Scriptwriting for Film, Television and New Media

Alan Hueth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429866487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

What are the foundations of scriptwriting? Why do some scripts gain more prestige than others? How do you write a script and get it noticed? Scriptwriting for Film, Television and New Media answers these questions and more, offering a comprehensive introduction to writing scripts for film, television, the Internet, and interactive multimedia.

Author Alan C. Hueth explains not just how to write, but how to think and apply the fundamental principles of screenwriting to multiple platforms and genres. This includes chapters on numerous script formats, including drama and comedy in film and TV, short films, commercials and PSAs, news and sports, interview shows, documentaries, reality shows, and corporate and educational media, including interactive multimedia. This book also addresses legal and ethical issues, how to become a professional scriptwriter, and a section on production language that provides helpful explanations of how camera, locations, visual and audio effects combine on screen to engage and sustain viewer attention, and, consequently, how to improve scriptwriting technique.

The book features numerous case studies and detailed examples, including chapter by chapter exercises, plot diagrams, quick-look and learn tables that assist readers to quickly understand genre related script elements, and in-depth script close-ups to examine precisely how writers utilize the principles and elements of drama to create a successful script. It is also supported by a comprehensive companion website with further case studies, assignments, video clips, and examples of films and programs discussed in the book. Scriptwriting for Film, Television, and New Media is ideal for aspiring scriptwriters and anyone wanting to broaden their understanding of how successful scripts are created.

Section 1
Foundations

Prepping and packing for the journey

Chapter 1
Principles and elements of outstanding scriptwriting

In this chapter, you’ll be learning about the following:

• How to transport viewers on some amazing journeys
• How to do what’s most important: engage and sustain the audience’s attention
• How the principles of pleasure, emotion/pathos (pity), fear (suspense), conflict, character beats, plot points, and script unity are related to audience effect
• How the elements of drama are used to write outstanding scripts
• What to not do as a writer

Introduction

This chapter is about getting ready for the journey. It’s about getting a big-picture view of your goal: how to get from point A to point B and then to C to D, and so on. So, think in terms of three things. First, the destination – what needs to happen in the heart and mind of the viewers? Second: your map and how and where you’ll go, and where you’ll need to take viewers to reach your goal. And third, you’ll need to prepare and pack provisions to assure that you have all of the basic tools needed to write all of these different film/TV/new media program forms.

First, your destination: the goal is writing scripts that will engage and move the audience in concrete and profound emotional, psychological, and/or physiological ways. How? To answer that question, we need to explore some principles and elements of scriptwriting. Consider these in your thinking:

• Why is it that viewers care about the Katniss Everdeen character in The Hunger Games films?
• Why is viewer attention riveted to the screen when they see the totally funny Mayhem character in the Allstate commercials?
• Why do viewers care so much about what the boss – in the award-winning reality show, Undercover Boss – will do about an out-of-control employee or a needy employee who’s living in his or her car?
• Why do viewers return week-after-week to see what’s up in the lives of the characters of The Big Bang Theory?
• Why do viewers sit still to hear their favorite actor reveal their greatest secret on the television talk show after the commercial break?
• Why do viewers sit through documentaries to really get to know the famous person or find out the real killer or understand a big issue?
• Why do viewers watch and begin to care about the history or goals or how-tos of their job with their new employer in an informational or training video?

Have you ever had such thoughts? Do you recall having any moderate to strong feelings (negative or positive) about the characters or other aspects of the content as you were watching? Did those feelings create some sense of suspense and anticipation about the program? Did you wonder to yourself: what’s going to happen next?!

Creating this emotional/intellectual connection between the characters (or other aspects of the content) and the audience is the most critical task for a writer. If this doesn’t happen, you lose your audience. They check out, zone out, or GOD FORBID: change the channel or website, or leave the theater! It’s all about causing the audience to care about the content. If they don’t care, they move on. And without an audience, there is no reason for the program to exist. Unfortunately, such failures are not uncommon.

• Most films that are made don’t make a profit.
• Most TV shows don’t last longer than one year!

Why do programs fail? Furthering our transportation metaphor, it’s because the writers don’t take the audience to a place where the audience wants or needs to go. They don’t understand the purpose for the journey – especially from the viewers’ perspective. It’s like driving without a destination in mind. The next section will reveal the destination that all viewers seek and the vehicle and fuel required to reach that destination. These concepts are foundational to understanding how and why programs succeed or fail. Like trying to live without air, water, and food … a writer who does not understand and practice these concepts will not succeed.

Program purpose: reach the destination

Every journey should have a destination. And, from a viewer’s perspective (and Aristotle’s), there is only one destination that works: the creation of pleasure in the hearts and minds of the viewer. One of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Alfred Hitchcock, understood this concept, and verbalized it in a concise and meaningful way: “Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”¹

• Definition: pleasure – a positive feeling that comes when we see aspects of ourselves and others imitated on the stage.

Aristotle noticed that the “most excellent” plays were those in which he could see a bit of himself and others in the play. In the same way, our measure of excellence is the amount of pleasure we get from TV, film, and new media programs. Think about it. Why do we give our money and/or time to watch something, and why do we praise some programs over others? It is because we experience a payoff – some kind of pleasure – based on being able to relate to what we see on the screen. That payoff justifies our investment – the money and/or time to watch it. This creation of pleasure in the viewer is the end game to a writer – the “destiny” for the viewer’s journey. You want to rivet the audience’s attention onto the screen and provide a pleasurable experience.

The second reason that programs fail has to do with the “means” to achieving the end game – or how the writer creates this pleasure. It’s the “vehicle” for reaching the destiny. It’s also THE overarching principle that this book is based upon and will be explored, described, and illustrated in every film and TV and new media program chapter in this book. Aristotle describes this with one simple word that has been used by writers of novels, short stories, plays, and film, television, and new media scripts for centuries: pathos.

Pathos

When you hear the word pathos, think this: emotion that you feel as a viewer. This is a foundational premise in this book. And for good reason. Great filmmakers and novelists confirm this. The novelist Stephen King said, “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”² The great filmmaker, Frank Capra, said “I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”³ And Hitchcock chimed in on this concept too in saying, “Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second job is to sustain that emotion.”⁴

Here’s how it works: as you watch, you see characters who are struggling – trying to reach a goal or overcome an obstacle. As they struggle, you identify with them and, hopefully, begin to vicariously experience their struggle … their struggle becomes your struggle. Or, maybe it’s some kind of informational or persuasive message, and you’re engaged by the imagery and sounds, or you just see content that spurs your interest, and it makes you want to see more. And you can’t look away from the screen because you want to know what happens next. Sometimes, it’s a more drastic response: you feel a lump in your throat with your eyes starting to tear up, or you even begin to cry; or a smile is soon followed by euphoric laughter; or you experience surprise and discomfort because the program content contradicts your beliefs or worldview. These effects are not random occurrences. Great writers want to move their audiences. They want to engage and sustain viewer attention in a way and order that heightens viewer engagement from fade up to fade out. But this doesn’t automatically happen. Consider all of the unengaging and lousy films and TV shows that you’ve seen over the years. Eliciting these effects in your viewers is totally dependent upon the writer’s understanding and mastery of the two components of pathos: pity and fear.

Our journey into pity and fear, and the elements of drama will include examples from a variety of film and television programs. However, we will focus on one particular film series called The Hunger Games. This film is a dystopian American science-fiction film series and is relevant to our Greek-Aristotelian connection and the instructional premise of this book. The writer, Suzanne Collins, based the three novels and film stories upon the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur – a story about how Athens would periodically send seven boys and seven girls to Crete to be eaten by the monstrous Minotaur. The sacrifice was punishment for past deeds – similar to The Hunger Games’ capitol city of Panem, requiring all of the districts to send two youngsters to die (as punishment) for the districts’ past uprisings and civil war. The Hunger Games film series is an ideal model for revealing the concepts of pity and fear – and their relevance to all film and television programs.

• Definition: dystopian – an imaginary totalitarian place where settings and environments, technology, and people are degraded and without hope of improvement.
• Definition: pity – a feeling that involves an increasing interest and care for/about a character, topic, or issue being portrayed in a film or television program.

Pity: sympathy, empathy, and antipathy

Pity can be a positive or negative feeling. There are three basic types of pity: sympathy, empathy, and antipathy.

• Definition: sympathy – when we feel someone’s pain or distress – based on a similar experience, or when we have a moderately strong agreement with something or someone.

Although you may ...