Lines should not go on and on, stating every obvious fact that could be better shown with pictures. This is a well-known problem with American television, where the “radio with pictures” label is too often true.
Pauses should be spelled out. By which I mean that what the characters are doing in between lines should be felt in the dialogue, not just stated in screen directions.
We should feel in the dialogue that these are real people, not just narration lifted off the page. People should sound, sometimes, as if they have not listened with every part of their fiber to the other character but have actually had an interior life of their own going on. This is one of the most realistic things about Pinter’s dialogue when he writes for film. Characters are obviously dealing with a rich inner life. In fact, they often don’t respond to each other’s lines, sounding more as if they were two independent characters, alone in the same room, but not aware of it. (This can be amusing, annoying, or, as in Pinter’s writing, phenomenally realistic.)
And, of course, it’s more than nice if the writer shows a fine sense of wit, timing, intelligence, and character, all of which should leap out at you.
Lines that cover a whole page and leave no room for action should be suspect; but if someone writes a lengthy monologue that makes you jump out of your chair with excitement, you’ll probably find a way to make at least that speech work.
One of the most exciting kinds of scriptwriting is the kind that places us right in the midst of a scene. We see the lovers quarreling, but we don’t know why—yet. The scene has reached a point of tension; we have to fight to keep up; they know so much more than we do, but it’s exciting precisely because the scene has momentum. Conversely, a script in which dialogue starts as we dissolve to the scene, though we know that the characters have been with each other for two hours, limps along. A script in which every scene crackles with accepted facts that we perceive rather than receive, is a good script. A script that crackles, in general, that leads us from scene to scene, enticing us to want to see more, is a good script.
Given all these “rules,” it is important to say something that I once read in a marvelous book on cinematography: “Rules were made to be learned so that you could know which ones to break.” In other words, know what is supposed to be done, so you can then be free to use your own imagination and inventiveness to forge new territory. This goes not only for cinematography and lighting, editing and casting, but for scriptwriting as well. If something strikes you as “a good yarn,” a story in which you can see something, even if no one else does, then perhaps you should go with it, even if it doesn’t fit into anyone else’s idea of what a good script is.
WRITING
Whether you’ve read a script that is very good or one that is only so-so but has a wonderful germ of truth in it, you will probably want to do some rewriting. If you’re working with a producer by this time, he or she will tell you what your rights are vis-à-vis the writer (e.g., Writers Guild of America [WGA] requirements), but there’s nothing to keep you from doing some of that writing on your own, before meeting with the writer-note-taking, as it were. Keep in mind that most writers are very wedded to their material, and if you want to have a good relationship with them, you’ll need to use your powers of subtle persuasion and be tactful. I once made some changes in a script after detailed consultation with the writer, who said, “Hey, it’s your film, go ahead, do what you want.” After the film was shot, and the writer saw what I had done, he stopped talking to me. And that was an amicable arrangement!
First, look at scenes that are either missing or don’t belong in the film at all or—to ring some changes, already—should be shifted from one place to another. That’s a fairly easy problem to spot, though not so easy to solve, since, as a wise writer once observed, “scripts are like balloons: you squeeze them in one spot, they bulge in another.” Next, you’ll want to balance the length of one scene against another. Is this one too short? Does it follow too quickly on the heels of that one? And so on.
Are there characters who don’t belong in the film? That’s an interesting problem, and very frequently isn’t seen until too late. But if a film is to work, the number of characters who demand our attention has to be just right. When you get to the editing phase, you will very often not only cut out a number of scenes because the film doesn’t work without that excision, but you will cut out some characters as well. (Remember the actor’s complaint, “I was left on the cutting room floor?”) It’s easier and cheaper to do those cuts at this stage. How do you know whom to cut? Look for characters who don’t add very much, who are in there just to convey information. Can that information be delivered in some other fashion? By another person? By pictures? On the other hand, are there characters missing? Is the interaction of the two main characters so constant that we can’t take our eyes off them but in the end feel somewhat bored by them? Try adding a scene with someone we haven’t met before. It can be very refreshing.
Is there too much plot? This can be one of the problems with the middle that we talked about before. A script that carries us along from one important scene to the next may be very exciting, but it can also dissipate excitement by keeping us moving too much. Try inserting a scene that does nothing, a scene in which we learn a little about character or nuance, but which is basically there to let us relax, to take us away from the main action, or to let something happen offstage, to let time pass. It’s not just that we need to move a little slower; it’s that these kinds of scenes, in which “nothing” is happening, actually show us a little more about the personalities of our characters, and that makes us able to understand what is happening; it adds to our ability to believe plot.
In order to make all of the above a little more tangible, I’ve included a few pages of script, which I’ve marked up with suggestions for changes. Then, on succeeding pages, I show the revisions. This is not an all-inclusive example; there are no new scenes, no reams of new characters, but it should show one approach to the reading of a script.
RESEARCH
A great problem encountered by nearly all of us, whether we are writers, producers, actors, or directors, is the notion implied by the question, “Is it real?” When you read through my brief example, did you ask yourself whether I knew anything about the Bekaa Valley, about marriage in Lebanon, about the Shiites, about war? If you didn’t, then I probably conveyed enough truth in that script for the pages of this book. But would it have been enough if you were going to be directing such a film? I doubt it. You would want to spend some time researching the subject matter discussed in the script. This is not a matter of trusting or not trusting the writer. It is far more serious than that. It has to do with the fact that you are going to take this script, if you like it, and spend a great deal of time—not to mention money— on it. It also has to do with the fact that you are going to be asked by the actors, producer, art director, and a host of other people how you wish to portray such and such a facet of the script, and that can’t be done unless you know something—maybe a great deal—about the subject matter. That makes sense, doesn’t it? So you’re going to have to get out the encyclopedia, the history books, the catalogs; you’re going to open up your favorite search engines on the Web; and you’re going to have to go to places you want to make films about, or at least talk to people who have been there.
REALITY
When we asked before, “Is it real?” we were asking from a researcher’s point of view. Now we are asking from the point of view of the audience. Does this script, as written, persuade you, the viewer, that the characters, the situation, the dialogue are real? Perhaps more than any other question, this one has to be answered. For how often have all of us, sitting in front of the television set, commented at the end of a particular film or videotape program, “I don’t believe it”? How often do we look at the portrayal of a policeman, a lawyer, a lover, a “saint,” a teacher, a child, in fact, practically any human being or human situation with which we have some acquaintance, and sa
y, “No, it doesn’t ring true”? It’s your job as director to decide how much reality you want in your film and then to make sure you get it. (Some people don’t care; comedies and fantasies are often specifically above reality—that is, surreal.) This is the time, when you’re reading and rewriting your script, to make those decisions and make the necessary changes.
Now, this isn’t simply a matter of saying, “Oh, it doesn’t sound real.” You have to know the characters with whom you’re dealing, and you have to make a choice: Is the dialogue going to sound like the real characters, or sound like some abstraction of the real characters? What do I mean? Do you remember the first time you heard a method actor at work, with the mumbling, the tortured grimaces, the pauses. (I’m overdoing it; all good acting is, to some extent, based on method.) Did you at some point say, “Hey, that sounds the way real people sound”? Method actors often sound like real people because real people don’t speak in whole sentences; they change direction, take pauses, mumble, and so forth. Some of that “real dialogue” feeling can come from actors’ interpretation of any dialogue, but much of it must come from the writing itself. So when you’re rewriting and deciding how “real” you want something, remember the method actor. How many clues do you want to give the actor about how you (or the writer and you) want the scene to go? Put in pauses; put in accents; put in your sense of reality.
After all is said and done, whether or not you want to make a script into a film depends less on the “rules and regulations” I have set down, or on your ability to rewrite dialogue, and more on your interest in the story and your willingness to stand by it through the long hard processes that follow.
Of course, sometimes you have little or no control over your script. And that deserves a little discussion.
TIME OUT
A word about the “business.” There are all sorts of productions you may get involved with in the film and television industries. You might be directing a television series; you might be directing an “industrial” or an educational videotape. Other jobs may be directing for PBS in Washington or doing an in-house, closed-circuit informational film for a multinational corporation in Indiana. Most of what we directors do, alas, is not the kind of film we go to see at the local movie theater, and much of what we do is not originated by us. In point of fact, most of the working directors in this country are toilers in the field. They are hired for a specific project—for a specific term, often not more than a few weeks—to direct a film for one episode of an ongoing series, an educational documentary, a commercial, or a promotional short. (This happens both to staff directors and to independents, unattached to a studio, a television station, or a large institution.) Because of that you will often find yourself called upon to direct a script chosen by someone else, for which you will not conceive the idea or cast the characters or raise the money or hire the production team. You will be handed a script that is to be filmed within two or three weeks, for which the cast is already assembled or that is part of an ongoing television series. And that means less control than you would like to have.
What about such times? If you’re at all like me, these are jobs you will probably decide to do, not so much because you’re wild about the scripts, but because they pay well or lead to better work, or because you’re a professional—it’s what you do for a living. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should take the script as a fait accompli without any possibility of change. You should read it just as you do any other script or story line and make suggestions you feel are appropriate to the story editor or producer or writer. What it may mean is that you may not have as much flexibility as when you’re operating all by yourself or starting a new project. For instance, it’s unlikely that you can get the producer to delete a character who is part of a running cast in a series. You may be able to get the story editor (see chapter 3) to insert more dialogue for such a character if you feel that he or she is not being used enough to justify his or her existence in the script, and you should certainly suggest changes in dialogue that sounds dull or wrong to you. How far you can go will depend on your relationship with the production company and your feelings about yourself as a writer. The worst thing you can do, in my view, is to accept bad scenes or bad dialogue without making some effort to change them. If you have problems, state them and see what happens. You may be surprised to find that producers and writers and editors are just waiting for someone to help them solve a problem that they had confronted but failed to fix.
TIME IN
Let’s sum up the chapter so far. In a production, the script has to be paramount. No film can exist without one, and the best films are founded on the best scripts. Sometimes those scripts have been created by the writer, who sometimes works in conjunction with the director. Some directors spend months working with their writers, honing everything to perfection. Does this mean that on the set you may make no changes? There are two schools of thought. One says that the script, after thorough rewrites, is golden and cannot be changed on the set, when pressures may make you do things in haste. The other says that nothing is written in stone and that actors' tastes and characterizations, your own ear, and the producer’s power all cause changes in the script, whether on the set, in the editing room, or at the lunch table. Whichever you choose, both schools accept the notion that the script itself is crucial as a starting point, even if you intend to improvise your way through the final filming.
TIME OUT
What about improvisation? Many of you will have read or heard about the actors and directors who like to make up dialogue around a concept. While the actor/director John Cassavetes was one of the best-known directors for this approach—using a corps of actors over and over again to create whole films around improvised dialogue—in recent years, improv has become a tool used by many in certain scenes. And while a filmmaker like Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show) can create enormously funny material through improvisation, most directors will use improvisation only to free actors or to get at a scene’s underlying meaning or an actor’s underlying emotions when all else fails. The use of improvisation, then, should probably be something that comes from a particular situation during a shoot, rather than as an approach to scriptwriting, unless you-and your actors-have demonstrated a real affinity for this technique.
ARITHMETIC
Normally, money and budget matters belong in a book or course about producing. I introduce the subject here because no matter how beautiful the script, no matter how enthusiastic the participants, films cannot be made without sufficient money. So, let’s talk briefly about budgets.
“Sufficient.” What does that mean and what does a director need to know about such things?
The answer to these questions depends, in part, on what your relationship is to the script and to the overall production, and how big the staff is. For starters, you should be able both to read and to create a budget. That’s pretty upsetting to some people, especially those who can’t balance a checkbook or do their own IRS forms, but I think I can lead you through the basics of budgets so that you will have a reading-and-writing capability in them. Directors need to know something about the financial side of filmmaking because (a) they have to know if there is money in the budget to do what they want to do, and (b) they may make a film all by themselves for which they serve as both producer and director. Ignorance of money matters in filmmaking is not bliss. There’s a nice little paradox here: If you’re working with a huge staff on a major project, you can simply tell the producer, “I need this. Find the dough.” And leave the worrying to him or her. If you’re operating in a tiny group, you and your producer will split chores because no one person can do everything. But in between—and that’s where most of our projects fall—you’ll have to know something about budgets.
There are a number of categories to deal with.
One Salaried positions. Who is going to be paid a weekly salary? How much do they get?
Two Craftspeople. Who is going to be hired for the dur
ation of the shoot? For how many weeks or days? How much should they get?
Three Sets, costumes, makeup, film equipment, and so on. How much will these cost?
Four Cast. How many actors will there be for how many days at how much per day? How much should they get for overtime? How much are the agents’ fees? How much for casting consultant?
Five Miscellaneous. Includes everything that doesn’t fit into the above categories.
That’s not difficult, is it? Look at the budget I’ve set up on the following pages. It’s more complex than the five categories I’ve outlined, but if you look carefully, you’ll see that everything in it fits into those basic categories. Where do you get the figures to plug in? That’s a matter of experience or going to the proper rental catalogs, unions, or personnel to make the deals. Those numbers are available, and the production manager or producer deals with them on most films (see chapter 3), but you should have a beginning acquaintance with these figures.
N.B. The terms “above the line” and “below the line,” which are traditionally used in budgets are omitted here. I find them unnecessarily confusing. If you encounter them somewhere in the industry, ask what they mean in that particular company. Also, what I’ve included here in “Category” and “Explanation” may not be entirely familiar. For the most part, these things are defined or explicated in the coming chapters or in the Glossary. For instance, personnel is discussed in chapter 3 and laboratory terms in chapter 9. However, the basic notion of a budget is laid out here.
BUDGET FOR A MODEST3 16MM FILM DRAMA4
Every budget should have, at the beginning, a note as to what it covers. Here’s mine. This budget is based on a four-week preproduction period; ten days of shoot; and ten weeks of postproduction. The film is to be shot all on location in Vermont.
What I’ve provided here are the categories and the figures—the bottom line—for a forty-minute dramatic film with ten main actors. You should, hereafter, be able to read such a budget and, with some effort, write one.
Directing for Film and Television Page 3