Here’s a link to a paper by the very aptly named  American academic JAMES CUTTING which discusses the differences between our perception of film shots and scenes, and how we perceive things in reality.

http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/cutting%20%280%29%20perceiving%20scenes%20in%20film%20and%20in%20the%20world.pdf

Yes! More mathematical approaches to screenplay writing! I’m not sure how practicable this is – I think if you were to try and impose these arcane scientific \ mathematical ideas to writing your screenplay first draft that you may well just disappear up your own fundament. BUT this is rather interesting nonetheless. And makes you think about how screenplays work – about the cuts within scenes and between scenes – the grammar of film or what Prof Cutting refers to as the ‘contract with the audience’.

It’s written in slightly impenetrable academic language but it’s full of fascinating insights into how film fiction and screenplays operate. For instance, it starts:-

‘Watching a film is different than observing the real world. In particular, scenes in film are framed and set off from a larger context, they are divided up into shots that are composed from different points of view, separated by instantaneous cuts, and with the camera performing other feats impossible for the unaided eye, such as zooming in. Real life has none of this. How is it that we come to accept the wholeness and integrity of film with multiple shots and cuts?’

A very interesting question but is this entirely true? How about, for instance,  when we go to sleep at night then wake up in the morning? That could be viewed just like a cut between scenes couldn’t it?

Here are a few more thought-provoking quotes from Cuttings’ article:-

‘Episodic memory, a central concern of cognitive science, is essentially the memory of scenes from our life.’

‘Why are we able to make sense out of two shots with no transition? Acceptability seems predicated, in part, on the physical differences between shots. Cuts become acceptable only when the general patterns of light in the two shots are sufficiently different…’

‘Among other things, continuity means keeping track of what is in each shot and making sure that the world that is projected on the screen appears coherent. However, it appears that we, as perceivers, are not that particular about such coherence.’

…and this quote from John Huston –

‘All the things we have laboriously learned to do with film, were already part of the physiological and psychological experience of man before film was invented… Move your eyes, quickly, from an object on one side of the room to an object on the other side. In a film you would use a cut. … in moving your head from one side … to the other, you briefly closed your eye.’

The section entitled, ‘How Cuts, Shots, and Narrative Knit Together a Film for a Perceiver’, is particularly interesting.

If you haven’t got the time or energy to read the whole thing,  here’s an article about Cutting’s work in New Scientist, which sums it up a bit more succinctly (but less interestingly) :-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527483.900-solved-the-mathematics-of-the-hollywood-blockbuster.html

Philip Shelley

Script-consultant

March 2010

FILM CRITICS

Seeing the recent critical pasting received by the film The Boys Are Back made me think about how much we all rely on film critics to inform us about what films we should and shouldn’t see – and how badly served we often are!

This is what I said about the film in my blog about the London Film Festival on Nov 6th last year: ‘a beautiful bit of story-telling,’…’ the observation of character and particularly poignant and hilarious moments in the family’s life is so well done. And writer Allan Cubitt, without, in my opinion, ever resorting to cheap sentiment, manages to wring every last drop of narrative tension from this deceptively slight story. Familiar in terms of subject matter – the tragic death of a loved partner – this is intelligent, accessible film story-telling at its best.’

Compare that to what some of the UK national newspaper critics had to say about it when it came out a few weeks ago, ‘an insufferably cutesy film about single parenthood,’… ‘this excruciatingly artificial and prettified film,’… ‘Not one single thing, for one single moment, looks real or sincere’,… ‘A phoney, sugary tale without substance’.

But all the above quotes are taken from British reviews. Interestingly some of the international reviews have been very different.
This from ‘The Age’ (Australia) – ‘this beautifully etched, deeply moving drama’, ‘Nothing in this finely honed film feels forced or conveniently sentimental.’

And this from the Hollywood Reporter:
‘Few films have so poignantly portrayed a father’s relationships with his sons as “The Boys Are Back,” a film by Scott Hicks that reminds you he once directed the luminescent “Shine.” For the first time since that magical feature debut, Hicks has invested heart and soul in a film project.’
‘Never does anything feel forced or contrived. Life, as this memoir reminds, can offer plenty of drama that need not abide by fictional formulas or genre conventions.’

Which all goes to prove what? Well, that you take your pick but, for god’s sake, don’t take any critic’s word as gospel unless they have proved over many examples that their taste concurs pretty much exactly with yours – and even this is no guarantee that this will continue to be the case.

But for me there’s something else here – and it’s that in the UK I don’t think we’re very well-served by our national film critics. Philip French may have reached Observer-instigated National Treasure status but to me he’s the worst of the bunch. Almost everyone of his film reviews needs a spoiler alert – he ALWAYS gives the story away! Such a large proportion of each of his reviews are spent regurgitating the plot so, regardless of whether he tells you anything interesting about a film, he’s pretty much always going to take away some of the pleasure of watching a good film – he never lets you enjoy the unexpected unfolding of a story. This seems to me just rank incompetence. Surely, not giving the story away is the most basic requirement of any film review? And most of the rest of the review is him showing off with everything he knows about previously-made, similar films (which is admittedly sometimes quite entertaining).

Here’s an example. And – just to warn you – if you haven’t seen NOWHERE BOY and want to see it, DON’T READ THIS!
PF’s NOWHERE BOY review http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/27/nowhere-boy review

The critical pasting received by The Boys Are Back reminded me how all those jaded critics watch films every day of their working lives; it’s not surprising, I suppose, that they’re a bit grumpy and mean-spirited.
A load of cynical 50+ middle class white guys sitting in a preview theatre at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday morning probably are pretty resistant to a film that works by connecting with your emotions as well as your intellect. Thinking about it like this, it makes you understand why heartfelt, committed emotional stories or comedies (pretty much any comedies) get short shrift from these jaundiced hacks – and makes you realise why more ‘esoteric’, ‘intellectual’ films like The White Ribbon get all the plaudits. Don’t get me wrong, I thought The White Ribbon was a really good film but it was intellectually rather than emotionally engaging. And I don’t think it deserved its incomparably better reviews than The Boys Are Back.

It reminds me too of the blanket critical response to The Wire. Now The Wire has many strengths but this whole cult of criticism seems to have grown up around it which I really react against, not least because, at times, I think The Wire is (deep breath) well a little bit….boring. You see, now you’re shocked – no-one dares say anything negative about The (mighty) Wire! In fact the whole cult of how wonderful US TV drama is compared to UK drama smacks to me of ‘the grass is always greener’. I’m sure if you just took the best of UK TV drama and filtered out all the stuff that hasn’t quite worked, it would look pretty damn good. And that’s what we get over here. We get all the stuff that’s already proved successful, not the stuff that has been canned after the pilot or the first season. In my book, the first series of Criminal Justice wasn’t just as good as most US TV drama, it was better. OK rant over…

Philip Shelley
Script-consultant, Feb 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/dec/01/research-tv-drama-csi

Here’s a link to an interesting article from The Guardian. Some boffins try to apply a scientific \ mathematical approach to script analysis. Interesting how they quite successfully boil down the plot of a CSI episode to 30 keywords(!) and allow writers to identify sub-conscious themes in their work.

It also reminded me of how I started to think about ‘Waking The Dead’ stories in a similar way as mathematical equations that needed solving! So – you have your cold case story (from the past), which is one story-line that runs through the 2 x 1 hours.
But you also need a story-line in the present (so it’s not all just retrospective backstory) – classically, another series of murders committed by the killer from the past to evade discovery.
So you have two parallel storylines that ultimately connect; and into this mix you have to throw other elements, for example: –
flashbacks (an essential characteristic of the show), and how you ‘motivate’ these flashbacks;
the issue of making sure your WTD heroes drive the story, while also creating compelling guest characters;
giving each of the regular investigator characters an investigative story strand that uses their particular specialist expertise;
and providing your protagonist – Boyd – with an antagonist who’s a match for him, the default end sequence being a long interview sequence between protagonist and antagonist punctuated by revelatory flashbacks.
Not forgetting your big turning point \ twist at the end of Hour 1 to hook audiences for Hour 2 the following evening!

Thinking about all this, it would probably would have been a good idea to give writers a chart that looked like a scientific diagram to illustrate it!

Philip Shelley
www.script-consultant.co.uk
Jan 20th 2010

London Film Festival – Studies in Narrative Structure

Last week I went to 4 very different films at this year’s LFF, and they proved very inspiring and creatively energising. They all made me think about different aspects of film drama and screenwriting.
For instance:-

Lo Spazio Bianco ‘The White Space’. An Italian film about a woman in her late thirties who, after a brief fling, becomes pregnant for the first time. The baby is born three months prematurely and the heart of the film covers the three month period in which the woman lives in a horrible limbo, visiting her tiny baby daughter in her hospital incubator every day, unable to touch her, the baby’s life in the balance. Viewed objectively the story is quite slight. There are few twists and turns but it’s a beautiful character study of a woman of a certain age at a huge moment in her life. The performances and script are excellent but what really grabbed me about this film was the way it was structured. Whether this was something that was done in post-production, or whether it was an original and integral part of the script, I don’t know. But what raised it above the ordinary were the bold cuts, the huge leaps back and forth across time in the story. So for instance, the film cut from the moment when the woman discovers she is pregnant to a scene in a hospital room where she is being gowned up, surrounded by medical staff (and as an audience at this point we’re asking – where are we now?) before she is led into the incubator room to see her baby for the first time, after the birth. Only later does the film go back and fill in the gaps in our knowledge of her birth. The effect of this juxtaposition of scenes is at first unsettling but ultimately hugely effective.
And then right near the end of the film, as the story reaches its climax, and the woman is walking back through the streets of Naples (and the city of Naples is a powerful element in the story) to the hospital to witness the moment when the breathing tubes are removed from the baby to see if she can breathe on her own, we cut from these shots of the woman walking alone in the present, to scenes of her walking alone in the streets in the past – and for the first time, right near the end of the film, we see her collapse, the moment when she went into premature labour and is then wheeled into hospital and told her baby has only a slim chance of survival. Cutting these two sequences together adds huge power to the story-telling and makes us want to know even more badly whether the baby survives or not.
There were so many examples like this in the film of non-linear story-telling adding hugely to the effectiveness of what might otherwise have been quite a simple story.

Blessed – an Australian film about a group of troubled youths in working-class Melbourne. Again this was a really interesting, enjoyable if bleak film made even more interesting by its structural originality. The story is told in two halves, entitled ‘The Children’ and ‘The Mothers’. The first half is told from the POV of an unconnected group of troubled teenagers. The film cuts between several different, unconnected stories. Then in the second half we revisit the same stories all told from the POV of the teenagers’ mothers. And we discover several unexpected connections between the characters from different stories, as some of the stories start to come together.
Structurally, particularly in the first half, this is reminiscent of Short Cuts or Crash and keeping the stories separate for so long only makes the eventual surprising links between them all the more satisfying from an audience POV.

Finally two films that are both about families in crisis (how many films that phrase covers!) the UK \ Australian co-pro The Boys Are Back; and a Brazilian film A Deriva (Adrift) which starred French actor Vincent Cassel. Both films are beautifully written, character-driven in the best way. Of the two films, Adrift is more claustrophobic and low-key – an intense study of a family break-up, over the course of a summer by the attractive Brazilian seaside, as seen through the eyes of the eldest daughter of the family, a beautiful 14 year old who, while observing her parents’ infidelities and break-up, is beginning to discover boys and relationships for herself. It’s this approach to the story – seeing it through the eyes of a 14 year old girl that really raises this film to a different level.
The Boys Are Back is structured more conventionally – the story is told from the POV of the Clive Owen \ protagonist character and is generally linear. Based on Simon Carr’s memoir, this is just a beautiful bit of story-telling about a complicated family situation (big understatement), a middle-aged man whose wife dies, leaving him to bring up his two sons by different mothers. The observation of character and particularly poignant and hilarious moments in the family’s life is so well done. And writer Allan Cubitt, without, in my opinion, ever resorting to cheap sentiment, manages to wring every last drop of narrative tension from this deceptively slight story. Familiar in terms of subject matter – the tragic death of a loved partner – this is intelligent, accessible film story-telling at its best.

Philip Shelley
www.script-consultant.co.uk
Nov 6th 2009

DAMIAN WAYLING INTERVIEW

Damian is a writer whom I first met when he was on the Carlton new writers course some years ago. It was clear then that he had real talent – a highly original, distinctive voice, and strong story-telling instinct. He has gone on to have the success his talents and dedication deserve and here are his thoughts on various matters connected to screenwriting…

Why did you want to write for the screen originally? What films \ TV shows inspired you?

I wanted to write for the screen because… I’m not sure I know. I loved the dialogue heavy films of Billy Wilder, all those sharp pulp-noir movies, and Preston Sturges and Ben Hecht screwball comedies – so I suppose I wanted to write that kind of crackling dialogue delivered by smart people. I still do, but now I also know that the most powerful moments in movies usually have no dialogue.

How did you get into the TV drama business?

By degrees. I worked as a graphic designer doing record sleeves for pop bands before getting a job working on a TV show. The show was Network 7 – a youth current-affairs show produced by Janet Street-Porter. Lots of people in TV started there. One of them, Eric Harwood, formed a documentary company and my first writing work was on programme proposals for him. Then he was surprised to find himself a producer on a TV drama for Channel Television. It was set on Jersey – lots of kids arrive and get jobs for the summer. The scripts were by a very experienced Coronation Street writer and were very bad. Lots of Famous Five style plotting. Eric knew I was ‘trying to write’ and asked me to help him rewrite them. We locked ourselves in a room and produced six half-hours in about three weeks. The Exec Producer weighed them in his hand and said ‘yeah, they feel about right’. What we wrote got shot, and that’s the way I thought it went. It’s never happened that way since. One of the cast was Tom Ward in his first role. I’m currently writing for him on Silent Witness.
After that I found an agent, who I still have. There were a number of false starts on shows like Casualty and Peak Practice before I finally got my first screen credit on The Bill.

What sort of shows have you worked on?

Lots of crime shows – The Bill, Waking The Dead, Trial & Retribution, Silent Witness. I suppose you get known for something and get approached for more of the same. But that’s ok, crime shows are not really about crime they’re about the things that led to the crime: love, hate, revenge, fear, lust, greed – all the universals.

What have been your most enjoyable shows to work on and why?

More recently I’ve done more non-crime scripts. One was for a BBC series that was about to be made when the US co-production money fell away. It’s a contemporary remake of Vanity Fair. Nobody gets murdered and it was a pleasure to write. It was a semi-adaptation and there was always the book to lean on when things got tricky. I hope it will get made. Another is Garrow’s Law – an 18th century legal drama. It’s ‘law’ rather than ‘crime’ and the legal and period language was a pleasure to play with. The story was based on an actual treason trial and there were hundreds of pages of transcript to read. I think I managed to do it justice, fit in a B story and keep the love interest going – all in a fifty-seven minute script!

What scripts are you proudest of and why?

The Garrow’s law script came out pretty well. There were three writers on the series and we were all cautioned by a very good script executive, Hilary Norrish, to be careful not to write ‘period drama scenes’. An excellent warning.
I also developed a project some time ago with a producer who has since become a friend. The notion was ‘the English MASH’ set in 1940 when it seemed inevitable that German troops would sweep across the Channel. Lots of the country houses of England were requisitioned and turned into Emergency Medical Services Hospitals. The lady of the house would look after the interests of the nursing staff, the army would run the place and between them treat the flow of wounded.
It’s a period that’s always interested me and I did a lot reading before sitting down to write a pilot episode. It came out very well and it always gets a very positive response when it’s sent out as a writing sample. Nobody’s yet done anything so rash as say they want to make the series!

What have you been working on most recently and what are you working on next?

Currently writing for Silent Witness. It’s a death in custody story and has a go at the IPCC. After that I have to write a draft of a film script that I seem to have been working on since I was a teenager. It’s a revenge thriller with a backstory set twenty years ago. It’s been picked up more times than Amy Winehouse. I’m swapping lots of emails with the producers about the ending, but it’s a great story and the script is in the best shape it’s ever been – so I will deliver the best draft I can and they’ll go out and try and sell it.
Apart from that I’m trying to get ‘a number of original projects’ made.

What advice would you have for budding writers starting out in the business now?

Be patient, but not too patient. Remember you’re involved in a trade – you’re trading what you can do – write – for what the producer has – money. That should put you on an equal footing. Don’t walk away from a script meeting with a story you’re not excited by. Don’t assume your script editor is either always right or always wrong.

Is it important to have a good agent? What qualities should you look for in an agent?

Yes it is, but the problem is defining ‘good’. I only have experience of my agent, who is terrific, and stories from other writers about theirs. I’m with a relatively small agency and quite happy about that. I would worry about getting lost in the list in some of the bigger outfits.

What qualities do you need to succeed as a writer in TV drama?

Hmmm. An absence of preciousness about your scripts is a good start. Build them with love and care, but be prepared to rebuild them – a lot.
An ability to empathise with all the characters in your stories – even, possibly especially, the bad guys, losers and monsters.
I know some very sociable people who are successful screenwriters, but not many. My appetite for socialising is satisfied fairly easily. Which is just as well because the job involves spending long hours in your own company. I envy writing teams, but don’t think I could make that work.
If you have curiosity you’ll find story possibilities in lots of places.
You need persistence in the face of apparently irrational and ill-considered rejection.
An enthusiasm for watching good TV drama.
Some talent…

Philip Shelley
script-consultant.co.uk
Oct 7th 2009

Just a quick one to recommend ( a bit late in the day) the current BBC series ‘The Street’. For me, these shows are object lessons in top-quality dramatic story-telling. The first story in particular, featuring a stand-off between the excellent Bob Hoskins & Liam Cunningham, was dramatic screenwriting at its best. Using a highly familiar ( see High Noon) storyline, this was nevertheless fresh, immediate and compelling, with some wonderful character moments.

But all the episodes so far have taken fascinating – even if familiar – set-ups and spun powerful stories from them. Each story has a sense of dramatic inevitability but the writers make each scene count – this is lean, economical writing and studying what makes these stories work will teach you a lot.

Two really interesting articles, one recent, one not so recent.

Firstly, an excellent article by US screenwriter SHANE BLACK from last week’s Guardian, with tips on how to write an action movie – although you could adapt the principles to any genre of screenwriting.

And Nicolas Shindler’s 2002 Huw Wheldon lecture about story-telling in TV drama.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/22/shane-black-12-rounds

http://www.redproductioncompany.com/aboutus.asp?menuid=8

Philip Shelley

www.script-consultant.co.uk

www.script-consultant.co.uk has just passed its first anniversary and I thought I’d briefly reflect on the first year.

Above all, it’s been a lot of fun. Generally speaking I’ve read a huge variety of scripts in both subject matter and style and I’ve been really inspired by the energy and ambition of so many screenwriters in the UK and around the world. While most of the scripts I’ve read have been from UK-based writers I’ve received projects from as far-flung places as Finland, Singapore, the US and Nigeria (more of which later).

The overall standard has been remarkably high. In some ways this is quite depressing – I’ve read a lot of scripts by writers who by rights should be getting paid work in the UK TV & film industry but haven’t cracked it yet – but also quite encouraging. And it has only confirmed for me one of my main reasons for setting up the site – to help these writers get a foot in the door by using my contacts on their behalf.

It’s a response to the fact that there are just so few ways into the industry for new screenwriting voices at the moment. The BBC Writers Academy stands out as a sole beacon of hope. Apart from this, there is the BBC Writers Room, the annual Red Planet prize, the Script Factory – all of which are excellent. But none of the broadcasters (with the obvious exception of the BBC) or major independent production companies have taken up the mantle of running a course to find and train the script-writers of the future, as Carlton used to do before it was swallowed whole by Granada. There really should be several of these courses running annually. Apart from anything else, as the BBC have discovered, they make economic sense. It’s one of my aims over the next year to initiate and run one of these courses alongside the work of the website.

Over the past few months I’ve put several writers in touch with script editors, producers(mainly at the BBC) and agents, and received a lot of very positive feedback and I’m sure sooner rather than later some of these link-ups will result in script commissions and further work.

The best example of the website working as it should has been the opportunity to match up one of the most promising writers I have met through the site, and a London-based Nigerian TV producer who is currently working on a new 26 x 1 hour drama series for Nigerian network TV. This is an ongoing project, but this producer now wants the writer to work on polishing rewriting this series prior to it going into production in the summer. This is a fantastic (and hopefully lucrative) opportunity for the writer, but has also allowed the producer to access new writing talent he would otherwise not have known about.

This is the sort of thing I hope the website can get more and more involved in over the next year.

Best wishes & Happy Writing!

Philip Shelley

Some more recommended books about screen-writing that may be of interest:-

The Pitch by Eileen Quinn & Judy Counihan
As far as I’m aware the only UK book specifically about pitching, treatments etc, and by people who work in the industry and know from personal experience what works and what doesn’t.

Conversations With My Agent by Rob Long
Gives a really good insight into the working life of a successful US writer. And it’s very funny.

Bambi vs. Godzilla : On the Nature, Purpose & Practice of the Movie Business by David Mamet.
A good section on ‘the screenplay’ – also ‘technique’, ‘genre’ and other interesting insights.

Monster : Living Off the Big Screen by John Gregory Dunne.
A fascinating insight into the work of a US screenwriter

Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee
As well as the screenplay, the book contains Lee’s journal about the writing and making of the film.

Going Mad In Hollywood by David Sherwin.
Autobiography by the writer of ‘If’ and ‘O, Lucky Man!’

Save The Cat! By Blake Snyder
A lot of this book did nothing for me – far too much structure that came across as formula, and a lot of the movies he references – eg Aladdin – don’t really inspire.

But as with all these books it’s a question of cherry-picking – there are some gems in there if you look hard enough. In this book it’s the end section – his insights on various ‘rules’ of screenwriting that he’s formulated stumbled upon in his years as a screenwriter.

Regards

Philip Shelley

script-consultant.co.uk

There are a whole host of screenwriting books on the market and their usefulness (or not) to writers is an interesting question.

There’s undoubtedly a place for the best of these books but I think it’s dangerous to view any of them as gospel – better to cherry-pick the best from each, use them to re-energise and inspire your work as a writer rather than use them as step-by-step manuals.

As a script editor, I think some of the books are in fact far more useful to us on the other side of the fence than to writers themselves. They often provide a really useful framework for analysing and improving scripts – but trying to write a first draft to a whole set of prescribed plot points, act breaks and turning points is bound to sap some of the creative energy and turn the process into something more like grappling with a mathematical equation. And the likelihood is, once you’re satisfied you’ve hit all the requisite plot points, what you’ll be left with is something deeply unspontaneous.

Here’s a list of some of my favourite screenwriting books in no particular order:-

On Directing by David Mamet

Yes it’s called On Directing but it actually has some of the best insights of any book into the craft of screenwriting, particularly about telling stories through the cuts between scenes.

Adventures In The Screen Trade by William Goldman – I was reminded of this by the South Bank Show on Goldman on Sunday night (26-4-09). More autobiography than screenwriting manual but packed full of good stuff nonetheless.

Image, Sound & Story by Cherry Potter; particularly Part Three: ‘The Creative Process and telling Your Own Stories’. There’s a really good section in here on ‘Free-writing’ – the other side of the process from the formulaic, structure-heavy ‘rules’ in some of the (less good) US screenwriting books.

Story by Robert McKee. Not as good as listening to the man himself – his three day talk is a brilliant performance – but there are a lot of really perceptive, fascinating ideas here. Also a lot of stuff you probably won’t agree with…

Screenwriting: The Art, Craft & Business of Film & Television Writing by Richard Walter.

Quite a basic introduction to screenwriting technique but very good nonetheless.

Story & Character : Interviews with Brtish Screenwriters. Edited by Alistair Owen.

There are many books consisting of interviews with screenwriters and this is as good as any.

- – -

Part 2 of this blog on screenwriting books TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…

In the meantime it would be great to hear from all you screenwriters out there about:-
whether you think screenwriting books serve a purpose, how they can be best be used to help your own writing processes and…
which other screenwriting books you would recommend to your fellow-writers.

Philip Shelley
www.script-consultant.co.uk