The Immmediacy of Theatre

Earlier this year I produced “The Importance of Being Earnest” as a co-production with my own and a neighbouring theatre group. It was great fun and a great success – every single performance sold out, as did the dress rehearsals which we opened to the public due to demand for tickets. Last night, cast & crew and production team gathered to watch the DVD of one of the performances.

Something funny happened then. The opening scene has the two would-be Earnests gabbing away at high speed – such speed, indeed, that some audience members said they could not understand properly. But when we watched this opening scene on DVD, our director remarked, “Funny how film slows things down.” And it was true – the DVD performance seemed slower than the live performance which it had recorded.

This triggered musings that I have mused over many times before. I love film, and I love theatre. I’ve written for film (a bit), and I have written for and been involved in theatre (a lot). Watching the DVD last night, laughing at all the inside jokes, giggling in anticipation of an upcoming witticism or groaning about messed-up lines (not many, it was a fantastic cast), I realized how much I enjoy the immediacy of theatre.

Theatre is so different from film. You don’t get fifteen re-takes until everything is perfect; no second chances. Well yes, there is always the next performance, but most people see a show only once. (Sarnia’s mum excepted – sorry, inside joke.) So no second chance with one and the same audience, you’d better get it right.

And that’s exactly it. Get it right – but there is usually more than one “right”. No second chance, but the chance to create something new every night, for the audience is different every night, and unlike in film you can react to this difference.

The other immediacy is, of course, that you see and feel the result of your work right there and then. For the writer, no months of waiting and wondering after you’ve delivered your screenplay – will they actually use it? How many other writers (and/or directors) will maul my story? For the actor, no months of post-production or shooting three other films until this one actually opens at the cinemas.

In a way – or perhaps in many ways – I find this much more rewarding than the thought of my name on the big screen. I’m serious. It would be fantastic to sit in the cinema and see the screenplay credits spell my name. But I have a feeling it would be less real and less palpable than the stage version.

Knock Knock: Missed Opportunities & Valuable Lessons

A few months ago I joined a project initiated on an expat forum – a call for film lovers to get together and “just do it”, it being a short film. The group turned out to be a mix of enthusiastic amateurs and professionals: a director, some actors and myself (all stuck here in Frankfurt having to earn their living with “real jobs” and eager for an opportunity to practice their craft) and a cameraman.

We agreed we’d aim for a short of 2-5 minutes, tossed about some story suggestions in a facebook group and when the vote was cast, I took the winning idea and started working on the script.

Lesson 1: How short is short?

I had not considered writing shorts before, so my first thought was: how short is a short script? I know that my short stories tend to be too long (15,000 words on average). I also know, of course, about the one page, one minute format but suspected that while this works out fine over 90 minutes it might not be the same with a three minute project. This suspicion was confirmed when I read the script of Oscar finalist The Door by Juanita Wilson – six pages, 17 minutes. But armed with lots of good advice, mostly through TwelvePoint (in particular Patrick Nash’s recent series of articles about shorts), I went to work quite cheerfully.

My first draft ended up at five pages with lots of location changes, very short scenes and about three lines of dialogue. Discussions with the group resulted in “let’s just shoot and see where it gets us” – a happy-go-lucky approach that really only worked because all the professionals involved worked for free, the cameraman has his own equipment (need I say this is a huge asset), and the director is also a real estate agent and talked one of his clients into letting us use his flat.

After draft three (six pages) I had to step back because I was organizing a major theatre festival (see also Lesson 3 below). The director took over, compiled a shot list and off they went to shoot. One day of filming, roughly two hours of material, a few serious editing sessions, and the final cut of Knock Knock now runs at 4:27 minutes.

Lesson 2: How story and script changed…

It started with a joke. Good punch line but nothing else, really. I sat gnawing my pen, wondering how to insert a story into this pun when I heard a song on the radio about a deaf girl who likes music really loud because then she can feel it in her stomach – and I had my story. I replaced one original joke character with this girl, built a relationship between her and a grumpy old man who lives in the flat underneath her, and used the joke for the ending – the punch line became the resolution.

At one point during Act II of our joint efforts this punch line actually disappeared entirely, and for a while the story threatened to go off track. Luckily the director and I were on the same page and I simply insisted on the essence of what it was all about: the relationship between our two protagonists. At this point I still fully enjoyed the advantages of this no-budget, small-scale project: I, the writer, was in control!

As mentioned above, I then had to leave the project during Act III (the actual filming). The story that ended up being shot is still very much the same, but it was interesting to see how my script ended up being really just a loose foundation for the end product. Here are the links to the script, the shot list (which also got changed some more in the whole process) and the film so you can see for yourself…

Lesson 3: Go all the way!

I had originally joined this project because I really wanted to participate in the actual shooting. Holding lights, untangling cables, making coffee, mopping sweat off the cameraman’s brow and especially be fly on the wall during the editing – I was going to do it all. As for the result, I did not expect it be any kind of Calling Card but really only went for the experience – and here is where I failed: I let go of that beautiful opportunity to control my script. I could excuse this failure with circumstances; discussions and preparations took longer than expected and so my theatre festival took priority. Still, it feels like a missed opportunity.

This is not to say that I am unhappy with the result. Sure, I had imagined a slightly different film, but that’s okay. However, I missed a great chance to see how, precisely, what I had written turned into what was filmed and, even more so, to participate in the editing, since I am convinced that writers can learn a lot from the editing process. (Interesting comments about editing, by the way, by Academy Award winner Chris Dickens of Slumdog Millionaire, here; and as always, the TwelvePoint archive offers a wealth of articles about editing.)

But hey. Cameraman and director want to continue working together and working with me. So next time I will make sure to go all the way, come hell or high water!

PS My next post will be entitled “How to avoid over-use of parentheses”. ;^)

Literatainment

German bestselling author Frank Schätzing is currently touring to present his latest book, the sci-fi thriller Limit, in a live reading. I had read and liked Schätzing’s best-known novel The Swarm – Uma Thurman bought the rights in 2006, Ted Tally (Silence of the Lambs) wrote the script, Dino DeLaurentiis is producing, the film is scheduled for 2011 – but in general I am not a fan of his rather loud and sensational style, not to mention the length of his oeuvres (even the paperbacks are too heavy to hold up in bed). However, I was intrigued by the advertising: “Limit Live – a multimedia book show!” So I went to check it out at Frankfurt’s finest event venue, the Alte Oper.

Pep up a traditional recipe…

Spot on a dark, empty stage, a huge screen as a backdrop. Loud, dramatic music accompanies pictures of the Earth seen from space, a myriad stars morph into the logo “Limit”. Enter Schätzing in the semi-darkness, equipped with an illuminated e-reader and headset mic. He starts reading the opening chapter, doing a reasonably good job considering he’s not a trained actor. (That changes later when he talks freely at a speed which, especially when his native Cologne accent comes through, is often hard to understand.)

I am just beginning to get a little bored by his droning when the chapter ends with a bang – death in space. The lights come up and the huge screen switches from dark universe to brightly lit TV studio, date: 25 March 2025. A complete change in tone. Weather forecast: 26°C, perfect for a trip to the Dutch Lakeland – a map shows most of the Netherlands and much of South England submerged. There are news about the mysterious death in space: it just might have something to do with the stand-off between the US and China on the moon. The two superpowers are quarrelling over access to large fields of Helium 3, the “clean”, environmentally friendly energy source found in abundance on the moon.

… by throwing in whatever the pantry holds

After a few minutes of news, Schätzing starts interacting with the presenter on the screen, then switches her off and takes over the stage again, but not to continue reading. No, what follows is a mix of stand-up comedy, pseudo-philosophical musings about everyone’s fear of the future (his advice: don’t whinge but do something about it) and explanations of the story’s scientific background, aided by video footage from National Geographic and a public broadcaster (ZDF).

Then he takes live interaction with film one step further: one of the protagonists, played by popular German actor Jan-Josef Liefers, shows up on the screen and complains about all the stuff his author puts him through in the book. Schätzing placates him by calling a second – rather sexy – book character up on the screen, and the three do a “live” reading of an action-packed chapter (excellent timing in the reading, hat tipped). Then the author shoos his “children” off and continues with the mix of reading and joking, going into the details of sex in space (not that easy, it seems) and in general presenting himself and his brand.

All this went on for almost two hours non-stop, but it did not feel that long. It was loud, it spelled the message out in bold letters, it lacked depth – but it was entertaining. It was different, mixing various elements – not exactly great literature but “literatainment” instead.

Brilliant concept or major ego trip?

Much ado about nothing? Yes, to a degree. A new way to reach a wider audience? Perhaps. My guess is that most people in the audience were Schätzing fans anyway, and I doubt the show actually converted anyone who wasn’t. I for one am still not really tempted to have a go at the 1382 pages of Limit – but I went to see the show, didn’t I?

Schätzing, who I suspect sees himself as the German Michael Crichton, is not afflicted by a weak ego, and the show reflects this. But is this bad? His background is in marketing and advertising, and he knows how to market himself. He certainly pepped up the traditional concept of a book reading – while those dramatic pictures from space washed over me I half expected to hear a booming voice from offstage: “Let there be a blockbuster!”

Is this where we’re heading?

Watching Schätzing strut across the stage, I thought of last year’s book fair in Frankfurt and the launch of Open Road Integrated Media, a digital content company that publishes and markets e-books by creating connections between authors and their audiences across multiple platforms. Their strategy includes promotional videos and websites where the reader can browse and click to know the author (access to interviews and unpublished material etc).

Limit Live was not geared specifically towards the e-book – although I would recommend using an e-reader for Schätzing’s books if only because of the weight – but it was going in a similar direction: way beyond the book. And while it smacked of dumbing down for the masses, it was certainly cleverly done. It could not be done with just any book, but some genres – sci-fi, thriller, crime, anything that calls for a bit of action and a complex story background – would probably work quite well. Is this where 21st-century writers are heading?

Julian Friedmann always encourages screenwriters to write novels too. Now I’m not saying that when we do that, we should write with a multi-media presentation in mind. But given that we have a very specific approach to story-telling, one that is visual and strongly geared towards emotional involvement of a large audience packed together in a dark cinema – or the Alte Oper – who knows… perhaps there’s something in this for us.

A Chilling Masterpiece

The White Ribbon – a disturbing masterpiece that chilled me to the bone.

I had not planned to post this, but after (finally!) seeing The White Ribbon yesterday I couldn’t help it, just had to pen my thoughts. This is not a synopsis, just personal impressions that may not make all that much sense unless you’ve actually seen the film. But perhaps they will make you want to see it…

I’ve not seen any film by Michael Haneke before, but if they’re all like this one, I’m a fan. Masterfully directed and acted. Outstanding photography, black-and-white images which, just like the complete lack of music, were a perfect fit to the psychological (f)rigidity of the people. A completely different pace from what we are used to these days. Slow, sometimes very slow, but not a single second without anything “happening” or with “just visuals” was just that; every one of those moments had a meaning and conveyed a message.

The adults were so unbelievably cold to their children. I felt frozen inside, sometimes wanted to shout “come on, show a sign of affection, hold your child, acknowledge the love he shows you!” But it never, ever happened.

The only adults who were a little warmer were the midwife and perhaps the estate manager’s wife – and the teacher and his Eva, but then she was almost still a child herself, and he not only looked but really seemed younger than his 31 years – and even at 31 he was a lot younger than all the other adults. He and Eva, they were a ray of sunshine and genuine warmth, warmth one craved for and lapped up hungrily in this atmosphere of psycho-cruelty.

The children…  The much-quoted resemblance to Village of the Damned is obvious without being a copy, because the danger emanating from them was human, not alien. I am tempted to say that when they were chilling, they had good reason to be that way. They didn’t know anything else from their parents.

*SPOILER ALERT* All the more touching to see the loving kindness in the doctor’s daughter – a love that was tinged with so much sadness when she looked at her little brother, and that took such a shocking twist when the true nature of her relationship with her father was revealed. *END SPOILER ALERT*

And yet, underneath all this rigor, the plaited or plastered hair and buttoned-up dresses or shirts, these children were not so very different from “modern” children. Underneath it all, they showed the same fears and yearnings and rebellious traits as children of today. They just channelled these feelings differently.

The characters, all of them, adults and children, were at the same time so foreign and so authentic, so genuine and convincing. Outstanding performances by all, absolutely all of the actors. How on earth did they prepare for their parts? This film shows a time that is not so very far away and yet feels so much more distant from our modern thinking and feeling than say, the Middle Ages or the future – as we see them in movies or read about them in books. At least I feel that way.

Does this film “explain” Germany and Germans at the beginning of the 20^th century? Perhaps it offers some help in understanding them, but for me that is not the real importance or impact of this film. Perhaps that’s because I am German and have had my share of German history studies.

I must admit, though, I felt weird when I saw the doctor’s house, which looks almost identical to that of my grandmother in Northern Germany, and the priest’s study, which reminded me so much of that of my grandfather, who was also a priest. Both were born around 1905, i.e. were as old as the children in this film. I wonder what their childhood was like. It is too late to ask them, they’re both dead; and I wonder what they would’ve told me. Whether they would have been like the “unreliable narrator”, as Philip French calls the teacher in his review in the Guardian . I am just glad they turned out to be warm and kind people.

I can’t believe that within a week I saw two films that could not be more different – Avatar and The White Ribbon – and was blown away by both in equal measure but in completely different ways.

And so I end this rambling spill of a post.

Okay, the next post really will be about “The Amphibian Film – a Teutonic Speciality?”

French and German Perspectives on Eric Rohmer

Much has been written in the past week to commemorate the great French filmmaker Eric Rohmer. Theauteurs.com offers an amazing compilation of UK and US voices, the bulk of which remember Rohmer as the intellectual among the Nouvelle Vague proponents, a man of paradoxes (“the modern classicist calmly dissecting desire”) and the filmmaker who made adult conversation cinematic. This latter claim of course is not uncontested – or as Gene Hackman quips in the film Night Moves: “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.” 

I was curious to see whether French and German tributes might show a (stereo-)typical focus on different aspects of his oeuvre. My research turned out to be a little limited by the fact that many of the French and German publications I tried were subscriber-only, but I still found some interesting articles – here’s the gist of it. 

France

Le Monde , in language recalling the flowery description on French wine labels, praises Rohmer’s films as having a “spiritual subtlety, a flavour of impertinence and freedom” and the “total erotisation of language resulting from a physical magnetism that is imbued with the postponement of morals” (this was just too tempting not to translate quite literally).

Le Figaro stays a little more sober, saying that Rohmer’s art lay in analysing a state, a condition, by describing a situation. He always looked at the relationship man-woman from a POV of absurdity and necessity; his characters, so the Figaro article, were “moralists, aesthetes who served to show perversity”.

The e-zine Gonzaï features a much more engaging tribute. A writer by the pseudonym of Lidell offers a very personal view of Rohmer’s films, recalling how all through adolescence she and her friends attempted to copy his female characters. She claims that Rohmer invented a new type, the beautiful and graceful young woman with an iron will. Lidell also writes at length about how Rohmer’s “gang” writing for the famous Cahiers de cinema elevated film criticism to new heights and at the same time established film as a proper art form, claiming that filmmakers, like composers, could create new styles and even start a new epoch.

The most interesting result of my French research was a short interview with Jean-Louis Trintignant about working with Rohmer in My Night with Maud. Trintignant, an actor who likes to improvise, was shocked when he saw the script: dialogue of exquisite elegance was marred (in the actor’s view) by obnoxiously detailed instructions such as insertions of “er… er…”, and even commas were terribly important to Rohmer. Trintignant recalls complaining that this was impossible for an actor to read such dialogue, but Rohmer urged him to try – and Trintignant confesses to having been most surprised to find that it was not only wonderfully easy, but even the only way to read the dialogue exactly as written.

Germany

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung  features two different articles by the same author on the same day, offering a mixed picture of cerebral analysis and romantic rapture.

The rather more analytical print article calls Rohmer “the storyteller of modern life” who merged a neo-realistic view with the characterization of classic French theatre. Rohmer used the camera as an instrument of his curiosity and choreographed his images to perfection; his films, poor in scenery but rich in realities, depicted basic patterns of human actions.

In contrast, the online article calls Rohmer “the master of blissful moments”, saying that his characters both are driven by and shy away from their yearnings – “and in this we recognize ourselves with dream-like clarity”. The author even waxes lyrical: there was “a shimmer in Rohmer’s stories that passed on to the audience when the screen went black, creating an impression that his characters, with all their desires and idiosyncrasies, were sitting right next to you.”

I was a bit disappointed with the brevity of the obituary in my favourite German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The author calls Rohmer “A Strict Composer” who orchestrated “beautiful young girls doing beautiful stuff”. The article, like so many others, also touches on the paradox that Rohmer presented in his work: he employed self-reflection as a cinematic element and yet managed to leave an impression of profound sensuality.

Die Zeit, Germany’s most prominent weekly newspaper, again mixes romantic eulogy and brainy philosophical analysis in a very long article entitled “The Saviour of Passion in Cinema”. Focusing almost entirely on the theme of desire or passion, the author paints a complex picture of Rohmer’s notion of Love, or rather of the Discourse about Love. But what kind of love? His characters flutter from one to the next, freedom equals the inability to find Mr. (or Ms.) Right, emancipation and self-actualization scare away Eros. Yet  – says this article – the catholic Rohmer did find a solution for true modern love, and he found it in French history, in particular Pascalian philosophy. According to Die Zeit, it is only by understanding Rohmer’s love for Pascal can one understand Rohmer’s films and the hope expressed in his films: only those who believe in absolute love can achieve miracles, and only the combination of passion and reason can give direction to desire and change it to love – and that is why Rohmer’s films contain so much dialogue.

Post Scriptum

Me? I’m no expert on Rohmer. I have seen a few of his films and have found moments of absolute brilliance… if only one didn’t have to listen to all that talking while waiting for this brilliance to happen .

Next week’s post will focus on “Amphibian Films” – and no, it’s not about documentaries on the disappearance of the poison dart frog from the Amazonian rainforest.

The Screenwriter’s Lens

Screenwriting, or perhaps rather learning about screenwriting, has spoilt a lot for me.

For one thing, it has spoilt watching mediocre films. Well, that’s no great loss, you may say, but actually – there’s a certain type of film I used to enjoy watching, just to chill, rest my brain after a hard day at the office. I can’t do that any more. I get too annoyed by underdeveloped characters and badly structured stories.

I also find it difficult these days to find a book or other prose that holds my attention. I keep wanting to say “get to the point” or “cut the verbiage!” even in books that I used to like. We had an interesting discussion about this in the Forum over on TwelvePoint.com – seems that many screenwriters feel the same – we spend years honing our skills to convey a maximum of action and emotion with a minimum of words, and thus quickly get bored with pages and pages of inner ramblings or minute descriptions.

So I can’t help but look at everything through the screenwriter’s lens – I weigh, I measure, and I usually find wanting by page 20.

Last night, however, I had an interesting experience. I went to the premiere of a friend’s play, a piece for six women entitled “The Gentle Sisters”. Within minutes I was drawn in completely by the actresses and their skilful handling of a very well-written and moving script. Afterwards I talked to an actress (who was not involved in the production). She liked the play but thought the staging was a bit static, and to my surprise I realized she was right.

How odd that I hadn’t noticed this lack of movement, of visual action on stage, when I’m so used to the scriptwriting mantra of “make it visual, use action to express emotion, show don’t tell”! But then I realized what had happened.

I aim to build my screenplays from the inside out because I hold that stories must grow from the characters and their development. In this play, the characters and their emotions were so well crafted and so genuine, both in the writing and in the portrayal, that I was completely captured. Perhaps after several viewings I would have started shifting actors and scenery around in my head, and a different director – not the author, as in this production – may stage it quite differently. But it did not and does not matter because the material was so good. It was all there, in the characters.

So the screenwriter’s lens made me not see a minor “fault”. For once, it did not spoil the show but enhanced it. Thanks, Stewart, and good luck with taking this play much, much further still – it’s worth it!

SWF 2009: Julian Friedmann’s Submission Strategies

This was a very popular session as we all hoped to catch that piece of golden advice that will eventually get our scripts on Robert Jones’s or Jonathan Darby’s desk. And here’s how you go about it:

Calling card scripts

Write several good calling card scripts in order to demonstrate your skills and to show that you can handle different genres: one 30-minute episode of a series, one 60-minute script for TV, one 90-minute feature script. Have one script with lots of good dialogue.

Do not write a spec adaptation (unless you really want to set yourself up as an adaption writer) but consider taking a novel that’s out of copyright and transferring it to a contemporary setting.

Make sure your calling card scripts are as good as you can possibly make them. Get input from other writers (join a writers’ group) and send the scripts to a professional reader or script editor. Your career should be worth that investment.

Script / commissioning editors

You can follow who is commissioning what on the Broadcast Commissioning Index (however the grapevine has it that this will be turned into a subscriber-only service sometime soon).

Check the credits of TV shows for the script editors; if you find that the same name pops up consistently in episodes that appeal to you, write to that person to tell them you like their work / style and that you would like to work for them.

Broadcasters, producers and agents

You have submitted your spec work to a broadcaster and been rejected. Now you want to send it to an indie producer… can you do without mentioning the rejection? Julian’s answer is a clear “no” – that would be unethical unless you tell the indie it has been rejected by the broadcaster (which is why the Blake Friedmann Agency generally don’t submit client material to broadcasters until they have tried independents). It is possible that a good independent will add value to a script by way of a director and cast, which might make the broadcaster decide to do it.

Agents and producers are usually more interested in you as a writer than in your spec stories – those are basically just to prove you can write. Therefore your submission packet should also contain information about yourself – why you write and what your passion is.

You can find out about agents through various handbooks, but an agent who belongs to the Association of Authors’ Agents or the PMA is to be recommended. Julian suggests that even if you have an agent, don’t rely on them always doing the right thing – you must read the trades yourself and get out and network. And do not sign any agreement that binds you for a year or even longer.

Producers’ biogs are available from PACT (UK indie producers’ trade association). Check them out, build up your own database of production companies. When talking to a producer, try to establish your financial benchmark – join the Writers’ Guild and make that “visible”.

The Submission

Do not address your letter to “Dear Sir/Madam” but address them by first name. Try to get a recommendation. Make sure you research your target and what they’ve done, touch on that in your submission.

One effective way of writing selling treatments that you can use to submit is to break them into the following parts:

* One paragraph similar to the back blurb of a novel (possibly without the ending)
* Character biogs – five lines for main and two lines for secondary characters
* Statement of intent with personal info; tell them why you are the person to write this particular story
* Synopsis of max. three pages – make this visual and write it in the present tense to give a sense of pace
* Contents page at the front

(For more excellent advice on how to write treatments that sell check out Julian’s articles on TwelvePoint.com.)

And finally, as for rejection…

… get used to it! And keep going!

PS This is my last instalment of SWF 2009 session notes. Next year you’ll all have to check it out in person – the festival is definitely worth it!

SWF 2009: The Screenwriter as Diplomat

Oscar-winning writer Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty) talked about the writer’s role in the development process. Screenwriter / consultant / lecturer Peter Bloore moderated.

Simon Beaufoy recalled how he used to walk into development meetings “prepared to be ruined” and indeed has had scripts “taken away” even after his first major success with The Full Monty (he cited Blow Dry as an example). However, his approach is different now: bearing in mind that the people a writer faces in these meetings are never stupid but always powerful, with powerful opinions, the writer must find a way to ADAPT others’ ideas while maintaining the core of his/her script. While you may not have the luxury of choosing your allies, the director and producer must understand this core, the soul of your script.

The key to a successful development meeting is MOMENTUM. It’s all about moving the script forward, and everyone should walk out of the room with something gained. While this is actually the producer’s responsibility, successful screenwriters are good at achieving this. Simon Beaufoy also maintained that the writer does not necessarily have to fulfil all development notes – in his opinion about 60% should do. (Note: in the “How to Be Good” SWF session Kate Leys and Rob Kraitt advised writers to make sure that nothing is “their fault” and comply with any and all notes. For a good write-up on this session – and two others – go to Margit Keerdo’s blog .)

Prompted by Peter Bloore’s question, Simon Beaufoy confirmed that going for low-budget films was a conscious decision he made after the Blow Dry disaster, naming his lowest budget film, This Is Not a Love Story, as his best creative experience ever. “Budgetary constraints focus the mind!” So he tackled the project backwards – starting with a budget based on a two-page treatment, then casting, attaching a director, then scouting locations and based on those writing the script in 10 days (yep, that’s what he said!), and another 10 days for shooting… In his words, there are vast opportunities for low-budget, crazy, interesting films and a specific UK voice in this area that needs to be protected.

Finally, Simon Beaufoy stressed the importance of preparing for development meetings. Ask to be given the notes in advance (argue that this will help focus the meeting); ask for ONE set of notes (otherwise you may have to deal with conflicting notes); and if you are given notes face to face after all, smile and say “great, can I get back to you on this when I’ve had time to think about it?”

So should we be worried by the fact that even an Academy Award winning writer is turning to micro-budget because he wants to maintain creative control? My answer would be: if you are crazy enough to write for big budgets, be prepared to lose creative ownership. It’s your choice. And if you’re lucky, you can protect that core of your script Beaufoy talked about. If not, make sure you retain the novelisation rights and write YOUR story as a book.

La Vida Electronica @ SWF 2009

Presented by journalist and script editor Ellin Stein in discussion with writers Ashley Pharoah (Life on Mars) and James Moran (Spooks), this session was designed to look at the use of technology in films. Given that e-communication is taking over real life, how do you portray character interaction other than by showing them typing or texting? How do you make this cinematic?

The discussion was supported by various clips ranging from old movies showing people writing and reading letters, usually with V.O., to brand-new student shorts with no dialogue but subtitled with the text messages the characters were receiving, and included a beautiful sequence from The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft conduct a classical two-person drama by phone.

Ashley Pharoah mentioned that in Life on Mars they played it as a joke that the murder photos can’t be sent by mobile phone.

James Moran described how in writing for Spooks, they went at it from the human side first and then used gadgets to create suspense and complications. (He also mentioned that they condense material for three hours into one… I believe that!) As to the problem of “showing people typing”, he offered the solution of having characters walk in with a print-out and then going off on to act on the info.

The issue of receiving information by phone or letter is by no means new. You can use a phone conversation to show people lying – saying one thing and doing another – but this works equally well with mobile phones or landlines.

There was general agreement that technology affects the plotting of thrillers. Characters can call for help on their mobile (and “Damn! No reception!” is a pretty lame excuse*). Moveable GPS prevent people from getting lost. Applications like Google latitude will allow your villain to track the hero as he or she flees.

On character level, technology can be used to show people’s isolation, or indeed to portray character by showing HOW they use technology.

The question was raised as to whether the lack of human interaction threatens to make stories less gripping. Ashley Pharoah’s answer was “not necessarily – just look at UA 93 when the passengers, knowing they are about to die in a plane crash, call their loved ones to say good-bye – that’s drama!”

The session ended with a nice little bonus when a voice from the very back of the room said (paraphrased) “We had some interesting reactions to using new technologies when we introduced Max Headroom”. The voice belonged to Annabel Jankel, writer of the Max Headroom TV series way back in 1985!

To sum up the discussion: modern technology does present certain limitations but also new possibilities, and it is up to us, the writers, to be inventive in the way we – or rather our characters – use it. I personally would have welcomed a bit more of a discussion about possible solutions, but I guess that also is up to us!

* On the topic of “no reception”, here’s a worthwhile read: “Anybody Getting a Signal?”

Spec Scriptmarket @ SWF 2009

Another presentation by Simon Van der Borgh, together with Developer / Script Editor Jo Tracey.

SVdB started off by issuing a warning about “readers” – one should always make sure that they are “real industry professionals”. Then he listed common pitfalls and flaws:

* When asked “what is it about”, writers tend to tell the story.

* Often the main character does not really go on a journey or have a purpose. It is important you really know who the main characters are; what their needs and challenges are; what the obstacles and turning points are for them; and how they interact with others. All this must feed into the theme.

* If during the writing a secondary character becomes more interesting than your chosen protagonist, be flexible enough to move to the secondary character.

* A character should never be predictable (watch Chloé – this film takes you somewhere entirely different from where you expect to go).

* Your characters must be believable; they must live outside the movie.

As in so many other SWF sessions, the importance of GENRE was driven home – know the genre; know its history, where it comes from; research what else exists in this genre AND works.

Decide whether you want to explore / develop your story for cinema or TV – rule of thumb: feature films are generally about ordinary people in extraordinary situations (or vice versa!), TV shows ordinary people in ordinary situations. TV is also more dialog-driven. Final Draft users can check percentage of dialogue in tools > reports.

Know the TIME (they mentioned a script set in the 14^th century where someone checked his wristwatch…) and TIME FRAME of your movie – rule of thumb: the longer the time frame, the lower the tension.

Know who you are writing for – use language that is appropriate for your primary audience – know who it is going to appeal to and why.

Finally: “Beware the fear of being understood” – screenwriters have a tendency to overcomplicate things when they should aim to “let the audience in”!