie can't possibly deliver on. Things the filmmakers can't possibly film.
"She's beautiful, she looks like the prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day, but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life -- "
I agree with David Mamet that this is utter horseshit. It can't be filmed. It's a plea to the script reader, as he says. (read his new book on the business, it's a bit depressing, but it's accurate)
The only elements that a screenplay should concern itself with are few: • Things you can point the camera at (characters, things, eg. the subject of the shot) • Things someone can do (action, description) • Things someone can say (dialogue)
That is it. So I wouldn't worry about rules of thumb as much as I'd think about that when writing description. Tell the story. Realize what your tools are. The rest is window dressing. I'm not saying don't ever put that pleading tonal stuff in there, I've certainly done it. The people reading yourr script seem to need some of it and it's become acceptable. But realize it's horseshit, it's not drama, do it sparingly.""
"The vast majority of people will experience the film by watching it. A script is made to be filmed. All that lovely description and turn of phrase will disappear in filming (unless you stick it in narration or dialogue or action)." No it won't. The picture of the script is on screen, however the director takes creative licence to what the most important part of the picture is the most important."
Yes it will. See what Turman says. It is unavoidable. Film is about what you can see and hear. Nothing more.
The only way it can make it into a film is if the script is completely altered. IE someone takes your literary story and spends time to convert it into an actual script.
For some reason I cannot quote you. It's either the network or my computer that has the problem. I will try to quote you the old fashion way.
**** "Writers who use literary techniques all the time are going to quickly lose control of their ability to tell a visual story. Everything in a script should be very specific. What do you want the audience to know and when? How do you get that across to an audience?" ****
I will have to disagree with you. I have never found this to be true in the scripts I read and the scripts I wrote. Maybe in theory it sounds like one would lose control, but in my expreience (again with the scripts I read) the writer has always managed to visualize the story if he understood the world his characters lived in.
**** "Using literary techniques means that the director has to either re-write the script or cut the unfilmmable parts out. That's a fact. An indisputable fact." ****
*laughs* I am a director by trade and the only time I ever needed to rewrite a script was when; the story structure had problems, the characters were shallow, the ending was not strong enough, or when the dalogue was bad.
I can tell you no director worth his salt is going to rewrite prose for the sake of cutting down expressive dialogue. Unless and I do stress the word "unless", he/she can tell the story in fewer pages. Of course if a script is 400 pages long, we will go back to the writer and tell him to cut it down. Not because for visual aspect of the telling but because the writer clearly has not focused on the story that pushes the telling along.
Also, I understand that the media I am working in is about getting as much information as possible with as much white space on the script as possible, yet I'll never conflate the notion to mean I will treat my scripts purely as a craft, and not as a work of literary art. IMO the artform is there, it is just expressed in a different mechanic than the novella or novel.
Maybe what you define to be literary art is different from my defination of art but make no mistake that a great writer will see the script as his own artistic voice.
It is for this reason to write a great screenplay is a lot harder than it is to write a good novel for the reasons we both mentioned.
**** ???? "If you want a bullet travelling through the air in your script, write that there is a bullet travelling through the air. If you want the ground to light up, write it in the script. If you want to see a comet approaching from space ..." ****
This is a play on semantics that is not contrary to the art of writing a screenplay. Why does it matter how something is said when the obviousness of what is happening in the scene is enough to tell me the director what I need to know?
**** "Completely untrue. That is the whole point of what I am saying. A film script is not a literary form, it is the first process in the construction of a film." ****
I think you are being miopic to what makes good film writing. Like Martin said, it's about story more than it is about style.
I will agree this much that if the writer can express his full vision with as few words as possible, then he should, but I will never go so far as to say this is a rule of thumb.
Oh, Eric11, I admire your bravery and hope you have a lot of stamina.
I laughed at the mention of John Turman as a writing guru. His father is legendary producer Lawrence Turman which I'm sure had nothing to do with John's credits. But anyways, he's talking about direct-speak writing which is -- "Tom takes off his jacket. Oh crap! He's going to fight John." You get it in TV and action films a lot. It's common and accepted so it's not like you're going out on a limb if you want to write like that. The money people like it because it's an easy read.
Which cycles back to what this thread started out with -- write like you want to be produced. It's gotten a little sideways about what Decadence can direct and whatnot which I don't think matters to most people on this board. The members of the community write really commercial scripts and they want to be produced.
If you want to sell your zombies and cannibals to Sony you have to learn to write like what Hollywood reads and buys. They buy stuff chockful of great language, descriptions, embedded commentary and other unfilmables because they are buying a script that has to appeal to actors, directors, marketing people and executives. A script is not just a blueprint for production it's also a sales pitch and a marketing tool and a hook for getting the best talent attached. The fact that a single line isn't filmable doesn't matter (I know, I know, but it doesn't) as long as the screenplay as a whole is obvious (like pretty much every example offered in this thread) and and everything sorts itself out in the end.
And Eric, myopia is great word for not understanding how a screenplay works as whole. "Myopic Director" is my new favorite oxymoron.
"But anyways, he's talking about direct-speak writing which is -- "Tom takes off his jacket. Oh cr**! He's going to fight John." You get it in TV and action films a lot. It's common and accepted so it's not like you're going out on a limb if you want to write like that. The money people like it because it's an easy read."
You can't have your cake and eat it. You mention professionals do it one way but then when evidence from other professionals is pointed out, you pretend that they don't count.
No-one has ever said that it doesn't sell. I've explained at length the reasons it does sell, and the reasons why it often makes for less effective films.
Adding unfilmmables at the end of a script to make it easier to read is fine. Any writer in the world should be able to dress a script up to make it read better. Adjectives are not hard to come by. My concern is only with novice writers who are trying to get better at writing scripts and those that want develop a deeper understanding of their art and craft.
"The members of the community write really commercial scripts and they want to be produced.
"If you want to sell your zombies and cannibals to Sony you have to learn to write like what Hollywood reads and buys. They buy stuff chockful of great language, descriptions, embedded commentary and other unfilmables because they are buying a script that has to appeal to actors, directors, marketing people and executives. A script is not just a blueprint for production it's also a sales pitch and a marketing tool and a hook for getting the best talent attached. The fact that a single line isn't filmable doesn't matter (I know, I know, but it doesn't) as long as the screenplay as a whole is obvious (like pretty much every example offered in this thread) and and everything sorts itself out in the end. "
Single lines are fine. The problem is that if novices don't develop a proper visual sense, they will never write anything that even approaches a sellable script.
As for using it as a sales pitch, a hook for talent etc. This is certainly the case, but It would have to be proven that there is a link between an actor liking the unfilmmables and taking the job, rather than being impressed by the quality of the dialogue and the actual story.
I personally have never heard a single actor wax lyrical about some character description.
At least you accept that some things are unfilmmable now.
"And Eric, myopia is great word for not understanding how a screenplay works as whole. "Myopic Director" is my new favorite oxymoron."
>>At least you accept that some things are unfilmmable now.
I think what I said was a single line uninformed by the whole couldn't be filmed. Y'know, myopia.
There's really no point in pursuing this, is there? DF is always going to be right and his taste and limitations= quality writing. It's one man against the majority of Hollywood. Me, I got my money on the house.
Oh, Eric11, I admire your bravery and hope you have a lot of stamina.
I laughed at the mention of John Turman as a writing guru. His father is legendary producer Lawrence Turman which I'm sure had nothing to do with John's credits. But anyways, he's talking about direct-speak writing which is -- "Tom takes off his jacket. Oh crap! He's going to fight John." You get it in TV and action films a lot. It's common and accepted so it's not like you're going out on a limb if you want to write like that. The money people like it because it's an easy read.
Which cycles back to what this thread started out with -- write like you want to be produced. It's gotten a little sideways about what Decadence can direct and whatnot which I don't think matters to most people on this board. The members of the community write really commercial scripts and they want to be produced.
If you want to sell your zombies and cannibals to Sony you have to learn to write like what Hollywood reads and buys. They buy stuff chockful of great language, descriptions, embedded commentary and other unfilmables because they are buying a script that has to appeal to actors, directors, marketing people and executives. A script is not just a blueprint for production it's also a sales pitch and a marketing tool and a hook for getting the best talent attached. The fact that a single line isn't filmable doesn't matter (I know, I know, but it doesn't) as long as the screenplay as a whole is obvious (like pretty much every example offered in this thread) and and everything sorts itself out in the end.
And Eric, myopia is great word for not understanding how a screenplay works as whole. "Myopic Director" is my new favorite oxymoron.
Thanks, I will try to add to this conversation but I am not sure if I have the stamina to go 15 rounds. I agree with a lot what you said about the industry. My experience is with the indi world not so much the studio's. However I think the object of both industries is to make great movies.
**** It's not a question of style. It is a simple black and white equation of what is filmmable and what is not. **** I hate to sound like the antagonist here because I respect what you have to say, but I don't agree with you at all. I have not read two scripts that followed a typical convention. They come in all sort's of style's composition, length and prose.
Because no one writes the same, screenwriting is an art more than it is a craft, one cannot put a cap on art.
**** You are a director. Tell me the shots that you would use to shoot this:
"She's beautiful, she looks like the prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day, but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life -- " ****
Okay, this discription requires two shots. One is a wide shot to introduce the character in her environment. The other is a close up of her face to show us where the eyes are looking.
That's it.
**** People keep avoiding the incontrovertible truth that film is a visual/audio medium and everything must be seen or heard. ****
Filmmaking is a visual audio medium yes. Screenwriting is about utilizing your imagination for that medium. There is a certain language that we use to help the director see his movie but we don't tell him this is how you are going to make your movie. A director well take a script and tell us his version of the story but his interpretations are subjective.
I believe a great director can make a bad script look good, but a bad director can/will make a good script look bad.
**** The only way to film the above is to change the script. That is a stone cold fact and I really don't know why people keep skirting the issue. ****
Well maybe to you it's a fact because you can't see how it can be done on film. That's okay, some scripts are intended for a particular director.
FYI if I was ever given the chance (I know I never will) I would hate to direct a Quintin Tarantino script. I would hate it because his style is offensive to me. But I love his movies and he does an awesome job directing his own screenplays.
It's not a question of style. It is a simple black and white equation of what is filmmable and what is not. **** I hate to sound like the antagonist here because I respect what you have to say, but I don't agree with you at all. I have not read two scripts that followed a typical convention. They come in all sort's of style's composition, length and prose.
*****
We're arguing two different points here. I'm not saying that there is a certain style of writing that everyone should adopt. That would be impossible even if that was what I wanted.
My problem is with unfilmmables, passages of description that cannot be filmed.
***** "She's beautiful, she looks like the prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day, but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life -- " ****
Okay, this discription requires two shots. One is a wide shot to introduce the character in her environment. The other is a close up of her face to show us where the eyes are looking.
That's it.
****
This illustrates my point precisley and I'm glad that someone has finally had the decency to try and attempt the impossible.
The film you have just directed just shows a beautiful girl in a wide shot. Then it comes close to show her looking a bit upset.
Thats all the audience will pick up upon. .
"she looks like the prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day". That is a thought that cannot be relayed to the audience with just a wide shot. This is what I mean by unfilmmables
All anyone will get is that she is good looking. That's it. (Even that of course is subjective).
When we go in close we'll see that she is a little sad. What we won't see is that the pain has existed for a long time. The audience will assume that something bad has just happened to her and wonder what that is.
If you want the audience to know she has suffered pain all her life we have to be told in dialogue or see it on screen through action. There are no alternatives.
Ultimately this segment of film is just this:
A beautiful girl. She looks sad.
Now I'm not suggesting that this is how you should write, what I'm saying is that very often people write very dull, cliched stuff then dress it up to make it read in a more interesting fashion. Ultimately that stylistic writing just boils down to the short passage above. Two shots, one of a nice looking girl and one showing us she's a bit sad. None of the history or character suggested by the writer will make it into the final film. (without an extensive re-write).
The big problem with writing in this way is not that it won't sell, it is that it encourages bad characterisation. People describe their characters in ways that are interesting to read, but untranslatable to film. You frequently end up with 2 dimensional characters and a flat story. It will read better than my example above and is therefore easier to sell, but it is the same film.
It's fine if professionals do it (though mistakes occur) because in their experience it helps their Producers understand it more easily. The danger is, as I have said, that people who are just starting out write exclusively in this fashion as I believe it prevents people from learning the ability to think visually.
"Filmmaking is a visual audio medium yes. Screenwriting is about utilizing your imagination for that medium."
Of course. But whatever you want to get across will either have to audible or visiblel. Those are the limitations imposed by the medium of the screen, not by myself. There is no limit to what you can put on the screen, there is no limit to the number of ideas, but you have to hear them or see them.
Now, everyone is free to write how they want, but the point is that ultimately writing this way may help to get you sales, but it isn't going to improve the film in any way. On the contrary it can seriously damage them by encouraging writers to put crucial plot information in the description when it should be on screen.
Films play on a screen with speakers. Those are the limitations imposed by this particular medium. Anything to be understood by the audience must either be seen or heard. These are not my rules they are simply a physical reality. Physical reality can be ignored by some people forever (Some people still believe the world is flat) but it's still the case.
Anyway, enough.
For me it is the single biggest flaw that I come across in screenwriting. It tends to be at the root of problems with character development, plot structure etc because it encourages people to cut corners rather than organically creating everything piece by piece. I see it happen in the conversion of professional scripts to film and especially in the work of people starting out.
And it upsets me because it is a very obvious problem that can be avoided simply by remembering that people are going to be watching it.
For me the crucial point is this. We know that a good story trumps everything, that is the one thing that every script needs. But which way of writing encourages writers to write in the most interesting way?
Take away a lot of the unfilmmable window dressing in a lot of scripts and you are usually left with what everyone complains about. The lifeless cookie cutter film. It is action and dramatic conflict, character development etc that are important and really give a script style. How the author deals with situations and the themes and undercurrents that he deals with. Not unfilmmable descriptions.
**** The film you have just directed just shows a beautiful girl in a wide shot. Then it comes close to show her looking a bit upset.
Thats all the audience will pick up upon. ...All anyone will get is that she is good looking. That's it. (Even that of course is subjective).
When we go in close we'll see that she is a little sad. What we won't see is that the pain has existed for a long time. The audience will assume that something bad has just happened to her and wonder what that is. ****
That is true, the audience will immediately pick up upon the obvious but acting is more than just emotions. It's about behaviour. Let's go back to the example you posted.
"She's beautiful, she looks like the prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day, but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life -- "
The writer could have said, "but her eyes show melancholey"- and the DP in me would have understood exactly what the writer wanted in this shot, but the actor in me would have desired more.
What I neglected to mention before was that the prose above was actually a direction for the actor, not the director.
An actress reading this script would be getting important insight into the mind of the character.
"who looks like a prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day". That says to an actor, this woman is vain.
"...but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life --"
All of a sudden this woman has layers. She appears vain to conceal the fact she is completely insecure
Now that I understand this characterization about the character. I am going to behave in a certain way that will portray the state of mind of this character.
The director starts off with the wide shot.
We see the character enter the room. In the wide shot we notice the character's attire and what she is doing. We see her behaviour which tells us, the woman could be Tyra banks but her body language shows that she is insecure.
If the writer had said, her eyes show sadness instead of giving us a little history. Then the actor will think to herself I am going to play this sad, "I don't know why I am sad but I am going to be sad anyways" - however that may not be what the scene is calling for.
Thus with the insight into the mind of the character all of a sudden the actor will say to herself. I am not going to play this "upset" I am going to play this scene insecurely. I am going to behave as if the next man who looks at me sideways, will have me running for the doors.
Believe it or not the audience will pick up on this behaviour even if they don't yet understand why.
I will finish the sequence in a close up shot to inject a feeling of sympathy for the woman in the crowed.
We the audience no longer see a woman who is just upset. We see a woman with a history. Here eyes do say it all.
The best example I can give you is the scene in Casablanca when Iisa is listening to the song "As time goes by" the expression on her face shows a woman who is longing for her lover and it is obvious that she doesn't expect to ever see him again.
Yes at first they appear sad, but we immediately understand that it isn't sadness she feels it is longing... And when we see people look like they are longing for something we know they have a history.
**** If you want the audience to know she has suffered pain all her life we have to be told in dialogue or see it on screen through action. There are no alternatives. ****
To say it in her dialogue is exposition. To say it in the action doesn't have to be said on script, it can be expressed purely through the behaviour of the actor.
If the writer wants the reader to know something about the characters past, he will insert a flashback if not, it is not worth mentioning it in the script.
**** It's fine if professionals do it (though mistakes occur) because in their experience it helps their Producers understand it more easily. The danger is, as I have said, that people who are just starting out write exclusively in this fashion as I believe it prevents people from learning the ability to think visually. ****
Thinking visually doesn't come over night. It comes by learning story structure and practicing writing creatively within the guidelines.
BTW I am not disagreeing with some of the points you made. They are all valid points, but I guess I want to establish that writing should be about story telling not about making rules that inhibit authentic creativity.
**** Now, everyone is free to write how they want, but the point is that ultimately writing this way may help to get you sales, but it isn't going to improve the film in any way. On the contrary it can seriously damage them by encouraging writers to put crucial plot information in the description when it should be on screen.
****
I don't see any reason why the writer would not wish to include something vital to the plot. Bad writing stems from not understanding story structure not about prose on a page.
**** Films play on a screen with speakers. Those are the limitations imposed by this particular medium. Anything to be understood by the audience must either be seen or heard. These are not my rules they are simply a physical reality. Physical reality can be ignored by some people forever (Some people still believe the world is flat) but it's still the case. ****
The only reality the writer need be concern with is making sure he has a story worth telling in his 120 page script. The rest are simply details.
**** Anyway, enough.
For me it is the single biggest flaw that I come across in screenwriting. It tends to be at the root of problems with character development, plot structure etc because it encourages people to cut corners rather than organically creating everything piece by piece. I see it happen in the conversion of professional scripts to film and especially in the work of people starting out. ****
Like I said before you are entitled to think that way and I respect you for it. At the very least you defend your position very well. It has been great talking to you about this subject.
For me the single biggest flaw in screenwriting are writers who don't understand story structure. Bad story structure will kill a movie, but too much prose, who gives a s***t?
"Believe it or not the audience will pick up on this behaviour even if they don't yet understand why.
I will finish the sequence in a close up shot to inject a feeling of sympathy for the woman in the crowed.
We the audience no longer see a woman who is just upset. We see a woman with a history. Here eyes do say it all.
The best example I can give you is the scene in Casablanca when Iisa is listening to the song "As time goes by" the expression on her face shows a woman who is longing for her lover and it is obvious that she doesn't expect to ever see him again.
Yes at first they appear sad, but we immediately understand that it isn't sadness she feels it is longing... And when we see people look like they are longing for something we know they have a history."
Your explanation is very convincing and it's certainly something to bear in mind.
Personally I'm very wary of the idea that the audience will pick up on such subtle details as a whole. I've spent a lot of time watching and discussing the reaction of the audience to my own films and others and despite having huge respect for the ability of actors feel that the cinematic context of things tends to override the internal emotion of actors when portrayed on screen.
It's been established since the days of Eisenstein that people will watch the same clips in different orders and take different things from the same performance if you change the context.
IE show a cat stuck up a tree, then show a neutral shot of a womans face and they respond that the woman is worried. Show the cat at the bottom of the tree and show exactly the same image of the woman and they say she's relieved.
It's like that Triple Distilled Smirnoff advert where her husband tells her he doesn't love her anymore and she starts crying. They then cut out the "don't" and "anymore", so that it is just I love you and when she cries it appears that she is crying in happiness.
Only a tiny fraction of the audience will pick up on the actual emotion being portrayed.
Context is King Imo. If this scene is in the middle of a film it will be qualified by what went before it.
I'd say the Casablanca example is a bit different. How much of the history do we take from the song? If the song wasn't such an old, wistful and clearly romantic one, what would the audience take from the scene?
""who looks like a prom queen who wouldn't give you the time of day". That says to an actor, this woman is vain.
"...but her eyes show she's had a lot of pain in her life --"
All of a sudden this woman has layers. She appears vain to conceal the fact she is completely insecure"
That's an intersting interpretation of the script, but I can't help but feel it's an attempt to find order out of the chaos so to speak.
Why choose insecurity? Her pain could also have caused her to become strong and steadfast. Or a million other different things.
The audience is only going to get a grasp on her character when we see her react to something specific or see her behaving in a very specific fashion. E.G she avoids boys at all costs which may suggest shyness or even that she has been sexually abused or whatever, depending on the severity of her reaction.
Anyway. This thread could go round in circles forever.
I think Rick might be overlooking, or downplaying the interpretation aspect of collaborative filmmaking. That is to say the tone. Mood. Atmosphere. Sometimes simply describing what can be physically seen isn't sufficient to translate the vision in your head.
If the writer can evoke the right tone for the reader by using what's per definition unfilmables then that's okay if they go to HOW something is filmed. How a situation plays out. How tense it is etc.
Like Anotherwriter says the words on the page starts the scene in your head. It draws you in and you KNOW exactly what they mean.
"The Flux capacitor. It's what makes time travel possible."
It's not that I'm overlooking anything, it's just that the issue touches on lots of different aspects of filmmaking. So many in fact, that we're all arguing slightly different points or at least degrees of points.
There is a sliding scale of what adds to a film in terms of tone etc as you say and what becomes deceptive.
The problem is I kind of rode into the thread like a bull into a China shop and got everyones backs up, when really I was only trying to expand the thread from the original point ( that producers won't throw your script away for breaking the rules)and present alternative views about the reasons people say it and why it isn't like that in reality.
As everyone on this thread knows, there are no hard and fast rules about screenwriting. I do maintain that novice writers should learn the rules; You can keep what works for you and reject what doesn't, but without starting with them you generally develop huge problems.
That's the experience I get from a lot of unsolicited scripts that are sent to me anyway.
Also, the thread keeps coming back to examples of professional writers. Professional writers are not my sole concern here. My real concern is for the writers who are not fully in control of their discipline yet and may, in attempting to imitate professional styles, jump the gun so to speak.
Ultimately these kind of techniques are a staple of Hollywood writing and they will help to sell the script.
I'm just not sure that it is a good thing. Like I say, I think everyone should read Mamets book Bambi vs Godzilla and see what he says about this style of writing and the impact it has had on the quality of Hollywood films.
Just taking the two examples of writing that Another Writer has produced. They are very stylishly written. Fast, exciting. But look beneath the words, what is actually happening?
One is a scene where a bomb is about to go off. It is the same scene I have seen in perhaps a 100+ Hollywood movies.
The other is a scene where the boss is moaning at his employee. It's almost identical to Beverly Hills Cop, the technique is used in True Lies, its even been parodied in Naked Gun it's that much of a cliche.
This is why a lot of people say this style of writing is deceptive. It dresses up action that everyone has seen a million times before and makes it seem fresh and exciting.
Now the actual films that have been used as examples may be great films,or not, it's irrelevant. (The writer may deliberately setting up a cliche to subvert it, on the other hand lots of films ARE made that are riddled with cliches). My point is that it is easy for both writers and producers to fall into the trap that something that reads well will make an interesting film.
In both writing and film you can dress things up to make them more exciting.
In the bomb example, you can have crane shots flying in to within an inch of the actors face to catch a bead of sweat trickling from his face. You can layer on sound, hear a clock ticking ever more loudly, have a red light flashing round the room. Fast editing to stimulate the senses, but when the lights go off, people leave the cinema and the film is forgotten because there was nothing interesting about the story underneath it all.
This is what Hollwood has become. A series of stimulations rather than an attempt at creating intelligent, truthful stories that create debate or fulfill people.
Hollywood has fallen into an almost endless cycle of remakes and cliche. They are even remaking films that are still warm off the press. Many commentators consider this style of writing to be largely responsible for that. Myself included. It deceives readers who are bored of reading scripts and it deceives Producers whose intelligence doesn't necessarily extend to understanding story.
The other side of it is this:
Hollywood is not the only route that a filmmaker can go. You don't even need a distribution deal to sell a million films in these days of the internet. Look at Documentaries like Out Foxed or the Ewan Mgregor narrated Faster which has sold millions. I've just returned from Cannes with an offer for my latest film.
There are other routes than Hollywood and there are different styles of writing. Which stlye of writing helps you to write the type of film you want to make?
The only thing I am concerned about is that people understand the issues behind all these type of debates and understand why things are like they are, so that they then can make an informed choice about the way that they write and what they write.
Just taking the two examples of writing that Another Writer has produced. They are very stylishly written. Fast, exciting. But look beneath the words, what is actually happening?
One is a scene where a bomb is about to go off. It is the same scene I have seen in perhaps a 100+ Hollywood movies.
The other is a scene where the boss is moaning at his employee. It's almost identical to Beverly Hills Cop, the technique is used in True Lies, its even been parodied in Naked Gun it's that much of a cliche.
This is why a lot of people say this style of writing is deceptive. It dresses up action that everyone has seen a million times before and makes it seem fresh and exciting.
Whether or not the actual scene the writer is going for is cliché or not has little to do with the format. What we're debating is how to best convey your vision, not whether or not your vision is cliché. That's irrelevant.
The point is the way the writer's use of language makes us understand the situation, makes us "see" the expression on everyone's faces without actually describing it. It was visceral. the reader "feels" it.
If this sort of language can make a trite situation seems fresh and exciting then that's an amazing feat. Imagine what it can do for fresh and exciting scenes!
"The Flux capacitor. It's what makes time travel possible."
But your last post DF circles back to what you've always said -- you just don't like the way Hollywood screenplays are written. That's what this whole thread has become. You keep talking about protecting new writers from the pitfalls of Hollywood writing. You mean the pitfalls of writing something that Hollywood sees as "filmable"?
This board is full of high concept scripts that are created because the writers really dig Hollywood movies. Their problem is that they are following your advice to only write what you see on screen. This practice makes the scripts these strange hybrids -- completely visual (down to the crinkling of noses) but lacking that extra layer of voice and conflict and emotion that Hollywood looks for in a script.
And it's great if people want to make their own films and reinvent conventions. I'm all for great movies and DF if you produce a great film I'll be cheering you on. The problem is that Simply Scripts is not the most indie forward script place on the planet. Most of the writers here want to be able to write the movies you don't care for (with ticking bombs and car chases and zombies) and see them in the multi-plex.
My advice for potential multi-plexers is that If you want to get produced read produced scripts from the last two years. Not screenplay books telling you what you can and can't do. Read the scripts of movies you like and learn the vocabulary and the shorthand and incorporate what you like into your writing. Take what appeals to you and fold it in. You're not doing yourself any favors learning to write from a book and then having to learn how to write all over again in a style that will get you produced.
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