Screenwriters and Screenwriting

Putting Practice into Context

C. Batty

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137338938
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Screenwriters and Screenwriting is an innovative, fresh and lively book that is useful for both screenwriting practice and academic study. It is international in scope, with case studies and analyses from the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, Ireland and Denmark. The book presents a distinctive collection of chapters from creative academics and critical practitioners that serve one purpose: to put aspects of screenwriting practice into their relevant contexts. Focusing on how screenplays are written, developed and received, the contributors challenge assumptions of what 'screenwriting studies' might be, and celebrates the role of the screenwriter in the creation of a screenplay. It is intended to be thought provoking and stimulating, with the ultimate aim of inspiring current and future screenwriting practitioners and scholars.

Part I

Screenwriters and Their Screenplays

1

White Space: An Approach to the Practice of Screenwriting as Poetry

Elisabeth Lewis Corley and Joseph Megel

Introduction

Despite contrary and eminently reasonable claims of many prominent experts in the field of screenwriting, such as Syd Field, we side with those who take the position that screenwriting can be an art form in and of itself; and we argue that, if the writing is approached and practised as an art, immeasurable benefits accrue. This is not to say that the writing of the screenplay is an end in itself, but that the approach to the writing can have wide-ranging influence on the quality of a finished film.

One of the most powerful tools at the disposal of the screenwriter, we argue, is one seldom employed to the fullest in the haste to create formulaic screenplays that appeal to a wide audience: the careful contemplation of the implications of script format and the language used to create visual description. As with the formal requirements of poetic forms, from the sonnet to the sestina, the strictures of form and precision of language can have liberating effects and profound implications. Like most who have instructed beginning writers, we believe technical language that pulls the reader’s attention out of the story can largely be avoided by sophisticated use of the formatting norms already in place.

The aim of this chapter, then, is to discuss the potential of screenplay format and, very briefly, the language of its visual description to contribute to the creation of screenplays that are not simply read, but, as with poetry, are received on many levels. The ultimate goal of our focus on the format and language of the screenplay is to liberate the screenwriter to create something as polished and resonant as a wellcrafted poem and in so doing to increase the presence of poetry in filmmaking.

The ‘spec’ screenplay as art

We are accustomed to hearing films described as cinematic poetry. For example, virtually everything written about Terrence Malick resorts to poetic equivalences at some point. A.O. Scott’s review of Malick’s To the Wonder (2013) in the New York Times asserts that the film ‘spins visual poetry not only out of prairies and creek beds but also out of less obviously sublime facts of the landscape’. Hearing films described as poetry is commonplace, but few expect poetry of the screenplay or regard the choices of the screenwriter as meaningful in the way we assume that the choices of poets are.

Most of the focus of our work has been on one form of writing for the screen: the creation of a ‘spec’ screenplay for a narrative, full-length feature film. The spec script, one written speculatively by a writer who chooses to do so other than at the behest of a studio or producer as a work for hire, is a distinct form of screenwriting and one perhaps most likely to be a starting point for those who have no meaningful connection with the industry. David Trottier’s Dr. Format Answers Your Questions offers clear distinctions between the norms of spec screenplay writing and the shooting script (2002: 67–69), primary among them the necessity to tell the story clearly, movingly, and to eschew anything that takes the reader out of the story. We do not need to hear about dolly moves if we can create a rhythm on the page that makes the film unspool in the mind of the reader as it does in the mind of the screenwriter. If it is difficult to find prominent examples of the kind of work for which we are advocating, it may be because so few spec screenplays are made into films; or, possibly, because most of the screenplays that are widely available are shooting scripts (Trottier, 2002: 18). Trottier also reminds us that industry norms change, albeit slowly, and formatting norms change (2002: 67–68). Change may accelerate as the means of making films move closer to the hands of the originating filmmakers. The 2012 independent film King Kelly, for example, was shot almost entirely on cellphone cameras (Holden, 2012).

In The Screenwriter’s Workbook, Syd Field recalls his mentor, the legendary filmmaker Jean Renoir, as having claimed that screenwriting cannot be considered an art because a film is not the work of one person. According to Field, Renoir said, ‘Art should offer the viewer the chance of merging with the creator’ (2006: 1–2). It is well beyond the scope of this chapter to take on the question of what constitutes art, but the notion that, to qualify as art, a work must be in some way tied to an individual’s private effort merged with a public audience seems difficult to defend. Whilst many have spoken to the issue of process and the importance of process, no one has supported the view that art can be traced to any one process in particular. As poet and theorist of poesy Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes,

In every work of art there is reconcilement of the external with the internal; the conscious is so impressed on the unconscious as to appear in it; as compare mere letters inscribed on a tomb with figures themselves constituting the tomb. He who combines the two is the man of genius and for that reason he must partake of both. Hence there is in genius itself an unconscious activity; nay, that is the genius in the man of genius. And this is the true exposition of the rule that the artist must first eloign himself from nature in order to return to her with full effect. Why this? Because if he were to begin by mere painful copying, he would produce masks only, not forms breathing life.

(cited in Krasny, 2004: 38)

It is those ‘forms breathing life’ to which we rightly aspire, and too often what results from a formulaic process is more like masks. Coleridge is also speaking of the role of the unconscious in getting to a place where the writing feels alive. No one argues that the unconscious can be summoned but we do argue that there are ways, long established in the writing of poetry, that make its entry and influence more generative.

As Wallace Stevens writes in his essay, ‘The Irrational Element in Poetry’,

what I have in mind when I speak of the irrational element in poetry is the transaction between reality and the sensibility of the poet from which poetry springs [ . . . ] What interests us is a particular process in the rational mind which we recognize as irrational in the sense that it takes place unaccountably.

(1957: 216–218)

What we are looking for in seeking more attention to the language of visual description in screenplays, and more conscious, less mechanical, use of format in screenwriting, is a benefit to the end product of the screenplay: the film itself. We freely acknowledge that, whatever this benefit may be, the means of its arrival are unaccountable.

Throughout their book Writing for the Screen: Creative and Critical Approaches (2008), Craig Batty and Zara Waldeback refer to ‘the art of screenwriting’. We agree that screenwriting can be, is, and should always be, at least in aspiration, an art. Even if Renoir is right and individual creation is crucial, the time spent creating the screenplay is, after all, often the work of one person (even if that person is working with collaborators), and that person has an opportunity to raise the work to the level of art through careful use of language and a profound understanding of the form and the format. Given the requirements of the film industry, the writing process, especially of the spec screenplay, may be the only time that this kind of quiet attention is focused on the project. The result has to be strong enough to survive the armies of people who will shape the project once it leaves the screenwriter’s hands.

A screenplay, then, should be not merely a set of technical notations for ‘a story told in pictures’ – Syd Field’s oft-repeated definition (2006: 3) – but a legitimate work of art in itself. Story structure and format, the rules of screenwriting, are for some restraints that are paradoxically liberating, and for others a source of anxiety. William Wordsworth’s Nuns Fret Not at their Convent’s Narrow Room is instructive here.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;

And hermits are contented with their cells;

And students with their pensive citadels;

Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,

Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,

High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,

Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:

In truth the prison, unto which we doom

Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,

In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound

Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;

Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

(cited in Perkins, 1967: 290)

The point of this is that whilst the screenplay does come with some clear rules and guidelines, those restrictions can be as liberating as the sonnet form proved for poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shakespeare and countless others who created opportunities for the arrival of the unaccountable.

What format does

Format is more than rules; but there are some simple rules that seem to be universally accepted in most screenwriting circles. Batty and Waldeback give a wonderfully concise overview of some of these (2008: 5–6), and Christopher Riley’s The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style (2009) and David Trottier’s Dr. Format Answers Your Questions (2002) delve into them in meticulous detail. What we would like to address here are the implications of some of these requirements and to suggest ways of using them to assist the screenwriter in visualising the finished film more clearly, and also to propose that there may be attendant benefits on such precision and care.

Batty and Waldeback stress the importance of correct formatting for purposes of professional appearance and for the accuracy of predictions of screen time, since the general rule of thumb is that one page of a printed screenplay translates to one minute of screen time (2008: 5). There are other reasons why the formatting might be worthy of close attention.

Scene headings

Everyone agrees that each new scene begins with a scene heading, although there are disagreements about what constitutes a new scene or what kinds of subheading might legitimately appear under a single master shot scene heading. The scene heading begins with an abbreviation for either interior (INT.) or exterior (EXT.), followed by the location (BEDROOM), which should remain exactly the same each time the same location is used, and then time of day (DAY). When it is crucial, the quality of the light can be suggested (DUSK) in place of the third element, instead of DAY or NIGHT. This technical language is understood as essential for planning purposes as a screenplay goes into production. Scheduling and budgeting programs designed to search for these cues, such as Movie Magic and Gorilla, help prepare for the compressed period of principal photography when the goal is to put together on the same day or night as many scenes in the same location as are feasible to shoot in the time allowed. It seems obvious that a new scene heading would be required with every change in location or time, including whenever time is not absolutely continuous. This concept is easy enough to grasp but is surprisingly often forgotten or misunderstood.

There are great advantages to rigorous observance of this rule, not just in preparing films for production but in helping the reader of a screenplay subconsciously receive information about the rhythm of the story. For example, at the moment of maximum disintegration near the end of Alan Ball’s screenplay American Beauty (1999), when time is whirling for the protagonist, the very text on the page seems fractured and fragmented as well, and the reader receives a distinct sense of jaggedness in time simply by looking at the page and observing the proliferation of scene headings.

EXT. WOODS - NIGHT

In BLACK & WHITE: Eleven-year-old Lester looks up, pointing excitedly at:

His POV: A DOT OF LIGHT falls across an unbelievably starry sky.

LESTER (V.O.)

For me, it was lying on my back at Boy

Scout camp, watching falling stars . . .

INT. BURNHAM HOUSE - JANE’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Ricky and Jane lie curled up on Jane’s bed, fully clothed. We HEAR a GUNSHOT from downstairs. They look at each other, alarmed.

EXT. SUBURBAN STREET - DUSK

In BLACK & WHITE: Maples trees in autumn. Ghostly LEAVES FLUTTER slowly toward pavement.

LESTER (V.O.)

And yellow leaves, from the maple

trees, that lined my street . . .

INT. BURNHAM HOUSE - POWDER ROOM - NIGHT

Angela stands in front of the mirror, fixing her make-up. We HEAR the GUNSHOT again. Angela turns, frightened.

INT. SUBURBAN HOUSE - DAY

In BLACK & WHITE: CLOSE on an ancient woman’s paper HANDS as they button a cardigan sweater.

LESTER (V.O.)

Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way

her skin seemed like paper . . .

EXT. BURNHAM HOUSE - NIGHT

Carolyn walks slowly toward the RED DOOR, drenched to the bone, clutching her PURSE tightly. We HEAR the GUNSHOT again.

EXT. SUBURB - DAY

In BLACK & WHITE: A 1970 PONTIAC FIREBIRD in the driveway of a suburban home. The SUN’S REFLECTION in the windshield FLASHES BRILLIANTLY.

(Ball, 1999: 98)

When looking at this page, before one has read a word of it, there is a dizzying sensation that closely approximates the feeling engendered in the viewer at that moment in the film (1999). On this one page there are seven new scene headings, which equates to a change of scene roughly every eight and a half seconds. For the screenwriter, whose job it is to visualise as a film an emerging story on the page, the parallel between the jaggedness on the page and the quick rhythm of cutting in the film has the advantage of increasing the likelihood of the film coming to life in the mind of the reader in a way that closely resembles its life in the mind of the screenwriter.

In film, the story can go where it needs to go. The screenwriter can skip steps, move from one side of the planet to the other in a bl...