New Start

Howdy campers....Maybe I should stop saying that. I sound like a serious comedian. Or maybe that would be a "serious" comedian, with all of the contradictions. But then maybe that will help me write movies filled with contradictions.

Anyway I finally stopped using the comma after "Anyway." Well that's not what I meant. I guess that's the conflict with writing for speech.

This post is about our latest start. Book that is. Well I mean I'm reading a new book. A highly recommended piece by Judith "I hope I remember if it's "o" or "i" Westin: The Film Director's Intuition."

It does make it easier to write dialog if you study how directors deal with cinema.

A little tip: Go to Amazon and do searches on screenwriting, cinema, Seger, and film theory. There is a plethora of info just waiting to be a sound or visual image.

Oh yeah,

Keep writing as writing is the revealing of the soul.

Elements vs. Plot - Examination of the Time Image

Howdy campers, it's time for yet another piece about the thing we call cinema. I've got a few days off and I'm letting my over-worked brain cool down, but I love the philosophy of cinema. It's voice ever-reaching; it's thoughts transcendental; it's effects infinite.

I was recently reading a post by Julie Gray over at The Rouge Wave about the glut of movies currently. One thing led to another and voila I realized why SPOOF movies are so popular these days. It's because as viewers see more and more spectacle, drama and hilarity, plot becomes less important and elements (character traits - The Joker; situational comedy - Tropic Thunder; recognizable occurrences - Juno, Knocked Up; and character props - Hancock) become the way to go.

Of course, as Disaster Movie, etc showed you have to have an "abstract coherence" as just a bunch of jokes is what you get in the average "non-spoof" (though I believe every movie is a spoof (Aristotle might call it imitation) on something - sometimes just not meant to be funny).

It gets back to something is actually in the Bible; there's nothing new under the sun. This is apparent in cinema with the growth of the remake market lately. Writers are looking for the clever hook about the x who does f(x) with complications leading to f'(x) - sorry for the algebra, but people just want a couple of good scenes in between stuff that leads up to them. Clever is only for dialog. It allows you to reveal character in reaction to a joke; in a voicing of learning or understanding; in approaching the opposite sex; in responding to the opposite sex, a friend, a mentor, a sibling or a colleague.

Juno has to be the worst story for "the Hollywood Style" of filmmaking. Do you threaten the baby, reveal some horrible adoptive parent secret, have an adoption agency scandal? No, you have a snarky teen who gets knocked up by a nerd, goes through to full term and gives up the baby, albeit only to one parent.

It was those dialog elements along with recognizable banality. The struggling couple, the naive, yet well-meaning parents, the comic relief BFF and a wealth of pregnancy jokes. Not to mention the circular path of the two protags.

Robert De Niro once said he would be in any movie with three good scenes and no bad ones, which I believe defines perhaps a low but the maximum you really need to aim for to make a film commercially well-received. Commercial is what people want to see not what is popular with the studios. People don't know what they want to see. One day it's The Dark Knight, the next it's Mamma Mia.

I watched Martian Child with John Cusack last night and it was missing certain elements that made it hard to recommend. It didn't properly relate back story, it fumbled the development of the psychosis by making the boy seem intelligent enough to know better; it presented conundrums that were superficially explored; the child had no real back story because the contrast of his childhood missed. It coincidentally had him as a writer who writes science fiction with an adoptee who pretends to be from Mars. There were just too many misplaced scenes.

SO you may say what does this have do with a Time Image? Well, the time image is an abstract concept defined by a succession of frame stat encapsulate time and subjugate movement. A simple example is showing two cars in a chase. It's an immediately recognizable passage of time as we switch from car to car, showing firing and ducking, swerving and bullet holes.

Tracking shots are other examples of the time image as we are concerned with the "combination of instants" rather than the instants themselves. In the pre-sound days, emotion was displayed specifically with abrupt hand gestures and varying levels of body language to emphasize the dialog sections. Close ups were instrumental in relaying emotion without speech, but now the close up has become a definition of time as it represents a progression of events rather than an instant of reaction.

For example, many film makers employ a technique whereby reaction shots are zooms rather than static cuts. This shows the realization rather than the emotion, which is more effective. Camera angles can also define the time image through the use of montage with several static cameras. You'll see this over done n action movies where we see the punch three times from different angles, sound fx and all.

Everything in a film should be about the relation of time to image. That's why the best movies don't show every movement but only those that represent time. For instance, you won't see the family enter the van in Little Miss Sunshine or you don't see Batman jump behind the wheel of the Batmobile, start it and pull out.

This is what good cutting and multiple camera angles does. It enables you to have a shorter time in your chase without missing the sections of it. A good example is the chase in Hot Fuzz, where they go back and forth between cars, which enables you to separate sections so you can be on a city road in one segment and a country road in another. The Dark Knight also has a well crafted chase.

Another version of the time image is the memory image. Memory images merely use quick images to establish location or time of day. Memory images are what allows the sound to be turned down and you can still understand what's going on.

The time image is also the basis of the "cinema of the seer." Where earlier films used sensory-motor schema which consisted of a perception image, an affection-image and an action-image (many others in between). This is a progression of a shot where a movement signifies each image.

The use of the time image is also the basis for the term "auteur," which describes the director as the storyteller rather than the screenwriter. Directors such as Hawks, Welles, Ford followed the practice along with most popular foreign directors such as Resnais, Godard, Eisenstein. That's why I believe every screenwriter should study directing as it makes it easier to determine what will work and what won't.

In mt ravels I came across perhaps the best shot I've ever seen. It was bound in time and made the movements into a whole rather than parts. The scene was in Citizen Kane when Kane was a child. He was outside a window and his mother and uncle I believe were discussing his future. The camera pans backwards away from the window framing them all in the shot as they move through the room. It comes to rest in the kitchen where mother has sat down at the table. The beauty of the shot is that it's one fluid move. Welles beautifully hides the track the camera is on by cutting off the shot below the ceiling of the room. Hitchcock does something similar in Frenzy with the famous scene that moves backwards out of the building and across the street.

These shots clearly denote the use of time rather than movement. It's also why many of the greatest films take place over years and not days as time subjugates growth and change rather than actions. Great films also tend to show an actual end rather than the end of a conflict. Take Silence of the Lambs, it doesn't end with Clarice killing Buffalo Bill and ending the case, it ends with her truly coming to grips with both her childhood and Hannibal Lector's fascination with her. In the beginning we could see her being terrified of that phone call, but in the end she has grown enough to understand he wasn't a threat to her.

I think that's the difference between a $40M box office and a $140M box office. It's not resolution of conflict but a picture of growth. Juno could easily have had birth complications or Clarice could have been at the other house. These both would have changed the tone and purpose of the movies. Purpose is perhaps what makes filmmakers great. There are no new stories; nothing people haven't seen, or at least heard of.

Making yourself stand out by remembering the picture before the plot is what writers should be striving for. Plot stems directly from character so memorable characters will produce memorable (interesting conflict) moments. Memory images make up these pictures. Memories of what just happened in the film and\or what people are cognizant of or averse to.

Aristotle called plot the "representation of truth." Character is the representation of choice while thought is considered to be the representation of character. Interestingly enough some call new-wave cinema the "power of the false." Meaning that it's all made up so it can go places where real life can't. Thus how "flying monkeys" work in the Wizard of Oz or how invaders snatch bodies. It doesn't actually defy logic but it can twist it to fit the circumstances. As an example, Live Free or Die Hard should have seen McClane in traction after just a few of the stunts, but we can believe he can take it by showing him limp or grimace or bleed. The memory of previous Die Hards makes it less of a stretch though the stunts became more demanding and McClane got older.

Curiously, early Greek theater was filled with more treachery and deceit than sex though it touched on sexuality and sensuality in taboo formats. The reason why sex doesn't work well for cinema o the seer is because sex can only be equated as a movement image and not a time image unless we use rapid cutting of facial expressions and use of the hands. This section was admittedly a last-minute addition as I finally found Hitchcock's opinion about sex in cinema (I wasn't really looking for it). In his opinion, he would not cast a "Marilyn Monroe" as she, as he puts it - "wears her sex like an amulet." He would rather have it under the surface to be discovered which explains why he used Tippy Hedron types.

Well, that's it for this installment of the Time Image. Join us next time as we explore this paradigm even further.

Google Chrome

Howdy folks, I know this isn't a screenwriting post but I've been using Google's new browser for about 10 minutes now and I have to say they have a great beta here. It should kick IE and FF in the ass. It has worked with sites that haven't worked in one browser or the other.
It seems pretty stable and is a fast renderer. Unlike IE or FF where if you get a site that is rendered incorrectly the refresh won't fix it but with Chrome I had a site load incorrectly hit refresh and it rendered correctly. I'd say that MS shouldn't have tried to horn in on the Internet.
Now IE's share is goig to experience real problems. I can say to anyone still using Netscape (I held out until I had to install Windows on 100s of test machines) you WILL love this. It's just a beta but is so far very stable.
Kudos to the Google browser team.

Aristotle’s Poetics – Part 1

Howdy campers. It's that time again. Yes, time for a new post. I know I should be finishing my comedy but writing comedy seems to be a little harder in terms of length(funny exchanges only get you so much "black space" - damn that punch line).
Anyway, as the title says, we're going to do an intro to The Poetics, perhaps the "granddaddy" of all screenwriting tomes. Written several THOUSAND years ago, its concepts of plot, character and dialog are still valid and perhaps the basis of all later theorems, whether philosophical, scientific or even artistic.

We will use the translated text and it will be in italics.

I was introduced to the Poetics recently in my screenwriting group. It's headed by this year's winner of the Sundance Lab, Steven Arvanites. We had a very inexpensive visit by Prof. Gordon Farrell of the Tisch School and many others.

The Poetics is not a book in the regular sense of the word in that it is compiled from lecture notes from Aristotle as there were no texts that survived. It is in-depth in terms of what he spoke of though. Depending upon the translation, it can be rather difficult to read as he analyzes the works of early Greek poets and dramatists and uses words that don't have the same meaning as now.

As an example, "imitation" in his time meant "a genuine representation" but now it means "a false representation." Contextually, this becomes apparent but the use of rhythmic speech is not as commonplace so words like "iambic pentameter" or "dithyrambic hexameter" are more so the domain of poets.

In his teachings he advocated that all stories must have a beginning, middle and end. But this is not in direct correlation to what evolved into the current three act structure. To Aristotle, this was time based.

Now, according to our definition Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.

The substance of his theories though encompasses the gamut of cinematic representation - albeit then in stage form. His theories on Tragedy (qualitative) are the basis of the 3 Act structure currently in use - but ironically that was his definition of plot(qualitative) and not content(quantitative). His content involved four linear concepts.

Prologue, Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last being divided into Parode and Stasimon. The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the Parode of the Chorus. The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy which is between complete choric songs. The Exode is that entire part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the Choric part the Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is a Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors. The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole have been already mentioned. The quantitative parts- the separate parts into which it is divided- are here enumerated.



Well, that's it for Part 1. We actually tried to post from Word but Blogger doesn't use the same <> syntax. Fricking JavaScript.

The Flexible 4 Act Structure

Howdy campers, don't forget your booties cause it's cold... uhh wait, that's not what I meant. I guess I write too much while reading.

Anyway, today's topic was inspired by our good friend UNK.
He is a stickler for using a 4 Act structure rather than traversing that long second act in the 3 Act structure. I whole-heartedly agree.

Especially since the 2nd Act midpoint is always desirable. I like to look at the movie(script - but we are writing movies) from the end to the beginning and back so that I can map points of interest(conflict - whether it's setup, build up or payoff) to the desired ending. This actually helps maintain tone and theme, I find.

To help me look at it abstractly, I borrowed from The Hero's Journey to develop a more flexible course through the circle (nearly all movies are circular arcs in that the hero usually ends up at or near where he started in the regular world). Of course the negative arc doesn't, though (Leaving Las Vegas).

Rather than using four sections, I use 8 so that you have more chances for change, disruption, conflict and resolution and also because this abstraction doesn't tie you to page numbers.

The first section is "At Home or Work," which is where every story starts. Sometimes this is as simple as a character preparing for her day or rescuing someone from the bad guy or hell even going to sleep after a hard day's work. This is the chance to START to intro your main characters (the order isn't as important as the reason for it). I say start because giving too much info too quickly will come out on-the-nose and expository. It's best, in my opinion to show a few images that show mind-set or social status and move on to the "problem at hand."

As you can see, it doesn't start at 0 degrees because this is reserved for the hero and you may intro the villain first. Sometimes, it increases the tension to imagine who will stand up to "Villain X who is so heartless and cruel." This section more so establishes location, genre, etc. rather than in-depth personality traits(that should come with the various conflicts). Some stories don't have an actual McGuffin so the goal is an accomplishment rather than a possession(graduate Cum Laude, break the hot dog eating record, get married before next week, etc.)


The next section is "Start Of Decision." This section usually begins the trip to the "new world of conflict" and includes the incident which moves the hero to take on the challenge or not. By this point, you have intro'd what the villain wants and it should be perfectly juxtaposed to what the hero wants(graduate Cum Laude, break the hot dog eating record, get married before next week). Of course those are simplified cases but they speak to the abstract notion of "implied conflict." You aren't the only student, hot dog eater or person desirous of marriage). Here we really expand on the hero's personality and show the contrast between their perspective allies\enemies. The Act 2 incident will be what cements the relationships whether they be for the better or the worse and should occur in this section.


The next section is "Meeting Allies and Discovering Enemies." This is where the rubber hits the road so to speak and the hero is truly in the midst of conflict. After the answer of the call, those who want to help and those who want to hinder are brought into view. Depending on the genre and story they could be peers, underlings, or just intimate with the hero or villain. Of course, the McGuffin becomes the total reason for everyone's existence by this point, no matter what it is. This section takes you around the halfway point as everyone jockeys for position and feels out their adversaries. Once again this flexible structure means that things aren't exact time-wise as scenes\sequences take as long as they take.

This section gets us even closer to the inner-desires and conflicts of the hero and villain and their supporting cast. Again, never give to much too fast. Let it happen in conflict. It may never be relevant that the hero is afraid of dogs or cheated with his best friend's wife while drunk. I guess that's an extension of it's "on the page" that I'd call it's "in the story."

As an example, if a story takes place on a boat, the hero should be unable to swim. Or if it takes place in the desert, the hero should have trouble in the sun, etc. Let the story find the flaws rather than developing them in what I think is a vacuum. Any back story is well-placed here but again, be careful as you don't want to tell whole stories. So if the hero is afraid of dogs, have them walk by one that startles them or even tries to sniff them.

Ex: Indy falls into the pit near Marion. The hissing rises with him as he grabs is torch. His eyes light in horror as the moving ground reveals itself.

Indy
Not snakes. God, anything but snakes.

I had to use that example with the Darabont Indy 4 script making waves lately.

What I like to do with back story is to use a dream. That way you can be "abstract" and very visual without the usual, "When I was young" technique.


But I digress. The next section is called "In the thick of things" and carries through Act 2 into Act 3. This section brings most of the twists, big reveals, and sets up the final Act. More enemies reveal themselves in the build-up from their intro. This section is where sub-plots and story threads are concluded (depending upon their "closeness" to the goals of the hero) The lead supporting character usually continues their story\arc beyond this point, but underlings get wacked here A LOT. Never to return.

By a lot I mean, multiple underlings, be they on the good guy's side or the bad guy's. The level of their "destruction" is also story and genre-dependent though as poignant dramas don't work well with murders just as action movies don't have people flunk out of school(unless it's a "SEAL" movie).
This section also elevates the conflict between the main characters and will contain the 2nd Act midpoint so used in 3 Act structure.


The next section is called "Give up or go on" and occurs near the end of Act 3. It's when the hero is becoming weary of the fight after others are "wacked" out of the story and the villain just keeps coming. You can really show what your hero is made of here as this is also a good time for a "duplicitous reveal" or double-cross if you will. You are grinding closer towards the McGuffin and the villain usually gets it by this point but can't manipulate it without the help of the hero. Kidnappings or threats to those close to the hero usually happen here as the desperation of the villain becomes greater. "Why didn't she give up?" syndrome. The hero normally will have to accomplish some feat to retrieve the McGuffin and\or ensure the safety of those closest to her. Again, this is story and genre dependent and has no exact structure, just an abstract idea. (If you really want abstract read "Deleuze on Cinema")

The next section is called "Bleak as night" and usually occurs when the hero has the most personally destructive thing happen to them. Their HQ is bombed; their dog is killed; they get kidnapped, etc. and it is the point where we all think the hero is a psycho for enduring all of this (you could have given up in the other section), but this is also where we find out why this person is a hero. They handle this in stride, though obviously their heart is heavy.


The last section is called "The final battle" and usually happens because fo the kidnapping, dead dog, etc. The hero's back is against the wall and they usually "flip out" becoming for a moment like the villain and doing something against their code. This is also the final straw for the villain and the villain's last chance to win the McGuffin. This section can be a surprise in terms of who the real villain is or it can just be the natural progression of the struggle. Thrillers pull the twist, action and comedy usually doesn't and drama can go either way.

Here we determine once and for all who gets the McGuffin and who is the last person to be wacked. This is usually the villain but movies like "No Country" break the mold (OK it's not really a mold, more like a "mold concept."). This is also the point where everything in the hero's arsenal is required as many times it's tiered (in the vein of Game of Death) where the hero has to get by the last of the underlings (like a lot of video games) before confronting the lead villain. Sometimes they must face both at once. Again this will be story\genre-dependent and to some extent character-dependent. Back to the flaws, it takes place on a boat when the hero can't swim. There are dogs everywhere. It's really cold or too hot. Perhaps an old friend who was turned long ago is the last underling. It's up to you. BE CREATIVE.

The battle with the villain must have more at stake than any other, so that's why I write from the end so that I don't go above the ending in the beginning or middle. Continuity is a bitch.

That brings us to the EIGHTH and final section, "The return to life at home." This is just when the hero settles back into her routine to wait for her next challenge or just to continue living life, having retrieved the McGuffin, protected those closest and vanquished the villain. This is the place where you set up a continuing franchise or just a sequel. You can have some mysterious stranger show up with some startling info or have something happen in the home life.

An example is the ending of Iron Man where Nick fury mentions the Avengers. A lot of franchises rely on standalone stories but the ending of Matrix Reloaded made certain everyone would see the Revolutions. In other words, leave a string untied or a thread hanging. Stand alone features should realistically tie up all loose ends and close out all threads.

Anyway, that's our description of the 4 Act flexible structure. If anything the key is don't count pages count events, emotions and images. Most viewers don't realize "structure" in the movie, they just expect certain things to happen at certain times. Though by that I mean in relation to other events.

Example: The killer appears in the mirror, we expect a murder. Or the villain can't get the McGuffin to work, he kidnaps the hero.

This of course all goes to the duree and the Six Movement Images which imply that all images should relate to all others and all actions should be extensions of others.

Wow, this is fun. I wish I had decided to do this years ago. It's truly invigorating to be able to use everything I've noticed in my travels.

So remember
Keep Writing as Writing is the Revealing of the Soul

Six Images of Dissemination

Thoughts are faster than the structure of typing.

Great News for a Tired Writer

Yes, after a serious funk and being at the end of my rope (fortunately perhaps, I'm the homicidal type), some really good news came this weekend. I actually got involved with a writers group a few months ago and last weekend, we did a 5 page script read of my well underway Political Thriller.

Everyone loved it. Out of the 10 or more read, mine got the best feedback on pacing, dialogue, white space and readability. I guess my crazed PhD program is working pretty well. I managed to even keep my job.

Also, I have THREE, count em, THREE ProdCos waiting on scripts, so my schedule seems to be good. My goal is to start a movie this year, whether it be an indie or a sale or an assignment.

I found out about a federal program (Section 181 of the Jobs Creation Act of 2004) that allows private investors to write off 100% of their investment as the money is spent. I'm thinking about finding some investors and filming a horror film.

I may even start blogging again. WooHoo!

An Image of a Moment

Howdy writers,
We've been away in the library, but we're back with a look at the philosophy of Henri Bergson through the analysis and theorems of Gilles Deleuze.

What does that title mean? Well, Bergson defines what he calls the duree, which is the infinitely divided slice of time, dependent on that before it and after but existing as its own qualifiable instant.

With any cinematic attempt, small moments can be large parts of a movie. The slow step towards a door, the slight smile of acceptance, or the look of fear at an encounter with the unknown. All of these moments add up to create a chronological series that isn't dependent upon the measure of time but the measure of the passage of time.

This is seen in movies like Memento which happens backwards or Pulp Fiction which happens out of order. It can also be seen in films where the passage of time is greater than the film length - which is basically every movie. Different films and creators handle time differently as different stories may compress or expand time by years or hours.

Anyway, that's a taste of duree. I'll post more when I finish the books.

A Countenance Worthwhile - Neo-Real Character Studies

As soon as we get around to it.

The Saga of the Anti-Hero

Howdy fellow writers,
We're back because of the holiday. I thought I would do a new post on directors next but an interesting topic came up in a post from UNK
which talks about a definition of different story scenarios.

It was an interesting list of contradictory goals and immediately made me think of "anti-heroes." You know the guy who is forced to do something he wouldn't normally do to "save the day" as it were.

This is a very difficult character to write as you have to be careful to not put the "hero" in the position of violating that covenant at the wrong time, nor fulfilling the covenant at the wrong time.

The anti-hero though can be a very exciting character as he will not do the expected but the unexpected; such as torturing a villain or shooting a running criminal in the leg rather than chase.

These characters are also interesting as they can be "non-heroes" like the hacker who has to commit a crime to get his daughter away from a porn star mother or a hitman who has to save his target. Amazingly, I picked two stories from the same author, Skip Woods. The films are Swordfish and Hitman, neither of which were heralded though Swordfish had a pretty good BO run.


I, though, would rather have the quintessential hero; the family man who is used to trouble but takes on the job because he has to protect those he loves and what he believes in. He doesn't turn down the call. Sorry Mr McKee. I disagree. Sure you can add a few minutes of regret and soul-searching but you are still limited to how you actually construct the intro and the inciting incident.

You're stuck with the same old speeches as to why the hero won't do it at first. This type of hero is limited to the military or some derivative as the person can choose to refuse, so their life is not in danger.

If you look at perhaps the most famous modern hero, John McClane, he can never turn down the call as it is his job. In history there was one hero that comes to mind who does at first turn dwn the call and that's Wyatt Earp. But looking at the back story, it's clear that he is in the same position as the recent "Rambo" where he was "retired" from the hero game and doesn't want to get involved.