Global Scriptwriting

252 Pages·2001·8.089 MB·English

by  Ken Dancyger (Auth.)

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Dancyger, Ken.
Global scriptwriting/ Ken Dancyger.
p. cm.
Includes index.
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1. Motion picture authorship. I. Title.
PN1996 .D365 2001
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Global Scriptwriting began as a notion born out of a series of workshops I con-
ducted in various parts of the world between 1996 and 2000. What I learned from
the participants nurtured the ideas now set down in this book. I'd like to thank
Martin Amstell of the London International Film School; Joost Hunninger and
Chris Williams of the University of Westminster in London; Jeanne Wikler, Jane
Williams, and Karol Kulik of the Maurits Binger Institute in Amsterdam;
Reinhard Hauff and Uschi Keill of the DFFB in Berlin; Oliver Schuette and Steph-
anie Bastian of the Master School in Scriptwritingi n Berlin; Margit Essenbach of
the Zurich Film School; Victor Valbuena of Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore;
and Ron Blair, Paul Thompson, and Carolyn Vaughan of the Australian Film and
Television School. There are many others, you know who you are and I apologize
to you for the less specific acknowledgment. Space dictates brevity.
At Focal Press I first broached this idea with the ever-adventurous Marie Lee.
She became the midwife for this book and I value her ongoing enthusiasm for my
work. She was aided also enthusiasticallyb y Tem Jadick, Maura Kelly, and copy
editor, Harbour Hodder, who pushed this writer as he's never been pushed be-
fore, to make this a better book. Thank you. I'd like to thank my friend Maura
Nolan who prepared the manuscript for the new computer age. And I'd like to
thank my friends and family who tolerated my obsession with this book wher-
ever we happened to be-on vacation or at home. Their good nature and good
humor-is it an illness?-helped me progress to the finish line. Finally, I'd like to
particularly thank my wife Ida whose sense of wonder and subtle support were
critical to the completion of this book. She is the silent partner who deserves co-
credit in this adventure.
This bookis dedicated to the next generation of my family-Emily, Erica, Rich-
ard, and Jacob. May their enterprising natures lead them to experiences as ad-
venturous and pleasurable as writing this book has been for me.
Ken Dancyger
New York
ix
INTRODUCTION
As you read this book, 2001 has come and gone. As Stanley Kubrick implied in his
classic film of the same name, the world both progresses and reverts to its begin-
nings. So too with filmic storytelling. Telling stones on film has been a global art
form since its beginnings. But at the outset of film, the storytellers worked out-
ward from the perspective of their national cultures and their personal artistic
predispositions. Today, they work from the opposite perspective-the globe is
their palate. And to be global they are creating new forms and new approaches to
classic subject matter. That is the subject of this book-how filmic storytelling has
changed. But to understand those changes and to catch the sense of direction of
future filmic storytelling, we need two more perspectives: the past and the pres-
ent. What is beyond question is that future storytelling will be global. To under-
stand why this phenomenon is taking place, we need to look at the factors that
are driving change and the factors that are supporting those changes.
First, the factors that are driving change. The last decade of the twentieth cen-
tury has witnessed unprecedented transformation in media technology, in the
industrial organization of the film and television industries, and in the genuine
globalization of the film and television industries. I'll turn to the last point first.
We need only look at the ownership and organization of the major film studios to
see such globalization. The current ownership of Twentieth Century Fox was
originally an Australian company. Columbia Pictures is under the aegis of a Japa-
nese company, and the ownership of Universal Pictures is about to shift from a
Canadian base to French ownership. When one looks at the relationship between
the film, television, music, and publishing industries, not to mention Internet
companies, national boundaries blur even further.
Looking at the flow of talent makes the point even more impressively.
Whether the perspective is the director, the writer, or the cinematographer, the
flow of talent is profoundly international. It is the July 4th weekend in the
United States in the year 2000. The two big films of the weekend are The Patriot
and The Perfect Storm, and both are directed by German directors, Roland
Emmerich and Wolfgang Peterson. The next most significant film of 2000, Gladi-
ator, is directed by the British director Ridley Scott. A side note is that the stars of
The Patriot and Gladiator, respectively, are Me1 Gibson and Russell Crowe, both
of whom are Australian. And the list goes on. The latest Demi Moore film, A Pas-
sion @Mind (2000)i s directed by Alain Berliner from France. The last episode of
the Alien series (1996) was also directed by a French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Australian directors are responsible for The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller,
1988), The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), My Best Friend's Wedding (Paul Ho-
xi
xii Global Scriptwriting
gan, 1998), Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1991), Six Degrees of Separation
(Fred Schepsi, 1994),a nd Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1993). British directors are
responsible for American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999), The English Patient (An-
thony Minghella, 1996), High Fidelity (Stephen Frears, 2000), Shakespeare in Love
(John Madden, 1999), and Ethan Frome (John Madden, 1992).A Dutch director,
Paul Verhoeven, is responsible for Rob0 Cop (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992). A
Hong Kong director, John Woo, is responsible for Broken Arrow (1997) and Mis-
sion Impossible II (2000).C ider House Rules (1999)w as directed by the Swedish di-
rector Lasse Hallstrom. This international flow of talent to Hollywood is not a
one-way flow, however. The Italian film I2 Postino (1996) was made by a British
director, Mike Radford. Volker Schlondorff, a German director, has made two of
his last three films in English. Clara Law of Hong Kong made the English-
language Floating Life (1995). Ang Lee, originally from Taiwan, has just com-
pleted his first Chinese language production, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000) after a half-dozen English-language productions. In short, the flow of tal-
ent is profoundly international.
The explosion of media technology, both at the low end and at the high end,
has also expanded the trend toward internationalization. The low-tech Blair
Witch Project (1999) was inspired not only by the horror genre, but also by the suc-
cess of an idea subscribed to by a group of Danish filmmakers. Lars Von Trier, un-
der the aegis of Dogma 95, has suggested that less is more-less artifice and less
intrusion (eg, technical-artificial music, sound effects, lighting) in the film-
making process will generate more deeply affecting films. It remains to be seen
whether Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998), Mifune (1999),a nd The Idiots
(1999) prove to be as influential as Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1979)
or Peter Watkin’s Culloden (1965).N evertheless, these films and the idea that pro-
duction values are secondary to a sense of reality, has already produced the most
profitable film of all time-The Blair Witch Project. They have also encouraged im-
portant filmmakers to experiment with the techniques of Dogma 95. Mike Figgis’
Time Code (2000) and the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private
Ryan (1999) owe much to the ideas that were generated by a small group of film-
makers working in Denmark-which again supports the notion that filmic story-
telling is more global than ever. Technology and the flow of talent and capital are
driving change. And developments in the pedagogy of storytelling are support-
ing those changes.
In the 1970s, ideas about screenwriting were generated out of the work of a
number of playwrights who became screenwriters. All paid appropriate alle-
giance to Aristotle and his ideas on drama. Two events coincided to influence
scriptwriting and its pedagogy. The first was the release of Star Wars in 1977, a
film whose origins were in other movies as well as other popular forms: comic
books and serialized stories in prose and on stage and screen. The second event
was the publication of Syd Fields book on scriptwriting, Screenplay (1982). Be-
tween the commercial success of Star Wars and of Syd Fields Screenplay, an indus-
try was born-the “how-to-writea screenplay”i ndustry. Star Wars propelled the
renewed vigor and commercial power of Hollywood film. My task, fortunately, is
not to prioritize the flood of books that have followed but rather to suggest that
Introduction xiii
the pedagogy those books have supplied has helped to internationalize filmic
storytelling. It has provided a common language and a set of terms and ap-
proaches to story that are shared by beginning as well as seasoned professionals.
Agents and executives, as well as writers and directors, talk of plot points, charac-
ter arcs, and resolution or nonresolution with a confidence that was less certain
pre-Syd Field. What is of interest to us in this particular addition to the literature
is that writers now have distinct choices in the pedagogy. I find it useful to con-
sider these choices on a grid.
In the center there are the structuralists,w ho begin with Syd Fields paradigm
but who also may veer from formula into consideration of character and genre.
Many of the best known script teachers and gurus dwell in this space. Most en-
during in my view is the work of Frank Daniel, first at Columbia and later in the
writing area at the University of Southern California. His legacy, with its empha-
sis on structure, remains a critical foundation in contemporary pedagogy.
To the right of the structuralists, there is a school that I link with the importance
of mythology in filmic storytelling. These teachers and writers emphasize the
hero, the journey, and the deep layer of archetypical behavior that marks films
such as Star Wars and The Lion King (1993). This pedagogical approach owes much
to the work of Joseph Campbell, especially The Hero with u Thousand Faces (1949).
To the left of the structuralists are writers and teachers such as myself. Here
the influence of the work of Luis Bufiuel, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo
Antonioni, those filmic storytellers who broke all the rules, holds sway. The con-
sequences of this pedagogical approach is to look at the work of those who break
the rules to see if there is a pattern that is pedagogically useful. Since this ap-
proach will occupy a good part of the middle section of this book I needn’t bela-
bor the point. However, what I can say is that much innovation-the nonlinear
story as well as feminist styles of storytelling-suggest that this area has much
appeal among younger filmmakers and writers.
What is important about these pedagogical developments is that together
they have buttressed the globalization of filmic storytehng. In this sense, ongo-
ing pedagogical developments will encourage and empower writers the world
over to use these tools to reach out to national and international film audiences.
As a writer I have had a tendency to include any new ideas about filmic story-
telling in the book1 was engaged in writing at the time. Consequently I have writ-
ten about nonlinear storytelling in my book on film and video editing, The Tech-
nique of Film and Video Editing, 2nd edition (1996), and on my latest ideas about
genre in Writing the Short Film (ZOOO), a book1 cowrote with Pat Cooper. This book
gives me the opportunity to pull all of my ideas into a single volume and to push
the exploration about global scriptwriting out of the context of all my delibera-
tions about script. Consequently I have structured this book to be inclusive of
those past ideas as well as contextual for the newest ideas in the field as a whole.
The book follows a three-part structure:
1. Universal Elements of Script
2. Particulars about Scriptwriting
3. The Internationalization of Storytelling
xiv Global Scriptwriting
As has been my strategy in the past, I follow a case study approach in all the
chapters. In choosing these case studies I have drawn on American, European, as
well as Asian films that are widely available, although some will not be widely
known. Now, on to the beginning.
1
THE BASICS
In order to understand the basics of script-premise, character, structure, and all
the dramatic properties of film narrative-we need to consider a number of ques-
tions whose answers will conceptualize the substance of this chapter. What is sto-
rytelling? How does it relate to our lives? And why do certain stories succeed in
affecting us, and others fail? These questions are our starting point.
It’s best to begin with a central term, drama, a term that is usually associated
with the stage and with theater critics. The term itself implies conflict. If Macbeth
didn‘t want to become king, with the sitting king as a barrier to his goal, there
would be no conflict in Shakespeare’s play. If the warring families in Romeo and
Juliet got along, the play wouldn’t take the dramatic shape that it does. If Othello
weren’t as jealous, if he weren’t a Moor surrounded by Caucasians, and so on. If
the senators of Rome were content to allow Julius Caesar to fulfill his ambition to
be Emperor of Rome. . . well, you get the picture. Shakespeare would not have
found the tragedy of Julius Caesar compelling; nor would we.
Not all conflict is a merit from the perspective of the critic. If a drama is over-
wrought, the critics consider the story melodramatic or operatic. When they
want to suggest that a drama is flat, they describe it as flawed or cheapened. In ei-
ther case the implication is that when drama is working the level of engagement
between the audience and the story is ideal. It has credibility, and it has the ca-
pacity to, in a valuable way, invite us into an identificationw ith the actions of the
character and with the narrative arc of the play.
Drama, then, is a level of conflict that is shaped, as Aristotle suggests, with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. That conflict may be internal, interpersonal,
intersocietal, or between man and nature. The consequent clash of goals brings
us into an identification with a character. If the character has will and energy, we
identify with the drive. If the story positions the character as a potential victim,
we fear that the character’s will (and ours) will be crushed.
What needs to be said about drama is that it differs from real life. That is not to
say that each of us do not have conflict in our lives. Quite the contrary. But the
conflict in drama is intensified and structured for a purpose-to entertain or to
capture us in a moral swamp where we can swim or sink with a character. And
drama offers resolution or catharsis in two hours. Few real-life conflicts hold out
such a promise.
Which brings us to the importance of storytelling in the human experience.
Whether expressed in a series of cave paintings, a series of tapestries, a sonnet, an
3
4 Global Scriptwriting
epic poem, a novel, a photograph, a play, or a film, all these storytelling expres-
sions have meant so much more than the artifacts now housed in museums or the
plays read in high schools. For each generation these communiques from one hu-
man being to his or her community have served multiple purposes. On the most
basic level, an artifact is an entertainment that might promote laughter or joy from
the experience. Cartoons, TV situation comedies, and soap operas have their
equivalents in the travelling plays, court jesters, and clowns of former times.
Or the story might have an educational goal. Education is a broad term, and all
of us throughout our lifetimes are in the process of becoming educated. New in-
formation, moral education, political education, social education-all are the
valid educational goals of storytelling. Fairy tales and fables for children, or the
more complex education layers of a play such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, offer
different types of education for their audiences.
Whether informational or moral, or educational about the social and psycho-
logical dimensions of the human experience, stories educate us in layered and
complex ways. The outcome might be to improve us as all education can, or it
might simply provide a cathartic experience that helps us cope with demons that
would otherwise prove harmful to ourselves or to others.
I’m not suggesting that stories are the panacea for all that ails society and its
members. But I am suggesting that storytelling has played an important role in
helping societies function. And when those stories are seminal and important,
they can have a transformative effect, as all art can. Stories can yield the under-
standing that brings people together, and in this sense it has and does fulfill a crit-
ical function in society.
Imagine for a moment stories told in a form that reaches across societies, across
nations, and around the world. That is the power of filmic storytelling. This in-
vention of the late-nineteenth century became the popular art form of the twenti-
eth century. The storytellers of the twenty-first century want to tell their stories in
images. Whether in film or video, those stories have become the most important
and most powerful story form of our time.
THE VISUAL VERSUS THE SPOKEN
Storytelling as an evolving form followed two distinct paths-the visual and the
aural. Theater today owes much to how far the aural tradition has progressed.
And although film owes much to theater structurally and in basic dramatic prin-
ciples, it is distinctly visual as a medium. Its use of light also owes much to paint-
ing and to photography, but its visual character goes beyond those forms. It’s
best to think of filmic storytelling as a form where every aspect of the form
evolves out of this visual character.
Consequently, certain film genres that are particularly visual-the western,
the musical, the action-adventure film-are dominated by visual action. That ac-
tion may characterize, it may advance the plot, or it may simply provide the con-
text for both. But these genres are not exclusively visual, they are simply the most
predominately visual.
The Basics 5
To illustrate the depth of the visual character of the medium a cross-section of
famous and less-famous film sequences will serve. Among the most famous are
the shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (1960), the Odessa Steps se-
quence in Eisenstein’s Potemkin (1925), the breakfast scene in Welles‘ Citizen Kune
(1941), the gunfight toward the end of Peckmpahs The Wild Bunch (1969).A mong
the less-famous but notably visual sequences, the burial of a child’s mother early
in David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago (1965), a young boy’s escape from a tyrannical house-
keeper in Carol Reeds The Fallen Idol (1948),t he sniper attack in Stanley Kubrick‘s
Full Metal Jacket (1987).I n this last sequence, many men die on a patrol during the
Battle of Hue. They die because of a single sniper. After many losses they kill the
sniper, only to discover she is a woman. These sequences are powerful, dramatic
evocations presented to us at set pieces.
The medium more often functions with more modest but no less visual as-
pects. For instance, it may offer insight into character. The visual action of the
Marlon Brando character, Terry in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), when
he’s getting to know Edie, a young woman (Eva Marie Saint), is instructive. He is
a young man with lots of rough edges; she is a student in a convent school. They
sit on swings making conversation.H e has taken one of her gloves and as he talks
he plays with her glove. From his actions we understand his desire-he wants to
get close to this young woman but he doesn’t know how. His awkward visual ac-
tion implies that desire and that awkwardness.
Another example is an early action in Carol Reeds The Third Man (1949). An
American writer named Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) arrives in post-war Vi-
enna, invited and paid for by his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find
that his friend Lime is dead. A policeman arranges his accommodations and a re-
turn to America. Holly tries to punch the policeman for insulting his friend. He is
knocked out instead. The scene visually illustrates both the impulsiveness and
the naivete of the writer. His refusal to believe Harry Lime is dead leads him to
fight and, predictably, to lose.
Characterization in film is almost always visually captured. So, too, is plot. The
murder of a brother motivates Wyatt Earp to become the sheriff of Tombstone in
John Fords My Darling Clementine (1946). A case of mistaken identity leads the
main character to be kidnapped in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (1959).
The placement of a damaging item in a gossip column will either move the main
character up the ladder of success or lead to his ruin in Alexander Mackendrick’s
Sweet Smell of Success (1956).T he key here is that it is a visual action rather than a
described action (in dialogue) that is natural and useful in filmic storytelling.
This idea of visualization should pervade your thinking as you begn to write
your screenplay.
Consider visualization as the first writing strategy when faced with character-
ization or plot advancement. The examples of wordsmith David Mamet, a play-
wright, writing for the screen is instructive. In terms of characterization, his
screenplay of The Edge (1997) is instructive. The main character Charles Morse
(Anthony Hopkins) is a billionaire. He is also an older gentleman married to a
young model. He is jealous of his younger rival, Robert Green (Alec Baldwin), the
photographer, who will photograph his wife in a natural wilderness setting in
6 Global Scriptwriting
Northern Alaska. Charles is portrayed as insatiably curious to understand and
control his world. He is deeply knowledgeable about tribal artifacts as well as
means of survival-creating fire without matches, keeping warm when wet. But
he’s never had to act on this knowledge, until he and Robert and an assistant
crash land deep in the wilderness. At that point, it’s all about survival.
Mamet characterizes Charles continually faced with a life-threatening chal-
lenge-a Kodiak bear, a freezing environment, no real compass to guide him to
safety. In each case, Mamet visually illustrates Charles’ capacity for hope and for
intelligence to solve the problem and to save himself and his companions.
The visual characterization and the visualization of plot (the escape to the
south) is Mamet’s writing solution, his visual solution to the writing problem.
TERMS-USEFUL, CRITICAL
If directors of films think in terms of shots, writers think in terms of premise, charuc-
ter, and structure. These narrative terms, some borrowed from theater and some
adapted for film, are the common language of film writing. Practitioners and pro-
ducers sometimes adapt them according to their experience, so you will encoun-
ter variations in how they are used. What I present here are the terms I have
found useful to writers to help them write.
Screenplay Format Prose is presented in a novel in sentences and paragraphs.
A script is presented in visual detail and dialogue organized in a distinct fashion
unique to film. That format is called the master scene format (see Appendix for
example). What is most common in screenplay format for film and television
films is the master scene format. Although multicamera television uses its own
format (visuaVaudio side by side), as does documentary, the format here de-
scribed is the master scene script format.
This format is useful because it facilitates the reading of the script as well as the
budgeting of the script. The scene numbering changes as there is a location
change. This allows tabulation of personnel, cast, crew, and props per location fa-
cilitating budgeting.
The Premise We experience a film through the main character. The premise re-
fers to the particular challenge facing the main character. In certain genres such
as the thriller, it is an external choice. In The Fugtive (1993),R ichard Kimble (Har-
rison Ford) finds his wife dying and after her death he is accused and tried as her
killer. He knows he didn’t do it. How will he regain his freedom? In Raiders of the
Lost Ark (1981),I ndiana Jones (Harrison Ford) wants to find the Lost Ark. Will he?
How, given the obstacles in his way? In these cases the premise is an external
rather than an internal struggle.
More often the premise does refer to an inner struggle. In this case, it’s best to
consider the premise as the two opposite choices facing the main character. In
Anthony h4inghella‘s TruZy, MudZy, Deeply (1991), the main character has recently
lost her lover to an unexpected illness. She is deeply wounded and struggles with