Film Making - Screenwriting

It seems like there is so much information out there about film making and writing screenplays with almost the entirety of the focus being on what I call the "creative" aspects of the film making craft. To that end, you'll hear screenwriting guru after screenwriting guru going on and on about such intangibles as having a "strong story" or "great dialogue".  They all seem to love to blather about what act structure you have or what kind of "journey" your protagonist takes. And the worst of it is, that by and large, that stuff is completely subjective and nearly impossible to assign a value to in any meaningful sense.

Now, are there some things that tend to stand out (both good and bad) as far as the creative aspects of filmmaking go? Sure. Are there universal rules that define what's "good" writing and "bad" writing, or what makes a "good" story vs. a "bad" one? I would say most definitely not. To my mind, most of the people that spend all of that time trying to quantify a creative process are very similar to people who spend a lot of time working out astrological charts. Like astrology, when it's broad and general, everything seems to fit, but the second you try to use it to explain all the little nuances that are actually present in the real world, the whole thing falls apart.

So, why is this a big deal to me? Well, it's not really. But I do hate seeing people waste tons of time and effort rewriting and working little things over and over and over trying to find that magical place that will suddenly transform their screenplay into something with "great dialogue" or an "amazing story". The thing of it is, that for every example some screenwriting guru will give about "how to write great dialogue" there are about 10,000 examples that don't follow Mr. (or Mrs.) Guru's advice, but are still "great" in their own right. Which leads me to believe that the "guru" is probably just another hack with an idea about something who's trying to make a buck.

I'm going to lay this out a little differently however. I'll give you some principles to kind of keep in the back of your head and I'll give you some insights into how this business of screenwriting actually works. Hopefully, when you put the two together, a more complete and realistic insight into screenwriting will come into view.

Screenplay Structure in a Creative Sense

The first thing that everyone always wonders most about is the "structure" of the screenplay in a dramatic sense. Here's the good news, you can stop worrying about that right now. Here's why...a story needs to begin. And it needs to end. That's it. There's your structure, in a creative or dramatic sense. Ever had someone tell you a really great story around the water cooler that was short? Ever had someone tell you a great story around the water cooler that was really long? Do you think that before they started telling the story they wondered how many "acts" there were going to be? Or, if some funny or interesting highlight in the story was the end of an act? Or, if some other event were the "beginning" of the next act?

Of course not. Because that's not how people tell stories.

Here's the simple deal about creative screenwriting structure: make it interesting. If your story is boring, it doesn't matter WHAT medium you're in, your story is still going to be boring. Plain and simple. Being a boring movie is no better than being a boring book or being a boring magazine article. I can't tell you how many scripts I've read that followed all the "rules" and still sucked ass. And, what's worse, is that I'll often see people take things they really like out because it doesn't follow the "rules"! How ridiculous is that?

You know what? It's a fricking movie. You can do random things. Things don't have to be just "so". I'll put it to you another way, there are filmmakers out there that routinely make movies that sometimes critics and even audiences absolutely hate, but they're still making movies. M. Night Shyamalan, Uwe Boll, Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noe, the list is nearly endless. Go check out some of their films and tell me what "formulas" or "screenwriting rules" any of those guys are following. Read all of those "guru" books on screenwriting and then just take a cursory glance at any of those filmmakers I listed above. You'll quickly find the "guru" has missed the point. The only gut check you have is if you like what you're coming up with or not. If you really do, then the next check is if other people are on board with what you like. You don't and never will get to choose what others respond to, so "to thine own self be true."

The hardest part to get across to someone who really wants to be a screenwriter is that, you just don't really know how well you'll resonate until your stuff is out there. There is no "formula" that's going to be successful all of the time for everyone. Ingmar Bergman was hugely successful as a film maker, but so is George Lucas. They have hugely different audiences, hugely different styles, hugely different influences, hugely different everything. There are legions of up and coming film makers that have been influenced by both of those directors and I have a feeling that those up and coming directors will also tell very different stories too. The point is, if someone is trying to teach you how to be creative and you buy into it, right out of the gate you're limiting yourself to someone else's idea of what is good. To my mind, that's a bad place to start. And, I can just about guarantee you that for every "rule" they come up with, or every example that seems to line up with their method, I can find an opposite example that works just fine.

In other words, be happy. Now, when you set out to write your first (or next) screenplay, you will have one less thing to worry about. Just remember, your movie has to start somewhere and end somewhere. That's it. The important thing is making it something worth watching.

Screenplay Structure In A Financial Sense

Now, just because your story can go just about anywhere, that doesn't mean your movie necessarily can. To write a really engaging and interesting story that takes place on distant planets with hundreds of different characters is not easy, but at least if you're making a book, it's relatively inexspensive. I say this, because ink and paper don't cost much and these days, a publisher doesn't even have to keep inventory, they can just print up a book when it gets ordered.

Films on the other hand, cost a lot. Almost without fail, when I talk to people who want to make films, they usually point to the cost of film stock as being a prohibitive cost. I'll hear things like, "well, it used to cost a lot to make a movie because film stock was so expensive, but now it doesn't because of digital" or something to that effect. The trouble is, making a really high end movie requires a lot of time.  And, in case you were wondering, time is what costs all the money when you're making a movie. 

This has a huge impact on your prospects not only as a screenwriter, but also as a filmmaker in general. If you don't understand the time component when it comes to film making, it almost doesn't matter what your story is. That is to say, if you write a story that takes too much time to make, you won't be able to make it. It's just simple math really.

I honestly can't recall how many scripts I've read through the years. From my own personal creative standpoint, I would say that almost all of them have been cliched, hard to read and for the most part pretty lousy. Now, that's just my opinion of course. I only point it out because after a while, I just got really tired of reading them, never mind trying to convey that I thought it was terrible without either lying or not hurting the writer's feelings. So, I took a different tack...I just started asking the screenwriters how many locations they had.

Not once since I started asking has a screenwriter had a solid answer right off the top of their head.

I realized right then something that I had always kind of taken for granted...these guys didn't have a clue as to what matters when it came time to actually make a movie! Almost every screenplay I ever read was from someone who really wanted to get into filmmaking or screenwriting and not one of them realized the financial limitations of the actual motion picture film manufacturing process. It turns out this was quite nice for me as I no longer had to spend any quality time reading crappy scripts, I could just point out that (and this is true probably 99 times out of 100) that the script has too many locations to be feasible to shoot.

This is an especially important concept to realize when you are first starting out as a screenwriter. If you don't have a proven track record of cinematic successes under your belt, coming up with some big huge, epic story with dozens of locations and 100's of cast members just makes it so much easier for a producer to say "no thanks". I mean, why would they want to green light that? Of course, everybody who sits down to write a screenplay for the first time is pretty well convinced that when they're done that they've got a masterpiece on their hands, but reality would tend to state otherwise.

With that in mind, what do you honestly think it would take for a well known film producer to risk losing his amazing, awesome, incredibly well paid job for your script? Would you risk an amazing, awesome, incredibly well paid producing job to produce a screenplay that would probably cost $80 million dollars to make that was written by someone with no credits? Or experience? Or even a good reference? I know I wouldn't.

Film making is a game of setting up and executing shots until you have enough footage from enough different angles and points of view (coverage) to enable the editor to create the illusion of continuous time and space (continuity) in your film. With that in mind, recognize that you have to dress the set, set up lights, rehearse, mark where all the actors move to and are going to stand, set focus, rehearse again for performance and then shoot. Each step is going to take a certain amount of time and then it all has to get repeated for every time you move the camera. Now, obviously, film shoots vary in their size, complexity and scope, but a good rule of thumb is that, if you have a good crew, that knows what they are doing and you have prepared properly, you can reasonably expect to get through 8 to 12 setups per day of shooting on average. Or, to put it another way, one or two setups per hour.

Taking this to the next step, just think about the coverage for a simple scene with two people talking in a room together. You need at least a two-shot (setup #1), probably two medium shots (one for each actor = setup 2 & 3) and two close-ups (one for each actor = setup 4 & 5), plus maybe one or two inserts of various actions the character might be doing (setup 6 & 7) and that would be a complete bare minimum! Now, using the formula above, you've just burned most of an 8-hour day and that's just shooting in one location!

How much time do you think it will add to completely strike the set and go to a new location? How many times do you think you can do that before it will physically take too long and cost too much money to realistically make your movie?

The trick is, and this is especially true when you're starting out, is to drastically limit the number of locations that require continuity dialogue. There are a couple of ways to do this...a lot of "mumble core" independent films shoot in a similar style to reality television where they utilize jump cuts and simply don't care about continuity. You can rehearse a lot before you shoot and then sort of "run and gun" with a lot of handheld camera work and severly limit the number of takes you get or you simply limit the number of locations that you are going to shoot.

I'll give you a heads up here, if you want to become a professional filmmaker with the best possible odds of having a lasting career, I'd recommend you get really good at making films in a limited number of locations.

With that in mind, here's a simple rule of thumb: try to limit your movie to between 1 to 4 locations with no more than 2 to 3 cast members with "significant" dialogue and no more than 8 to 10 total cast members. If you write more than one location in your screenplay, then at least 70% of the movie should take place in just one of the locations. If you get much beyond that, then I can just about guarantee that you will be severely curtailing your prospects as a new screenwriter. This is no less true for you aspiring filmmakers as well. Unless you happen to be just an incredibly talented "indie" director, you're going to have trouble selling yourself as a film maker if you can't show the ability to tell stories with limited locations. And, yes, films do get made with more than that, and no you don't HAVE to do it this way, but when you're first getting started, it can really be a game changer for you. Giving producers quality films that are actually financially feasible to shoot will make you worth your weight in gold. And, these days, that's a LOT.

Writing Dialogue

One of the biggest things I hear about in regards to screenwriting is the importance of "great" dialogue. It's as if there were some metric that one could use to define "great" dialogue from all the rest. But, think about it for a second, who defines what dialogue is great and which is just "average"? Not to mention the none too small fact that someone has to deliver that dialogue as well. It's funny how little repsect the actors get for making that "great" dialogue come to life. 

Put another way, I think really solid acting is by far the more important aspect in regards to getting ideas and emotions across on the big screen. If you don't believe me, just go see a local high-school production of anything by Tennessee Williams. What do you think the difference is? The "great" dialogue is completely unchanged, but the high school play sucks and the one on Broadway comes out great. Now just imagine that you had never seen the Broadway version first.

The thing is most people that are extolling how great a particular screenwriter or film director's dialogue is wasn't privy to the dialogue before seeing it done by a great actor or actress. I can tell you that if you gave all the "great" dialogue from a Quentin Tarantino movie to a bunch of hack actors, it wouldn't have looked or sounded "great" at all. Unlike a novel, where the author can go into the inner workings of a characters mind in addition to whatever dialogue they write, a screenwriter doesn't have that luxury. As such, their dialogue is stand alone and, of necessity, requires an actor to bring it to life. It's the subtle nuances of the performance that bring out the good aspects of the story as a whole, of which the dialogue is often the least important element.

With that in mind, when it comes time to write dialogue, my advice is always "less is more". Ideally, you want to give as much emotional freedom and room to your actors while still getting across the necessary information to propel the story along. I find that most amateur screenwriters fall into two immediate camps:

- Writers that are too expository; or

- Writers that are trying too hard to write "great" dialogue.

Being "expository" means that the screenwriter or filmmaker is literally using the character to tell the audience information through dialogue. Now, of course, sometimes a character has to give information, the trick is to try and mask it as much as possible. It's somewhat of an art form to really get that information in, but I would say that 9 times out of 10, it is done poorly, even by the pros. I think expositional dialogue most often comes up when dealing with story lines involving a lot of science or technical information, but it can crop up almost anywhere. A typical situation is when a screenwriter or filmmaker uses one characters dialogue to explain his or her relationship to another character. It might sound (or read) something like:

Tom: Hey Joe, how are you today?

Joe: Great. You know, I was just thinking that it's so awesome that we went to college together. I just love that we've been best friends ever since we were kids and you've always been loyal to me and just a swell guy. I remember how you used to...

So on and so forth. The point is, that while the information might be helpful to the audience, it's not particularly interesting to watch. The broader point though, it that the audience intuitively knows that these two characters should already know this information. And, as a screenwriter, if you have to tell the audience what's going on in the scene, then the scene probably isn't working already. The audience should be able to understand the relationships and scenarios on screen soley by a characters actions and behavior.  With that in mind, the screenwriter and filmmaker should always be striving to present scenarios where it is obvious what is going on without having to resort to the character saying what is going on.

I'll give you an example. Have you ever seen two people having a fight in public? You know, like where a guy and a girl are maybe out to dinner and something has upset them. Without hearing a word they've said, you can just tell that they are having a fight. Even if you got close enough to overhear the conversation, they might not ever bring up what has caused them to be in that argument. As in, their dialogue doesn't matter. But you can tell immediately they're fighting by how the girl might order her food or how she is being short with the guy, or maybe she's really closed off physically. Or the guy might be leaning in trying to be placating or maybe his body language is defensive or hostile. In this setup, a crappy screenwriter would just have them say why they are mad. A good screenwriter would milk that behavior that (hopefully) their actors are giving them to play the scene with.

Get my drift?

And this leads perfecntly into the second category of screenwriter or filmmaker, the one that is obsessed with "great" dialogue. Almost everytime I come across this from an amateur screenwriter, you can almost instantly tell which "great" dialogue person they most want to be like. As in, I can tell in about 10 lines if they really love Quentin Tarantino, because everything they write just sounds like they're trying to be Quentin Tarantino. Or, if they really love Kevin Smith, almost everything they write just sounds like they're trying to be Kevin Smith. Funny how that works, isn't it?

The thing is, dialogue is not just the sole property of the writer. Someone (an actor) has to play it. A great actor can take even expositional and largely crappy dialogue and make it sound pretty good. A bad actor can take amazing dialogue and make it sound awful. The thing of it is, writing, acting and filmmaking all take a lot of time and practice to get good at. Now, while most people who set out to do this kind of work all think they're amazing, chances are pretty strong that they're not. I would go further to say that, almost everyone (including the "naturals") will have to put in a lot of time and take their lumps to get good at what they do...just like everyone else.

There is a difference between aptitude and ability. Having an aptitude towards something might help your ability, but so will practice. If you have a lot of aptitude and practive very little, you will probably be able to work, but you will be limited in how far you go. Likewise, if you have almost no aptitude, but you practice a lot, you too will probably be able to work, but you will be limited in how far you go. This concept is true of not only filmmaking and screenwriting, but everything that requires skill.

Most people fall into both categories. I think the tendency for new filmmakers and screenwriters is to assume that they have a lot of natural aptitude, but the overwhelming truth is that it is very few people who actually do. As such, I think a lot of film makers and writers leave out the practice because they assume they have that natural aptitude. And there's the rub, if you ever find yourself wondering why some "hack" of a screenwriter gets to make movie after movie after movie, it's because he practiced. Probably a lot. I've seen a lot of pretty talented writers sit around waiting for someone to hand them something and I've seen a lot of screenwriters that weren't all that great just bust their ass and work. They write all the time, they work to refine their craft and sometimes it really pays off.

The point of all this and how it relates to writing "great" dialogue is that there is no formula for "great" dialogue. Some people have a strong aptitude for writing interesting, witty or especially engaging dialogue. Most people that end up writing that kind of dialogue have probably been writing for a really long time. So, if you're spending an inordinate amount of time going over and over your script, trying to tweak your dialogue or following some rule book on how to improve it, you're probably just spinning your wheels.

Here's the deal: whatever your natural aptitude for writing dialogue, it will show up. You can't fake it, you can't make it, it's just going to be what it is when you get started. The more often you write new material, the more often you will be able to refine that aptitude at whatever level you are at. Just assuming you have it or can create it is counterproductive.

In other words, practice is the only real key. Look, creating "great" dialogue may or may not be what you are good at. But, whatever skills you do bring, they will only get better with practice. Working something to death and chasing someone else's ideal of what's good is what I hope you'll avoid as a new screenwriter or filmmaker.

To Sum It Up

Screenwriting, like all creative endeavors, is a journey that evolves over the life of your career. So many people that are drawn to filmmaking and screenwriting are lured by the prospect of easy money and fame or an easy life. The truth of the matter is that it takes time, practice and diligence to really make it happen. Vincent Van Gogh didn't start out painting "Sunflowers" or "Starry Night", he started out painting portraits and bowls of fruit and things like that. It took him years to get to the point that he was producing masterpieces. And, here's the thing, even after he had spent all of that time practicing and working on his craft, there was never a guarantee that he was anything special. In fact, during his lifetime, he was never really all that well regarded and it wasn't until after his death that people really started to notice his work.

The same is true for film makers, screenwriters and even actors. There are a lot of people out there doing this kind of work.There are very few that will distinguish themselves. The things that make them distinguishable aren't "teachable" nor are they "repeatable" because every person is unique and brings their unique-ness to the table.

As a burgeoning filmmaker or screenwriter, I hope you take a few things from this article:

First, don't limit your creativity. Write what you want to write! If people don't respond to it, at least they're not responding to what you really wanted to do. It's called being true to yourself. The real benefit though, is that people almost never respond to people who are fake. At least this way, you are giving yourself a chance to connect with your audience.

Second, work within a realistic framework. Now, I know that right after saying "don't limit yourself" I'm telling you to limit yourself. But, what I'm saying is to limit yourself to what your chosen medium will support. If Vincent Van Gogh one day decided to paint with fire, it just would't work. Just like, if I wanted to write a book with on solid gold pages, it just wouldn't work. Same thing is true for filmmaking, there are certain limitations on the medium that you have to confine yourself to. I suppose the best way to put it is to give yourself unlimited creative freedom within the confines of filmmaking reality.

And third, only with practice will you give yourself the opportunity for greatness. Yes, once in a great while someone pops out into the world with an amazing natural talent, but we're talking one in a billion here. The rest of that amazing creative work that we all admire almost always comes from a lot of hard work and practice. You'll notice that I said opportunity up there. There is no guarantee that you will be great, but with practice, you can probably get pretty good. But, only through practice will you ever know what your real potential is. You might end up to be an amazing filmmaker or screenwriter that is remembered through the ages. Maybe. But, you might also just be the person that has a great career, even if you're not all that memorable. You don't get to choose if you're great, that is for others to decide, all you can do is put yourself in the position to be up for consideration.

-Danny