Idea IS the format

Well, you never know… you just never know. You just go along figuring some things don’t change ever, like being able to drive on a public highway without someone trying to murder you. And then one stupid thing happens. Twenty, twenty-five minutes out of your whole life, and all the ropes that kept you hanging in there get cut loose, and it’s like, there you are, right back in the jungle again.

I got in last night (actually a week or two ago now that I’m ready to post) feeling like I wanted to watch a classic, something showing the art of a great film-maker learning to stretch his talent – and his budget – as far as possible.

Every now and then the stream of sewage that is broadcast television spews out something worthwhile, like a dirty dank coal-mine yielding a 20-carat diamond. On this occasion ITV4 blessed me with exactly the gem I was hoping for.

It’s pretty much Spielberg’s debut feature.  And, without wishing to understate the film-makers’ craft, the logistics of shooting the movie must have been pretty damn simple.  They would have run something along the lines of…

1) Get hold of a car. A cheap, red, American car.

2) Stick an everyman behind the wheel. A cheap, red-faced, American everyman.  (In case anybody has registered that he represents the travelling salesman within all of us, call him David Mann.)

3) Stick a camera behind the everyman (and in front of him, and either side of him).

4) Get hold of a rig. A cheap, rusty, really beat-up rig.

5) Film the rig marauding the car at high speed, snaking along hundreds of kilometres of long empty roads through the heartless heartland of America.

6) Drive the car and the rig into a ravine, filming it from about thirty different positions.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. Every now and then Mann stops, and gets out of the car, and – through his total inability to engage with the inhabitants of the dried-up backwaters he’s washed up in – says very little.  We see how isolated and insecure he has become, expressed through this conspicuous lack of dialogue.

On the rare occasions that Mann speaks, he does so in fits and spurts. He scoffs at the gas station attendant’s transparent attempt to sell him a new radiator hose, or stumbles through the process of ordering a glass of water and a cheese sandwich. At the peak of his performance, he confronts a fellow diner with a string of incoherent demands and misguided accusations, all of which turn out to be totally unwarranted.

The real narrative momentum of DUEL is delivered through Mann’s interior monologue, as he explores each avenue of action open to him, and discovers each to be a dead-end. The film becomes a backdrop against which each of us is left to wonder how we would respond in the face of such a brutally malevolent force, one that will not relent, one that cannot be reasoned with.

Immediately after DUEL ITV4 screened an hour-long interview with Spielberg in which he discussed his work on several of his better-known films. With regard to DUEL, he revealed that he had undertaken the project on the strength of his first great realisation in film-making – that, armed with a good script, and his own assorted faculties, he could make a watchable movie.

So what is it that makes it such a good script?

Well, there’s the fact that it cuts brilliantly to an essential vulnerability at the heart of the human condition. That it holds us at the precipice, and forces us to gaze downward into the depths of our own potential powerlessness and ineffectuality. There is that.

Of course, there’s also the fact that it’s written to be so overtly realisable. Given one capable actor, two beat-up vehicles, three or four scenes with any significant dialogue, and a decent stint in an audio suite recording voiceover, Spielberg crafts a debut feature worthy of Hitchcock. And, by Spielberg’s own admission, if DUEL owes anything to Hitchcock, it was there in the script before he even picked it up.

I think I came home wanting more than to just watch a movie.  I wanted to learn something.  What did DUEL teach me?  That a good script doesn’t just deliver on elevated ideas and stylised insight into the human condition.  It’s set in a single location, or a wide open space – somewhere cheap to film.  It emphasizes a few central performances, and a concentration of focus and narrative tension.  Think the rich and concentrated mix of talent stranded in the remoteness of space, in Ridley Scott’s ALIEN.  Think the patchwork of talent isolated in the polar wilderness, in John Carpenter’s THE THING.

Look at the common ingredients, in pure story-telling terms, as they start to emerge:

1. We find ourselves at an environmental extremity, some lonely and isolated colonial outpost characterised by it’s actual and ideological displacement from the ‘civilised’ world.
2. We discover a tormenting force, at first hidden from view, whose motives and modus operandi become gradually clearer as the story unfolds.
3. We turn to our central protagonist – the character with whom our greatest sympathies lie. Though abrasive in manner, perhaps even mildly sociopathic, he or she is also essentially rational and reasonable, and ready to come to life in the face of adversity.
4. Our protagonists prevail, but never triumph.  These movies gain a great deal from showing an awareness of the difference between one and the other.

I don’t know about anybody else, but these make some pretty compelling building blocks for a debut feature.  They lend themselves to sprawling westerns, long range sci-fi, and the kind of smothering horror movies and psychological thrillers I grew up on.

They put the onus on the writing, confining events within the claustrophobic context of a wide open space, juxtaposing the intricacies of human nature against the an otherwise prosaic and inanimate backdrop.

This is the script I’m currently trying to write, and the idea behind the idea behind Weatherman.

All I need is the damn time to do it.

I posted recently about a trip out to LA to work on some short scripts, as part of a project I’m working on at the moment.  There’s not much I can say about them at this stage, but I do have the following observations about the process of writing as part of a team.

1. Give yourselves plenty of room to breathe

I’ve never been involved in a collaborative writing process before – it’s always been something that I’ve done alone.  It quickly became clear that it can be quite a creatively claustrophobic process, especially in relation to a screenplay or script, where every word costs money, and needs to be driving your narrative forward.

The right adjective or adverb might make the killer line, but the wrong ones have to be ruthlessly dispensed with.  As a result, everybody is zeroed in, throwing words or phrases around, and shooting the majority of each others ideas out of the sky like clay pigeons.

I guess Dane must have seen this coming, because he’d transformed the loading bay behind the PPC offices into the largest writing room you’ve ever seen (pictured below), and we ended up using the extent of it in order to periodically remove ourselves from a central creative vortex within which nothing was sacred, and nobody could be assured of holding sway.

2. Make sure you have your own screen

We had Final Draft running across three Macbooks, so that anybody could drive, and all of us could keep an eye on things.  I hadn’t really thought about the alternative, but over one of our many cigarette breaks Dane talked a little about his experiences of working around the same laptop, and the merits of having a screen of one’s own became clear.

It’s one thing to be engaged in the inevitable intellectual sparring that seems to be a necessary feature of a collaborative writing process, another entirely for a full-blown fistfight to break out in the battle for control of the keyboard.  Even as it was we periodically snatched the cursor away from one another with our respective trackpads, but never more than playfully.

3. Bide your time and pick your battles

Writers generally have their own ideas about how things should be said, and are generally accustomed to saying them that way unchallenged.  In a collaborative scenario there will be words, phrases, sentiment and structural details you instinctively disagree with, probably in abundance.

It’s importance to learn to let the bulk of them go, unless you see your storyline branching off in a wholly unhelpful direction.  Taking issue on every potentially problematic detail will quickly grind things to a halt, and drain away any creative momentum you’re collectively accumulating.

When you’re writing to a deadline your first priority is to complete your script.  Once that’s done, you can worry about making it better.  With the number of rewrites most scripts go through you’ll likely find that a lot of the problems you have come out in the wash, without the need to waste any of your precious individual equity by taking issue.

You’ll also find that maybe a couple of readings softens your objection, or that it disappears altogether, and you realise that your first instinct was the wrong one.  It’s important to keep that basic principle in mind.  SOMETIMES YOU ARE WRONG.  But then, of course, never lose sight of the fact that SOMETIMES SO IS EVERYBODY ELSE.

A while back I posted an opening sequence for a short film idea I’m playing around with, with a view to getting some feedback from a few friends of mine.

I was particularly interested in the question of whether short films need to follow a scaled down version of the Basic Film Paradigm, a model advocated by Syd Field in his book Screenplay as being the essential basis of any film script. The feedback tended towards the affirmative, in accordance with my own natural inclination.

As such, I’ve since spent what little time I’ve had to focus on the project remodelling my script to bring it into line with the paradigm. Before I go into that, I’m going to define what I understand as being the key tenets of Field’s model.

PAGECOUNT
A standard length for a feature length screenplay is 128 pages. This equates to roughly two hours and eight minutes, since a page – of dialogue or action – should equate to a single minute of film.

SET-UP, CONFRONTATION & RESOLUTION
A screenplay breaks down into three main phases – the SET-UP, lasting approximately 30 minutes; the CONFRONTATION, lasting approximately 60 pages; and the RESOLUTION, lasting a further 30 pages.

PLOT POINTS
These parts are delineated by two plot points, marking the transition from one phase to another. The first plot point is the point at which a dramatic need of one or more protagonists becomes clearly discernible. The second plot point is the point at a major corner is turned in the fulfilment of that need.

THE ENDING
The ending is the first thing you need to know before you start writing. Your storyline must have direction, following a path of development along which the ending lies. Furthermore, the ending comes out of the beginning; someone, or something, initiates an action, and how that action is resolved becomes the storyline of the film.

TWO INCIDENTS
The inciting incident is that which sets the story in motion. The key incident is a dramatic visualisation of what the story is about (and is often plot point one). These two incidents provide the foundation of the storyline.

SCENES VS SEQUENCES
A SCENE is where something specific happens. It is a particular unit of dramatic action – the place in which you tell your story action. A scene must move the story forward and/or reveal more information about a character. A SEQUENCE is a series of scenes connected by one single idea with a definite beginning, middle and end. It is a unit of dramatic action unified by one single idea.

These are the main elements Field establishes before he starts to write about how to build your storyline. He richly illustrates each point with examples, but I guess the real value for me has been taking on board the extent to which screenwriting is a literary and creative discipline of its own.

With reference to my script, it has helped me in the following ways;

• I’ve chiseled out plot points one and two. I was pleased to discover that these were already present, in roughly the right place, in a version of the script predating my exposure to Field’s views.

• I’ve realised that the film probably needs to be twice as long as I previously imagined. I had it down at fifteen minutes, but its looking more like thirty. This has much to do with the need to establish and develop the unfamiliar social context I am inventing.

• I’ve added a great action sequence, to redress the balance between dialogue and action. It will be totally devoid of dialogue. I’m very excited about writing it.

• I’ve focused on the ending. I’m still refining various details, but it’s now clear enough in my mind for me to try and finalise the storyline.

I’m now using a technique Field described to work with the storyline, before I try and write again. This involves writing my ideas for each scene or sequence, along with a few brief words of description, on a series of 3 x 5 cards – by his reckoning fourteen cards equates to about thirty minutes of screenplay.

By arranging and rearranging the cards, you can use them to play around with your storyline, and view it from different angles. I was doing precisely that this morning whilst lying in a lovely hot bath, and switched two of the cards into a deliberately unintelligible configuration. A couple of possibilities occurred to me, and rippled through the rest of the cards, until I found myself looking at a significantly new arrangement. I feel certain I’m going to follow the new structure.

I guess I can see where Field is coming from with this. A basic framework exists for any workable screenplay, but within that, you are master of all you survey. Invent problems, then find solutions. Conjure up the unintelligible, then redraw reality to make sense of it. Doing so causes you to examine the questions of ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ – questions that need to be addressed before you can even begin to embroider your story with language and imagery.

Brandon Bird: “The Last Supper”

2am. I awoke suddenly and utterly a few moments ago, after just two hours sleep, neatly exiting a startlingly vivid dream into which one of my most notorious ex-girlfriends had just assuredly introduced herself. Still, nice to know the old ejector seat is still in good working order.

A couple of days ago I posted the first sequence of the first draft of a screenplay I’ve been working on, called WEATHERMAN, with a view to answering a few questions, specifically in relation to Syd Field’s Basic Film Paradigm. I subsequently circulated the link to the following sprinkling of friends and acquaintances:

Dan Outram – writer and director of numerous short films and commercials
John Donnelly – writer and director of numerous stageplays
Kate Solomon – associate producer on UNITED 93
James Scudamore – author of The Amnesia Clinic
Dane McMaster – colleague, serial west coast technophile and screen guru
Emma Light – critic; therapist; confidante; wife

By the time I got up a few hours later I already had some good feedback. Dan was quick to set me straight on a fundamental tenet of screenwriting technique, asserting that “you shouldn’t write anything other than that which is seen or heard. Only that is allowed to tell the story. Otherwise the audience will not know it.” I’ve already taken that on board, and the updated version is available here.

Dane picked up on the question of whether short films need to conform to the paradigm: “Yes, in this matter at least, syd field is correct. a three act structure such as this should be adhered to as closely as possible. once you’ve mastered this you can destroy it and begin to build your own form of… well, form. Kubrick’s 2001, for example, does not follow this structure. Nor does Full Metal Jacket. But he’s one of the few directors who can stray from it and make it play. David Lynch actually adheres quite strictly to this formal structure… even if the elements that form his 3 parts are in a somewhat abstract form. David Mamet is another huge supporter of this form.”

Set-up, confrontation and resolution it is then I guess. I like the idea that it has to be mastered in order that it can be transgressed. It’s a fascinating point about Full Metal Jacket as well. Though I may have lacked the ‘education’ to put my finger on it, I always knew intuitively that there was something unusual about the form of that movie.

Dane also advised me to change the title. “Nicolas Cage got there first. Nobody needs to be reminded of that movie.” For the uninitiated (which, in the case of this movie, will be most of you) he’s talking about The Weather Man. He’s probably right, but I don’t need to start worrying about that quite yet. When I was a kid I’d spend days dreaming up great titles for my first novel, avoiding the trickier business of actually writing one. Speaking of which, in the words of the late Clarence Boddicker, “Sayonara Robocop.” [stabs Robocop in the chest with metal rod].

This is a diagram of Syd Field’s Basic Film Paradigm – he presents this as the required format of any successful screenplay.

This has raised a number of questions in relation to WEATHERMAN.

Does the paradigm apply to short films? Does it scale from a 120-page screenplay down to one consisting of only 15-30 pages? Can the current draft be remodelled and transposed onto this paradigm? And, if so, is that what I should be doing? Is a short film adopting this paradigm even the right format for this idea? If not, what is?

In search of some answers I went for a drink recently with an old schoolfriend – Dan Outram – who has some experience working as a director of commercials and short films. I pitched him the concept as concisely as possible and he was quick to draw my attention to a number of issues, the foremost of which is that a screenwriter has to be constantly aware of what the audience doesn’t know. 15-30 pages (i.e. minutes) isn’t a long time to deliver a complete narrative, particularly one that is established in an unfamiliar social or cultural context.

Maybe that’s why I’ve decided to post the first few pages of the current draft here, for whomever finds it, and cares to read it – in the hope that any comments will help me gauge what you know; what you want to know; what you need to know. You don’t have to post them below – you can always email them to me. Anonymously, if you prefer