Paying attention to sound

We put a lot of dialogue in our scripts, and we argue over whether we can provide minimal camera direction in a spec script, but we pay very little attention to sound. It’s time to direct the ear as much as we direct the eye. Or at least add some sound seasoning, not just an occasional “Bang!”

Sound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murch 

“You have more freedom with sound than you do with picture. There are, consequently, fewer rules. But the big three things—which are emotion, story, and rhythm—apply to sound just as much as they apply to picture. You are always primarily looking for something that will underline or emphasize or counterpoint the emotion that you want to elicit from the audience. You can do that through sound just as well as through editing, if not more so. Rhythm is obviously important; sound is a temporal medium. And then story. You choose sounds that help people to feel the story of what you’re doing.” - Walter Murch

Telling the story of a culture

Back from a break to take care of health. The pages are flowing on the third screenplay. It is culture-specific, and this quote gives perspective:

“The more specific you dramatize a culture, the more specific becomes its meaning to every culture.” - Sydney Lumet

Courtesy of Robert Avrech

More good stuff seen lately:

“Why aren’t M.F.A. writing students required to study screenwriting as a prerequisite to longer forms like novel or memoir?” 

Novel writing is aided by screenwriting.

I felt this way when I decided to focus on writing, that a screenplay pares story down to essentials, while a novel allows for much dressing that can distract from the story’s flaws.

Slaves to the algorithm.

Instead of slaves to the actors - note William Goldman’s take in Adventures in the Screen Trade on why studios rely on actors. Beginning and ending is about predicting the success of a film’s packaging.

“Nick Meaney has a better reason for believing that the stars are overpaid: his algorithm tells him so. In fact, he says…the studios are almost certainly wasting their money…When Meaney is given a job by a studio, the first thing he does is quantify thousands of factors, drawn from the script. Are there clear bad guys? How much empathy is there with the protagonist? Is there a sidekick? The complex interplay of these factors is then compared by the computer to their interplay in previous films, with known box-office takings.” 

Learning how to see

“Watch the last two minutes of the classic film, 2001. Today’s technology would allow someone to make a short film like this with very little effort. But could you? The making isn’t the hard part, in fact. It’s the seeing.

“Would you have the guts to go this slow? To use music this boldy? To combine iconography from three different centuries over two millenia?

“Where is the explosion of the death star and where are the hackneyed tropes of a hundred or a thousand prior sci-fi movies?

“Stanley Kubrick, the film’s director, saw. He saw images and stories that were available to anyone who chose to see them, but others averted their eyes, grabbed for the easy or the quick or the work that would satisfy the boss in closest proximity.

“Seeing, despite the name, isn’t merely visual. I worked briefly with Arthur C. Clarke thirty years ago, and he saw, but he saw in words, and in concepts.”

- Seth Godin - Learning how to see

More points to string the skeleton on

While writing my first screenplay, I learned that I needed to know the beginning and ending before starting on a treatment/outline. That way, I had two points to string the rest of the story between.

Writing my second screenplay now, I learned that I need to know the first act break and second act break as well before breaking the story. Now I have 4 points to string the story on.

I’m trying Dan O’Bannon’s (Mr. Alien) structure from his recently published posthumous book. The first act defines the conflict, the second act elaborates on the conflict until the point of no return, third resolves conflict for better or worse. As he says, all it will do is make a screenplay work. It’s no guarantee of quality, sellability, etc.

Why? To quote Mr. O’Bannon:

That’s why I hate writing a bad script; it takes just as much work as writing a good one.

My pitch for Angry Birds movie

So Rovio’s making a feature film out of the birds killing pigs. 

A piglet, prince among pigs, is lost in the woods in a pig exodus. King Pig’s people moved away, and piglet doesn’t know where they went.

Birds take him in and raise him as a brother to the bird prince, both taught by the old and wise advisor to the king.

Worm feeding doesn’t really cut it for piglet, but they discover he likes eggs - maybe he steals a chicken egg or something. So they feed him eggs. They can’t get other eggs, so, nobly, they volunteer their own eggs for piglet to eat.

Piglet grows to Prince Pig. He discovers his people and, after a tearful farewell to his Prince Bird friend, returns to rule the pigs. Wonderful time of peace between birds and pigs.

But Prince Pig hungers for bird eggs. Yet young and not good at impulse control, he sends his pigs to steal eggs. When the birds discover this, they become angry.

Prince Bird orders immediate war. Pigs aren’t that good at science, birds are, pigs try to protect themselves with rickety buildings and contraptions that are easily knocked down.

The wise bird advisor tries to dissuade the birds from war. “He is your brother.” “He is only doing what all pigs do.” “Pigs can’t control themselves.” 

To no avail - the war begins. Wise advisor is charged with creating special forces birds, genetically enhanced. Bomb birds, large birds, speed birds, etc.

The obvious sequel is wise advisor turning the tables. Maybe brings peace or tries to and makes it worse.

Think Concepts and hence this exercise is thanks to gointothestory.

Enjoy last year’s Chanukah posters

Reposting because nothing new comes to mind.

Happy Chanukah from Smokey the Bear

Boldly celebrate Chanukah with Star Trek

Play the Chanukah game of Dreidels

Chanukah will Occupy you with light

Dark creatures shed light on Chanukah

A mad tyrant falls then, may mad tyrants fall now

Pure geekiness for the final day of Chanukah

Desperate times

In my need for ways to procrastinate, I have taken to Googling “ways to procrastinate.”

Keep the first one simple

For the sake of all that is screenholy, make your first script a simple one. Try one protagonist, maybe with a sidekick, or two protagonists intertwined. The story should be complex and the feelings deep, true, but the cast of characters should not spawn dozens of well-meaning tadpoles. A first-time writer setting out should be flexing their muscles, not trying to muscle a team of Hogs. Keep the story straightforward, one or two people together trying to get through a slice of life, and you’ll be able to keep track of the story with (more) ease and put all your effort into learning the trade.

Meaning, don’t do what I did.

Consensus

I’ve definitely learned stuff, gotten better. Need more experience writing before this complex story concept is within my ability.

Need to drill on dialogue. How do I talk my way into Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice.

Time to focus on a simpler story concept, and rewrite x100 the dialogue. On to the next screenplay idea. Then maybe back to the first.

And maybe I’ll win entry to The Quest, and have guidance I can afford.

Remake not remake

Aurora Dawn by Herman Wouk is the novel version of Network, just as Apocalypse Now is the film version of Heart of Darkness. They aren’t adaptations, they aren’t remakes, they tell an entirely different story but they tell the same story, the same theme. One is radio, the other television, one is Vietnam, the other Belgian Congo, but they remake each other.

What I’m really saying is I want to read these notebooks of Coppola, The Godfather and Heart of Darkness books lined with his notes - “write down everything you feel, underline every sensation that you felt was strong.” Add one more goal to the list.

Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration

That was fun

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Pure geekiness for the final day of Chanukah