ONE PAGE FILM SCHOOL: Theme

As final exams approached in my first year as a film student at the University of British Columbia, I condensed two semesters of class notes onto one page as a study tool.

(Okay… it was double-sided. And the letters were tiny. But it was still a single page.)

One side was dedicated to the purely technical details; the other focused on the artistic and interpretive aspects of visual storytelling. Everything was on the table for the exam.

The first word at the top of the ‘story’ page was theme. In the list of all the story terms – plot, inciting incident, climax, resolution, and so on – theme was the one that generated the most interesting discussions in class.

Understanding themes – primary, secondary and tertiary – is critical for a thorough script analysis and requires a commanding knowledge of the content, characters and overall action of the story. Identifying and stating the themes isn’t always easy or straightforward, but it’s essential for anyone hoping to take on a key creative role in the film industry.

I love script analysis. In my graduate directing class, I dedicate three entire lessons to various analysis strategies. When I work with filmmakers and students, theme is still at the top of my list. It’s surprising how many story questions can be answered, how creative choices can be improved, and how audience satisfaction can be enhanced when there is a clear understanding of the themes.

Frank Daniel, my teacher-in-absentia, offered excellent notes on the challenges of screenwriting. Here’s a transcript from his lecture discussion on theme:

“One of the most difficult terms to deal with — and to understand — is the term ‘theme.’

The theme — simply spoken — is the principal subject: the main aim why a story is being told. This specific purpose, eventually, becomes the resulting effect of the finished work and can be analytically deducted from it. It gives the whole its unity. It gives each part and each element its place and function.

But how should a writer apprehend it when he is beginning just to meditate over his future story? From what end should he approach this confusing matter when his story is barely emerging as a possibility? If you are writing a film story, think of your theme only as the final effect, of the resulting impact that the audience should feel when the picture is over. You are offering an experience – a visceral, emotional, almost physical excitation.

Tension and Release

That’s why the tension, its gradation, culmination and release is the ‘vehicle,’ the tool, and de facto form in which the theme materializes. It consists, therefore, from the realization of the dramatic situation. From the apprehension of whose story, whose predicament is going to be followed, displayed and participated in. From the aroused intent and the consequent empathy, followed by the resulting sympathy and continuous anticipation.

Full involvement in the main character’s conflict becomes a distressing uncertainty about the surmised development of the events and the gradual crystallization of the wish to see the fulfillment of the main character’s desire.

Ordeal and Craving

The sympathy with the protagonist’s ordeal and craving brings with it, simultaneously, the fear from the threatening destruction of this desire, scheming or dream. In other words, the theme becomes, in the story itself, the craving for the fulfillment, imperiled either by natural, social or psychological circumstances or, many times, by all three of them. The more specific and simultaneously humanly universal this protagonist’s craving gets, the easier it becomes to create the viewer’s sympathy.

But there can be a totally opposite case. Instead of a humanly positive desire for human fulfillment, a story can follow a depraved, accursed, appalling aspiration, evil coveting, anti-humane obsession, destructive or even self-destructive mania. The history of tragedy offers great examples of this type of ogre: Richard III, Macbeth, Medea…

The Audience’s Emotional Approval or Rejection

In essence, we see either the audience’s emotional approval, or rejection, abhorrence, and even repulsion, depending upon the nature of the dominant drive (spine) that carries the story from its genesis to its resolution.

If the drive of the main character is a desire for human fulfillment, from its lowest, modest forms to the most heroic ones, in other words, love in any of its appearances, the theme becomes the acceptance, and the approval of the main character’s objective and the emotional effect of the story — feeling joy, satisfaction, elation or sadness, anger, bitterness – depends on the outcome of the presented conflict.

If the drive, fixation, or fascination of the protagonist is any kind of destructive or self-destructive delusion, then the theme unfolds as a progressing disapprobation. It can take a form of horrified aversion, hatred or just derision and the final effect, again, depends on the outcome of the conflict: relief, anger, sadness, etc.

The Storyteller’s Position

The storyteller’s position, his philosophical moral stand, shows itself inevitably in the theme. There is always the dichotomy between what he or she sees as reality or delusion, creation or destruction — what’s presented as meaningful, and what’s shown as nonsensical, harmful or harmless.

From this realization it is easy to approach the basic structure of the cinematic or dramatic story: the protagonist craves for a humanly positive value. Othello — to take the most blatantly clear example — is love, giving oneself to the loved woman, trust, etc.

The Antagonist desires to destroy this value, i.e. to change love into jealousy and a feeling of disgust from female vileness. The story carries and contains us, necessarily, by the deception of the protagonist, of his temporary or lasting error.

It leads, consequently, to the obligatory moment of recognition, the horrifying realization that the deception has caused. If the scene of recognition precedes the ‘catastrophe’ (the tragic resolution), we have a happy ending. If it follow the catastrophic conclusion, then the end is obviously tragic.

Protagonists are almost always wrong. Their values are not clarified. The scene of recognition becomes obligatory and leads to self-recognition, self-knowledge.

It figures that for the strongest possible effect, it is much better when the viewer has a chance to realize that the protagonist is in error and when he expects, with suspense, the moment of recognition, we will have a chance to see other story patterns and realize how the specific tension in each one of them determines the structure of the story.

The Most Important Fact

The most important fact to keep in mind is that the theme is not a philosophical, political, moral, or any other ‘thesis,’ (or ‘premise’ as some people call it) but an emotional response – social, personal, or any other – a stand, an engagement of the whole human being for a certain human truth, displayed in a process of its affirmation in the conflict of the story.

One way of originating a story is to start asking – What is threatened? What’s being offended, exploited, smothered? What human values are being destroyed? What truth is getting silenced or smeared? What beautiful dreams are being thwarted, or ruined, or crushed? And how should we feel about it? Horrified? Sad? Appalled? Victorious? Triumphant?”

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Searching for an Authentic Education (part 6): Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

The transition from first to second draft – or any subsequent draft – is an opportunity to advance all of the story elements in play. Rewriting for sound, color and lighting builds more layers that help to elevate a visual story. Focusing on the further details of location, props and costumes help advance the characters, their world and their obstacles.

Frank Daniel offers up a list of tips for the re-writing screenwriter in my final part of his last lecture at Columbia University. I think it’s pure gold.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 6)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

“Usually, in the first draft, sound is used only in the most pedestrian and naturalistic form. There are special ways that sound can help create the best metaphoric effects, for example, sound that means something for the character. You introduce it at the beginning and it pays off later. Suddenly just the sound of a train, or a jet landing, or whatever, assumes a meaning that dialogue cannot ever express. Well, pay attention to sound and explore its dramatic and poetic possibilities.

Colors

Another thing, the first draft is very rarely written in colors. It’s always black and white. It pays off to look at the script from this point of view also, and to think how you can use colors for dramatic impact. Most of the scripts, in the first draft, are lit in a television manner. Everything is clear, there are no shadows, no darks, no overly bright scenes. So that’s another element that you look at and try to use for the point of contrast and emotional reaction.

Locations

Locations in the first draft are very often completely cliché. Masters always try to figure out how to make the locations special. Do it their way. Ask how the place can help the scene, how it can work against the character, or for it, how it can create obstacles, offer difficulties, and how you can get rid of the stereotypes.

Props

Props are not properly used in the first draft. They are introduced and they are not continued. Props have tremendous power of poetically enlightening the story. You have seen it in the analysis classes, you know how they can be used. If you look at any of Billy Wilder’s or Lubitsch’s pictures, you know that props can do as bearers of metaphors. Why not learn from them and help your script to gain sophistication and cinematic magic?

Wardrobe

Costumes are never taken care of in the first draft. Again, from the analysis classes you learned that you have to be aware where change of costume becomes a part of the dramatic buildup in your story. Again, it’s something that you can play with in the second draft. The dress of a character can be more expressive than a whole monologue. It can let us know what has happened to the character. If he or she is “dressed for the occasion,” the viewer reads it, guesses the meaning of it, and becomes more involved. These are things that, if you are aware of them, can help your scripts to be better, and more professional.

Transitions

Transitions between the scenes can have tremendous effectiveness. In the first draft, as a rule, scenes are written in their entirety. People come into a room, say good morning, take their hat off, put it on the hanger, and although the scene actually starts five minutes later, you get into it at the beginning. That’s why the transition from one scene to the other cannot have that desired sparking power. Try to jump into scenes as late as possible. Ask how you can eliminate all that unnecessary early stage of the scene that makes the writing flat, banal, anti-dramatic. That’s where you see more exciting possible connections between the scenes.

You Can Master All the Tricks of the Trade

These tips are a sort of shopping list that you can keep, and use whenever you go back to your first draft with the goal of changing it into a full-fledged script. They may help you. And they may foster the realization that there are no mysteries in our craft, that you can master all the tricks of the trade.

The most difficult thing to learn, as I’ve seen it so far, is not the structuring of a story. Finally, that is based on the psychological truth of the characters’ behavior and on the logic of events. Far more difficult to acquire is the awareness of how the anticipation of the audience should be built and structured into the way the story is presented – the difference between the narrative and the dramatic, if you want. All the techniques of suspense, surprise, mystery, irony, etc., exist because of the viewer’s anticipation. If there is not anticipation, there cannot be tension, there cannot be suspense. And you learn to understand it.

William Archer, in his book Playmaking, says that dramatic writing is constant preparation. Think about it. What else are we doing but preparing the audience for the resolution of the story? Where does the viewer’s anticipation come from? What is it based upon? Somebody must put it in the picture. And who else can it be if not the writer? He tries to “use all the pointers,” all the elements that lead to the future. That’s why he weaves all the fears, all the hopes, all the desires, dreams, plans, and warnings into the texture of the story.

That’s the secret and it’s odd to see how most students resist accepting this simple truth. They have the feeling that somehow it is not necessary. But watch films. Look at the way the writer and the director keep you excited. Anticipation is the device. It’s getting you to wish, to want, to predict what’s going to happen, to make you afraid, to hope. It cannot be in the story on its own. It must be put there. It’s too late to think about these things when the picture is shot.

Another difficulty for a beginning scriptwriter is the realization that we are not writing characters but parts. As a scriptwriter you are writing roles for actors. You have to give the actors something exciting to play. Dialogue is the least valuable thing you can give an actor. Difficult action, physically or psychologically embarrassing moments, moments that require the actor to do something considerable, memorable, unheard of, chances for the characters to display their intelligence, their inventiveness, their skills.

That’s what you are obliged to offer. Actors are the first ones who are going to make the decision whether or not the film will be made, and they can become your allies in the hard world of filmmaking. And you will need allies, believe me.”

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Searching for an Authentic Education (part 5): Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 5)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

“Sometimes, just before going to sleep, suddenly you get that wonderful moment — it doesn’t happen often, but when it happens it’s great — where the characters begin to play for you the scene you are working on. They lay out the conversation, they do things that you’d never thought of, and you know that it’s right, great, perfect. If you fall asleep you lose it. It can never be recovered. Well then, when it happens, force yourself to sit up and take notes, because these lucky moments won’t repeat.

It’s not necessary to polish the notes. It’s enough to put down just the essence of the scene that you were seeing and hearing. The next day it will be there. You can sleep without any anxiety. There is a joke about a young writer who was given this advice, so he zealously wakes up and scribbles down the note of the greatest idea that he has ever stumbled over. Then he goes blissfully to sleep. The next morning he wakes up, rushes to the notebook, and reads, “Boy meets girl.”

The outlined approach to the first draft helps you get rid of many problems. Nobody can keep two hours of a story in his mind in all its complexity. You have to simplify the process for yourself. In the outline you can, in the abstract form, see the beginning, middle, and end. then you can broaden it and start thinking in terms of sequences.

Sequences are still too large to be in one’s mind clearly. That’s why you go into scenes and the scenes help to shape the sequences, and finally help to propel the story to it’s final fruition. When you finish the first draft, you know it’s a first draft. Now, with the word processors, it’s a pleasure to rewrite, because you know that you can make changes, you can make cuts, you can edit, you can shift scenes. You can do anything that the first draft needs, and if you save the disc, you feel safe. The draft is there, as long as the copy is there. The next draft can only be better because you can always go back to the first.

The Dramatic Predicament

Obviously in the first draft there will be a lot of soft spots, errors, and gaps. The major problem, as a rule, is that the beginning doesn’t work. In my writing classes the first two sequences are always rewritten a couple of times until they work, and then the students finish the whole first draft. That’s because I believe that one needs to know and see the dramatic predicament as clearly as possible. If you don’t build the set-up of the dramatic situation, you cannot have a second act! And no way can you have a third act, because the third act is the answer for the question you put into our minds in the first act.

That’s why we rewrite the first act until it’s solid. But that doesn’t mean that it’s finished, because what happens during the writing of the whole script is that your characters begin to live, you begin to know them better, and the relationships begin to clarify and sharpen.

The characters develop as you write, and when the first draft is finished you see that at the beginning they were not alive yet. They were stiff. You needed three scenes to tell us what the guy is about, because you illustrated his relationships, his likes, his dislikes, and that is why the first part hiccups. It doesn’t flow, it doesn’t roll, and it’s too long. Exposition is always too long in the first draft, and you should be prepared for that. It’s just going back and using the method of “looking at the story backwards.”

Since you know where the characters will arrive at the end, you can now put yourself in the position of a Greek God on Mount Olympus who looks at them as they are starting their journey. What you see as a rule is that it’s too easy. So you put obstacles in their way, take care of complications, and force them to find more inventive ways of coping with the situations, and you don’t allow them to get too resilient until the resolution. That’s how you begin to see all the possibilities for flourishing scenes, because a scene is good only when it’s difficult, weary and demanding for the character. If you don’t put obstacles in the scene, it’s flat, and it doesn’t offer anything to the others.

Another Usual Problem

Another usual problem in the first draft is that it has three endings and three culminations. And that’s natural because usually you need three basic characters in the story, and each of the characters requires a culmination, and each of them requires a resolution. In the first draft you write them as a rule, one after the other, and then you try to combine those three culmination scenes and find one event in which all three can happen. That will create the impact, within one strong scene, that we, the spectators, are waiting for, and then the resolution is easy. If the culmination of all the characters happens at one time, you can see more clearly how to tie up all the loose ends.

Sometimes there is a problem with resolving the subplots. To take care of this, you just need to do what a director does. You go through the story with each character separately — main characters, as well as subplot characters. You examine their lines of action, their “spines,” and make sure that their stories are clear, that they have been completely told. Did you introduce a character with a problem, and then the poor creature never appeared again, or appeared without being able to cope with the problem? You better correct that.

The tension in the second act sometimes suffers from the fact that the relationships between the characters are static. They like each other or hate each other and nothing is there to help develop a line of progression. So you look at that relationship and open it, put the characters at the start as far from each other as you can, so that they have space to fight and to accommodate themselves. Then you are able to find interesting scenes for them.

The Forbidden Pattern

Monotony is a problem in first drafts as well. There are several reasons for it. One usually is the fact that the scenes follow in the forbidden pattern: and then, and then, and then, and then. In such a case, immediately you have monotony. In a dramatic story the pattern usually for the connecting scenes is: “and then,” “but,” “therefore,” and towards the culmination, “meanwhile.”  That’s because near the culmination the subplots have already been developed and you need to jump from one wagon to the other. If you don’t have this “but” and “therefore” connection between the parts, the story becomes linear, monotonous, just narrative. Diaries and chronicles are written that way, but not scripts. There is no way of heightening the conflict and continuing the suspense in such a pattern.

Another reason for monotony is that there is not sufficient contrast between the scenes and sequences. That can be helped, completely rationally, if you are aware of it. You look at the script and you try to find out how the scenes or sequences can contrast with each other.

There are always ways to achieve or heighten the contrast if you use everything that’s variable in the medium: rhythm, tempo, colors, light and sound. One scene is silent, the other can be ebullient. One scene is slow, the other can be fast. Staccato, legato — long smooth camera movement, short cuts, “chopped” scene, etc. Anything that the scene suggests to help you awaken the audience’s attention.

In the analysis class we talked about the difference between tension, suspense, mystery and surprise. If these devices are not fittingly put to work, the sequence won’t have sufficient power. Appropriately you ask yourself, what am I working with? Is it mystery, suspense or surprise? And then you sharpen the applicable means. To determine what solution to use, you ask: what does the viewer know, and what does the character know? Because that’s what the devices of suspense and surprise are always based upon.”

* * *

Frank Daniel gave his last lecture at Columbia University, Film Division on May 5, 1986.  This is part 5 of that lecture in my series entitled: Searching for an Authentic Education.

More to come…

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 4): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

When you find an approach, a technique, or a combination of techniques that unlocks a positive flow of creativity in your work — new worlds open up. This can be a powerful discovery that leads you through the uncharted lands of your imagination. This is where the best stories and characters come from.

Frank Daniel taught screenwriting for decades. He encouraged stories to well up from the subconscious mind. Filmmakers need to go deep. The deeper the better.

If you’re wondering what sage advice he provided to David Lynch and others, read on…

[Part 4 of a bootlegged transcript from Frank Daniel’s last lecture at Columbia U.]

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 4)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

Now, let’s talk about the way you find stories. There are millions of approaches. You can overhear something, you can meet somebody, you can read something in the newspapers, you can have a conversation with somebody and suddenly an idea for a certain type of a story that no one has done comes to you. These beginnings aren’t something that can be prescribed, that you can rationally categorize, but once begun there are always certain obligations that you have to assume towards your story.

The best stories are stories about human beings, and if you find a character that you believe should be shown and seen, start the exploration of this person.

Those who begin to work on plots first always abominate this part. They think that you don’t need to do it. They fancy that you just select some fixed character units and move them around like puppets, manipulating them so they do what’s necessary to be done, fast and easy. They think you don’t need to involve yourself in the story. But when they finish the first draft there’s the problem of what to do next. They finally have to go back and start thinking about the characters, and then all the plotting becomes questionable. The characters begin to determine the direction in which the story should move. That’s why it’s much better to just accept this unpleasant must.

Know Your Characters

You need to know your character — backwards, forwards, and in depth. That’s the reason why we put together the character questionnaire. You’ve got it, and it helps you to ask all  the questions about the character — about his or her relationship to his or her family, to himself, or herself, to his co-worker, to his or her class, work, nature, art, etc. etc. They are all on the list to help you when you start exploring relationships of the character.

The moment you begin to imagine how your character dealt with and deals with his parents, how he gets along with his brothers and sisters, what are the conflicts with his co-workers, and all that, you begin to explore the world of your story, and suddenly scenes begin to emerge. You start putting the character in different situations in your mind, and you begin to hallucinate — to imagine him in the most mundane and exciting moments of his life.

The courage and audacity to deal with trivia and banalities is something you should develop. Because the best stories are made from the most banal material and if you don’t know how your character pays bills, does his laundry, what he likes for lunch and dinner, and what his little vexations are, his petty likes and dislikes, a lively, juicy story will never happen.

I had a wonderful experience this year with one of my students. You know her… She wrote a treatment last year that she brought into class at the beginning of the semester. It was dreadful. It was really very bad, and I had to tell her. So I did, and she was, as you can imagine, quite devastated. And then we sat down and talked for a good three hours. And now that she has a finished script which is really wonderful, I asked her what helped her to write it. She said that she was scared of banalities and trivialities, and that’s why the people in her first year story were cardboard figures And then there was the moment when she tried to see her characters as real, familiar, ordinary people and suddenly she felt free.

“They Will Never Recognize Themselves”

She came to me with the first outline of a new story, and I told her: Right! Use the people whom you know best. Sell all your friends, neighbors, relatives. Everybody has done it. They will never recognize themselves. They have a totally different idea of themselves, and besides your use them in a different context and there’s no danger that they will accuse you of anything. They’ll love the stories, really. Such comedy writers like Lubitsch always made people laugh at themselves without knowing it was them they were snickering at.

Tolstoy’s diary and the notes he kept while he was writing his novels are full of notes how he has combined cousins and friends, his relatives and acquaintances into the fictional personages. Some of them he used directly as he knew or remembered them, some of them he mixed with other people. that’s one of the best ways of finding characters that feel real.

The people, the things, that are familiar, the trivialities, the banalities of life as you observed them are always the spices in a story, in a sequence, in a scene. They make the script believable, they make it come “from somewhere.” The worst stories are stories that don’t have their roots in an environment, in a certain place of life. Such contes are just pure concoctions and no one can relate to them. You can avoid that by starting with exploring that one character that attracts you.

And you should ask yourself why. Why does this character ask to be in a story? What is it I feel about him or about her? Because then you begin to find out why you want to write the whole story, and what the passion of that character is, and why he wants what he wants.

Dream For Your Character

Eventually you reach a moment where you can dream for your character, where you can remember for him or her everything that happened in his or her past. When that happens then you are absolutely safe. The character will find his or her way towards the resolution of the story.

At this point the problem is how to hit that character in his most vulnerable spot. How to put him in the worst predicament imaginable, how to strengthen that predicament, and how you can increase, at the same time, his desire to achieve his dreams. Once you do that, you’ve got a story growing, and there is no problem what to do next.

You just use the rational approach and start asking yourself: what are the sequences in which this character tries to get himself out of the predicament? And you put him or her in that predicament as a rule, in about two sequences, of about 10 – 12 minutes. Then you have the steps from the set up of the dramatic situation to the culmination. When you can see the sequences and you start asking what event you can put in the center of each sequence, the story begins to unravel and then you have a chance to feel quite safe. You begin to have an outline, and you can, after that, begin to write.

The Thread of Your Story

There are people who don’t believe in outlines, so they start writing the script without knowing where they are going. What they end up with is something that resembles a script, because it’s typed in the format, and looks like a script, but it’s not a script, and it’s not a story, although it resembles it, and then, although they have written over a hundred pages and discovered something, they have to go back and decide finally what it is that they want to write about. Eventually, they have to throw away most of the scenes they have written, because the scenes don’t fit in the the new story.

The moment you know what the thread of your story is, you see why those etudes, those hallucinations that you should do before you begin to write, are so important. You all know that actors, for example, when they begin to explore a part, make all kinds of etudes for themselves. They go shopping as the character. They wake up as the character, do their toilet, go to a party, or whatever, as the character. They make up scenes that don’t exist in the script, but these explorations, these etudes, help them to understand all the trivia, all those elements that an actor needs to perform the part. You need to do the same thing.

You better know everything that could and might happen to your character. It’s not writing yet. It’s just the ideation, just the thread count. It needs to be combined with this other side of the process which is asking sober-minded questions like: what is the story about? What is the main character’s problem? What is the difficulty, the stress, in which the character can be put and how can the character solve it?

First Drafts

Personally I believe in a first draft written as fast as possible. When you polish each scene as you go, you stop the flow of your imagination. If you start taking care of every line of dialogue and every adjective in the descriptions, you are under restraint in imagining the total, the whole story. Well, the moment you feel that your character is ready to go on the trip, just start writing.

The best advisable way is to write the first draft without stopping.

And there — it’s only again, my advice, some do take it, some don’t — but my advice is to get used to regular writing hours, and write at least one page a day. For me the best thing is to write in the morning when your mind is more or less fresh, and if it’s not, if you have a hangover, for instance, then you write from a feeling of guilt, and that’s not bad either.

But if you have one finished page written every day that means 360 pages a year, which is enough. That’s three drafts of a script, if you rewrite it completely. But you will learn that the second and third drafts are usually written much faster, so 360 pages can be two scripts a year. That’s just writing one page a day. It gives you a feeling of freedom. You can waste the rest of the day and nothing happens. You have done that one page and you feel comfortable and relaxed.

At the same time something else is happening. You don’t necessarily think consciously about writing for the rest of the day, but subconsciously you still do. Your imagination is at work, unforced, at its leisure. And the next page next day is better.

Also, you shouldn’t ever try to finish everything that is clear in your mind in one writing session. If you do you will find yourself at an impasse. You’ll be stumped. But if you leave part of the scene, or part of the sequence that’s clearly in front of your eyes for the next day, you won’t have that awful feeling of getting started again, because you just continue, and the moment you begin to continue with the things that were clear the day before, new horizons usually open immediately. That’s because the imagination begins to work.

So one page a day — and that’s it. Next day, again.

***

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 3): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

It’s hard to find and write strong original stories that are realistic for independent film production — and particularly low-budget/no-budget film production. There are several tricks that experienced writers have used to conceive, believe and achieve their storytelling goals — and Frank Daniel passes a few of them along in [part three of] this last lecture at Columbia U.

For some, the difficulty with writing is exactly that — the difficulty with writing. There’s much to be said about understanding your own process for getting the words on the page. Distractions are everywhere in today’s world. But there’s always been distractions — and many times we seek them out, intentionally or not. Sometimes the distractions can lead you to great things. Sometimes not.

Your Creative Process

Trusting and embracing your creative process is something that can be learned and developed. It takes time, and it’s helpful to employ strategies to organize your understanding of how you work — your creative process.

I’ve used these tricks and never regretted it. It doesn’t cost anything to try’em. The title for this section might be ‘New Dogs, Old Tricks.’ Let me know if you find it helpful.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting (part 3)

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

It’s not a bad habit to keep files. You can make notes about the interesting originals that you meet, and you can put them into the files that say ‘characters.’ It’s not necessary to write long treatises. You just need to make a couple of notes, but you must put it in writing. You cannot rely on your memory. You need to create this habit of verbalizing your observations — one file for characters, one file for sets and locations and things, one file for gags, one file for lines that you overheard, one file for titles, one for situations, etc. You don’t need to know what the situation is going to be used for, just that there was something interesting that you saw happening. Make notes and collect these observations.

Titles are difficult to find. Sometimes you suddenly get an idea of a title that has nothing to do with anything you are writing at the moment. So you put it in the file. It can be the first step of a foresight of a story coming off. You know what the first ideas usually look like, oftentimes those are just germs of ideas. It’s a scene that’s not a scene yet. It can be a sensation of some figments of character that asks to be put in a story. An atmosphere of a place or environment that attracts you — whatever. These beginnings of ideas are coming from your subconscious mind, so they can have any kind of form. And before those dim silhouettes of characters, imagined bits and pieces of scenes or elements become alive and interesting enough, before they begin to make some sense and create some whole — it takes a long, long time and you have to help the process.

Ideation

So these notes, and a constant alertness in which you need to train yourself, help the first step, the ideation of the story. In my classes, I always spend several weeks at the beginning of the year just getting the germs of ideas from the students and trying to see where an idea leads and finding out why the writer has a desire to deal with it. The fact is that the students very often don’t know the answers clearly. It takes time to figure all those factors out.

You might have had an experience that I’ve had very often. Suddenly you start reading strange stuff. You go into the library and browse through volumes on biology, history, horticulture, or something else that evidently doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re working on. I never stop myself when this happens, because I know that there is a need for it. You just read whatever strange book you feel like reading, and then suddenly, when the idea comes, you see why it was necessary.

Just One Idea

Maybe from a three hundred page book you have read, there is just one idea, maybe just one line that appears in the script at the end. But it helped you to explore the territory, the subject matter, maybe the character or relationships. In other words, the ideation can be helped, and that’s what you need to learn — to play games with your subconscious creative mind. You constantly trick yourself, you put yourself into difficulties and solve problems that you have created for yourself.

You play other kinds of games, as well. For example, it’s well known that your desk, the place where you write should be used only when you work — when you really sit down and write. When you think and when you have what’s called writer’s block — which is just a very kind term for what’s called laziness in other professions — you don’t use your “creative” niche. Because your desk should be the place where the pleasure of writing occurs. You sit down when the scene is clear and when you can start typing. It’s a trick, sure, but try it, and you’ll see that it works.

Another way to help yourself — it may sound crazy, but it has worked for many people and I didn’t invent it — when you have an idea that is still unclear, when it still is more of a feeling of emotion and you know that you have got something you feel like doing, something you want to write, take a sheet of paper and write everything that you can tell about it: whey this script will be the greatest piece ever written, how it’s going to shake the world — in other words, brag on paper as much as you can. Use all the superlatives that you can imagine. Tell how people will stand in line to see it. Tell about all the festivals that will be astonished by it — whatever. And the moment you start writing all these gasconades some strange things will begin to happen. There will be some ideas that still may not have any specificity, but they’ll still be ideas that express the push and pull of the story.

The Envelope Please…

When you finish this bravado, take an envelope, fold the paper, put it in the envelope, seal the envelope, lock it up so that nobody can ever read it, and then forget about it. Then the work starts, the ideas start to become clear, and you get into the drudgery of writing. It becomes a question of how the scenes connect, and what the next sequence is going to be, what to tell now, what to reveal later, and all that.

Then, usually when you are approaching page seventy to seventy-five of the first draft of the script, there comes a moment when you are getting at least fifteen new ideas for better scripts than the one you are working on. Don’t throw those ideas away, make notes about each of them and by so doing get rid of them, for the time being, but if you reach that moment when you sincerely believe that the script you have been working on really stinks, and that it’s a piece of ‘you know what,’ then take out the envelope, open it, read the paper you wrote at the time of the prime inspiration, and you’ll be surprised.

The tormenting problems that you have had with your script have been there in the envelope, solved. You begin to see the answers, keys, the locks start opening. Now you can finish the script and then you can go back and improve it — make it into what it was originally dreamed to be.

Try it. Those who have used it have never regretted it. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s an old trick that I’ve learned from old script writers years ago.

***

Days of Grain and Processing

Not so long ago, film was dangerous. It was mechanical, chemical and physical – and there was always a sense of risk. Film labs used to be one of the key links in the filmmaking chain. You would bring them your hours of work and trust them with all of the magic from set. Next day you’d be back to screen it. I loved that routine.

We still call it filmmaking, even though we’re not really touching a lot of film anymore. It was great to revisit 16mm B&W prints of my first feature. I hadn’t been at a rewind bench in years and the memories came flooding back. I loved my split reels and splicers!

I was inspecting two prints that were now 25 years old. I remembered that the lab had difficulty in processing my black and white 16mm film. (Their business was mostly 35mm color.)  They struck a “first answer print” which I screened, but wouldn’t pay for. They agreed it was dark, but rather than throw it away, they gave it to me.

The next print was better. Comparing them side by side, you can see just how different the one print is: the contrast is high and there’s a lot of grain. Even the perforations are black.

Watching that print gave the story a completely different feel. Yes, some narrative elements were lost in the shadows, but there was an overall sense of foreboding and creeping dread that I liked. It kept me watching for different reasons. I’m glad I preserved it.

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 2): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

Film moves on paper. It may be read on a laptop, but someone has to put the words on the page. Not every student who signs up for film school wants to be a writer, but every creative key in the filmmaking chain needs to know the fundamentals of storytelling and the different styles of contemporary screenwriting.

Screenwriting is hard. It’s one of the most challenging literary forms because it’s not what it’s supposed to be. It’s a written document that tells a story – but it’s supposed to become something else. The pages of a script are intended to be interpreted by a creative team – and then transformed into images on a screen. How that transformation turns out is anybody’s guess.

Average screenplays rarely become great films. It can happen, but the smart money starts with quality writing. If you start with good writing, the chances of making a good film are vastly improved.

I took a screenwriting class at the University of British Columbia around the same time I got this Columbia U bootleg lecture transcript. I had a great teacher, Bill Gough, who mentored me through the writing of my first feature film. I felt very fortunate to have his ongoing feedback and advice. Writing is about listening.

This is part two of:

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

Scriptwriting, if it were taught only in the writing classes, would just be writing, but it’s more. It’s filmmaking on paper. Only when the other elements, the proper use of the language of the medium, are included does it begin to really work. That again is the reason why, in the first year, you are asked to take the directing workshop, even when you don’t have any intentions of becoming a director. You must try, at least once, to see what a director can do, what it means to devise an interpretation, to see what the camera and the editing can do for you. Then, even if you never continue directing, it will stay with you.

The problem with many Hollywood writers nowadays is that although they are very often good writers, they have been working, since the studio system disappeared, as total loners. They write in their offices and homes and they don’t feel the contact that, in the old days, the studio days, a writer necessarily did. He was forced to come every day at nine, sit in his cubicle, and type or do whatever. The writers usually played cards and had fun, but they were on the premises of the studio. They had a chance to see what happens when a picture was shot. They were constantly meeting the other professionals, they could ask questions, and they could collect and pick up all the know-how. That’s what we are trying to supply in our program.

We hope that having professionals as teachers will give you the basic idea of what it means to be a scriptwriter. Once you are on the right track and moving forward, you will realize that you will be learning all your life. There’s no end to it. The moment a writer or a director thinks he knows it all he should stop working, because from that moment he will only repeat himself. So if you learn the basics while you’re here, it will be easy to see all the ramifications later. The other classes and the other parts of the program, history, theory, etc., just add to your broader vision of your profession.

As you know, most of you come to the school with very little education in the history of cinema. For most film students all over the world, cinema means what’s being shown in the movie theatres now, today, and things that were made before are seen as prehistory or archeology, something that nobody needs to know about. Then everyone is surprised when a genre that had existed for at least fifty of sixty years reappears and is revived. Everyone looks at it as if it were a brand new phenomenon, a miracle. However, if you are familiar with the history of cinema you will be aware of the other forms, other genres, other types of narrative structures and styles that filmmakers have explored in the past. And that can help you explore different ideas with a new understanding of your own writing.

Now, let me try to explain what the reasons behind the design of the curriculum at Columbia were. It took several years to put the program into shape. Both Milos Forman  and I are firm believers in the validity of a solid curriculum. Curriculum for us means a step-by-step outline of the tasks and the problems that the student should go through and solve. That means that if the curriculum, in this sense, is clearly designed any professional who comes in to teach can start functioning. He doesn’t need to invent anything. He just follows the outline and uses his professional expertise to help the students. It make me feel happy that we have achieved it, and that I am leaving the school with a sound curriculum in existence, functioning and working.

Now let’s go back to the two parts of screenwriting: the writing and the dramaturgy. In the writing process the main educational problems are usually connected with the fear that everybody brings in the writing classes. Most of the beginning students don’t believe they have anything to say, and they feel like the director in Fellini’s “8 1/2.” Consequently they try to borrow from other people, and when they begin to write treatments, you can immediately tell who is scared to death, and thinks of avoiding the inevitable and who is trying to collect the courage to jump into the cold water and try something really new, original and personal.

Those who come with a genre story are usually trying to protect themselves, believing that the genre formula will help them put together some acceptable plot and that they will be in an area that’s foolproof. Which means that they start “plotting.” The only things they are concerned with are; where does my first act end and, what’s the culmination of the middle of the second act, etc. etc. They concentrate on all these purely technical and cerebral questions which don’t help the imagination at all. And what they usually end up with is something quite empty. They aren’t in their story, and they are not in the chosen genres. What they end up with are cliches, empty plots, flat characters and dull dialogue.

There is a belief that if you write a genre story, a thriller, a mystery story, etc., you are working on something that is commercial. This consideration, what’s commercial and what isn’t, is something you better forget about completely. All the marketing specialists, and I have a chance to see them every summer when they come to Sundance, are masters at telling you what was successful last year. They believe it will be successful next year, again, but it never works. If you look at those Columbia graduates whose scripts were acquired by the producers or made into film, you’ll see that they succeeded because they came with something that was original, that was not like anything that was made recently.

“After Hours” was not a commercial idea. When Lois Bonfiglio heard – she was then with the Ladd Company and was here when Joe Minion wrote the script – that Martin Scorsese was making the picture she was quite unhappy that she had passed on it. From that moment everybody started reading all the scripts the students were working on because maybe, now and then, something different might come along.

How many times have I seen people try to figure out what would be successful in two years with very little luck. And yet it takes two years to develop and finish a script, if you are fortunate enough to make it into a film. Can you imagine what the world will look like in two years? What will the trends in society be? What need will people feel? Nobody can predict that, and if you start taking the audience into consideration in this way, making assumptions about their future tastes and desire, you are in a field which is only based upon guesses, and usually wrong guesses, and unwillingly you create a sort of censorship for yourself.

The only thing you really need when you write is a total feeling of freedom. That’s why questions like; is this too expensive or, should I make it smaller so that maybe some independent producer will like it, should be forgotten. To make a film less expensive is something that you can do when the first draft is finished. There are always ways of finding the easier and less expensive solutions for scenes and sequences, or the whole scope of the picture.

There is a big difference between a cheap movie and a low budget movie. A low budget movie is a picture that’s designed to cost a certain amount of money that is not overwhelmingly high. A cheap movie is “Ben Hur” made with two horses and a few extras. Again, this idea of what’s expensive should not be on your mind at the time you are writing the script. It’s another form of censorship, and you don’t need that.

The most difficult thing, especially in the beginning years, is to trust yourself and to discover that you’ve got stories to tell, and a lot of stories at that. That realization usually comes as a surprise for most of the students at the moment when they begin to deal with only material that’s theirs and that nobody else can take, i.e. when they start utilizing their own experiences — when they begin to see that everybody they meet and talk to is a possible story or at least a character for a story.

You can sit on an airplane and next to you sits a lady or man, and if you encourage them, if you help them a little bit, and show that you are willing to listen, you get a story immediately. You can do that every day when you meet people. You should learn to listen and create this absolutely genuine interest in people around you, because that is the material that you write about.

***

Unleashing the Power of Hallucinogens

Before microdosing became the trend in Silicon Valley, some people used to just watch my film. The National Library and Archives has the last remaining 35mm print – and they won’t loan it out. But they made a digitized copy and we’ll be screening it for the first time tomorrow night.

Searching for an Authentic Education (part 1): Frank Daniel on screenwriting

Film school is like eating breakfast: you don’t have to eat the whole thing to know if it’s going to be any good.

Over the years, I’ve done comparative research on numerous film programs and spoken with hundreds of students. Most complain of faculty and curriculum that failed to impress, or at least meet a reasonable standard that warranted the tuition fees, living costs and lost income in their pursuit of higher education.

It seems like nothing much has changed. As a film student in the 80’s, I heard similar complaints.

I was fortunate. Yes, I quit a few programs in my search for an authentic education, but I found a few great teachers in my journey. One was Dr. Joan Reynertson. I enjoyed her classes and respected her as an educator. She cared deeply about film education. In her office, we would talk about other schools and film programs, the big ones like USC, NYU, AFI, etc. (She had graduated from Stanford.) I had dreams of going to the best schools, but never had the money. Dr. J told me about Frank Daniel. This was the guy you wanted to learn filmmaking from, she said. He was regarded as one of the leading film educators in the world. That was 1984.

I never got the chance to attend a Frank Daniel lecture, but eventually I got a transcript – a bootleg transcript from a student who taped his last class at Columbia. This was how the underground network of film education worked in those days. This was way before the internet. Here is part one of that lecture.

Frank Daniel on Screenwriting

Columbia University School of the Arts, Film Division, May 5th, 1986

 

First I would like to talk about the way we designed the program here at this school, and that will give you some understanding of why we did it the way we did. Scriptwriting, like directing, can be divided into two basic parts. One is the actual writing and the other is what’s usually called dramaturgy.

I had an interesting experience recently at the Sundance Film Institute where the seven selected filmmakers arrived for conferences with our seven script advisors. In about forty minutes the seven wizards, Waldo Salt, Frank Pierson, Tom Rickman, etc., made an assessment of what each of the seven scripts needed. And there was no real disagreement. Everyone knew what was wrong and what needed to be done. In just forty minutes all seven scripts were x-rayed and examined. Then the filmmakers met with each advisor separately and during those meetings there were about one hundred and fifty suggestions on how to solve the problems, and the suggestions of each of the advisors were totally different from the suggestions of the others. That’s why there is always ONE advisor assigned to help the writer sort out which suggestions best fit his intention, and this advisor stays with him for the six months before he comes and begins working on the project at Sundance — examining and shooting the scenes.

So that for me was a vivid demonstration of those two parts of scriptwriting. One part is dramaturgy, which is practically a scientifically defined discipline. It’s not difficult to find out what’s wrong with a script and to see how the story is built and what its needs are and which points need to be stressed. That’s the cerebral part of writing. The writing itself is for artists to do, and there are no rules, there are no ready made recipes that you can apply. That’s why in our program there are the writing classes and the analysis classes. In the analysis we deal with the dramaturgy, the scientific part, the theoretical, the cerebral, the rational inquiry.

Two Semesters of Script Analysis

You’ve all had two semesters of the script analysis so today we won’t talk about structure, acts, sequences, sub-plots, genres, style, etc. What I would like to stress is that: there is a difference between critical thinking and analytical thinking. For a creative person analytical thinking is a must. Critical thinking may occasionally be a little dangerous. If you start using critical thinking too early, you can get into a situation like one of the second year students for almost a whole year. He has read and studied theatre, dramaturgy and theory, and he’s a wonderful critic. But his critical thinking was fighting his creative thinking. His standards and the things he thought he could achieve were constantly in conflict. Nevertheless, I hoped that by the end of the semester he would have a finished script, and he did. He overcame the hyper-critical and self-critical thinking, and put together a complete first draft, something that in no time can be polished into a good, if not very good, piece of writing.

So that’s one thing to realize. Analyzing films, reading scripts, trying to figure out what makes the story move, makes the scene work, that’s a necessity. Critical thinking means that you apply certain standards and moral judgements and that’s a little bit different kind of mental activity. Fortunately our education stresses only the critical thinking. We are always learning how to do things right. We know that one and one are two, but with creative thinking, it can be eleven. It can be a couple. You have to look at things from different sides and angles, and free your mind, try things that nobody has tried before.

The Way Scriptwriting is Taught

The way scriptwriting is taught here, in groups and by reading aloud in class, is something that didn’t happen by accident. It would be much easier if you typed your pages and handed them in. Then the class would read them and make remarks. But that wouldn’t have the other effect that is necessary. The fact that you are sitting in the group and listening to different approaches means that you are constantly keeping your mind working. It begins in the first few classes when the assigned scenes are read in the class and you see how many solutions there can be for the same problem. And when you concentrate and follow what your colleagues are reading, you are actually working, because you have to imagine things, you have to see the scenes appear before your inner eyes. That’s an important part of the development of the art of the scriptwriter’s technique.

Besides, reading in class has another very significant purpose: it helps you to free yourself of your inhibitions, fears and anxieties. You have to perform in front of your colleagues. That’s also why the acting/directing class is added. It’s not to make actors of you, and it’s not just so you see what an actor can do for you. Of course the class is to let you hear how dialogue sounds when it is spoken, what can be left out, what can be expressed in another manner without words, but that’s just part of the class. The other part is that at the beginning of the acting/directing class you have to make fools of yourselves. You have to stand up in front of everybody and act.

Very Scary, Very Lonely, Very Difficult

I know that Brad Dourif’s class is not a truly pleasurable experience, but it gets you to develop step by step into professionals. You will always end with something that’s being shown, and you have to take responsibility for it. The sooner you start realizing it the better, because than you can start eliminating your inhibitions and fears. Writing is a very scary, very lonely, and very difficult job. When you face the task of writing one hundred and twenty pages, when you look at the pile of blank paper, you don’t believe you’ll ever be capable of covering those pages with scenes, dialogue, descriptions, and all that. But you’ll find that it’s not that much. Actually it’s very little. In fact you will feel that you’ll eventually need at least fifty pages more for all the ideas that you’ll have when the story begins to grow.

So that’s the reason you take the acting class.

***