BOOK TO SCREEN
How to Adapt Your Novel
Into a Screenplay
FRANK CATALANO
BOOK TO SCREEN
HOW TO ADAPT YOUR NOVEL INTO A SCREENPLAY
COMPILATION OF SEMINARS HELD AT THE 25TH ANNUAL WRITER’S CONFERENCE
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
Copyright © 2009 / 2015 Frank Catalano
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.
ISBN-13: 9780692282946
ISBN-10: 0692282947
Lexington Avenue Press
www.lexingtonavepress.com
818-994-2779
BOOKS BY FRANK CATALANO
Art of the Monologue
Monologues they haven’t heard yet
The Creative Audience
The collaborative role of the audience
In the creation of the visual and performing arts
White Knight Black Night
Short monologues for auditions
The Resting Place
a play
Autumn Sweet
a play
Rand Unwrapped
Confessions of a Robotech Warrior
Che Che
A screenplay
Short Monologues for Auditions
Book to Screen is a compilation of lectures presented by Frank Catalano as part of the 25th Annual Writer’s Conference. The conference was sponsored by San Diego State University on February 6 through the 8th, 2009 at the Double Tree Hilton Hotel in Mission Hills, California. The following transcripts were presented and recorded by Frank Catalano as part of the programs offered at the conference. This book is in part based upon this and other seminars presented by Mr. Catalano.
Writers of fiction and non-fiction and industry professionals from the publishing business primarily attended the 25th Annual Writer’s Conference. Mr. Catalano’s seminars focused upon those writers seeking to adapt their novels into screenplays. The complete list of seminar presentations by Frank Catalano for this conference that have been published as individual volumes are:
Book 1: Writing Great Characters in the First Ten Pages
Book 2: Writing on Your Feet– IMPROVISATIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR WRITERs – Part 1
Book 3: Start Your Story at the End
Book 4: The First Ten Pages
Book 5: Book to Screen (compiled volume – Books 1 - 7)
Book 6 Acting It Out – IMPROVISATIOINAL TECHNIQUES FOR WRITERS - Part 2
Book 7 Writing Great Dialogue
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Book 1: Writing Great Charatcters in the First Ten Pages
1. Page to Screen
2. What an Audience Expects of You
3. Your Pitch
4. Getting Your Adapted Screenplay Read
5. Always Put Yourself in the Audience
6. Adaptation – Your First Ten Script Pages
7. Wrapping It Up
Book 2: Writing On Your Feet
Improvisational Techniques for Writers – Part 1
8. Writing on Your Feet
9. Writing Using Moving Pictures
10. Writing Using Your Five Senses
11. Manipulation versus Selection
12. Writing Using Improvisation
13. You Don’t Have To Be Funny to Improvise
14. Finding the Metaphor – How Not to be Literal
Book 3: Start Your Story at the End
15. What I Learned Working at a Motion Picture Studio
16. Adapting your Novel into a Screenplay
17. Write Like You’re Buying Toothpaste
18. Presenting Your Story to an Audience
19. Everyone is concerned with the end result not the process
20. Visualize Your Book as a Movie Trailer
21. Rosebud
22. Write Like a Painter
23. Who is Your Target Audience?
24. Start Your Story at the End
Book 4: The First Ten Pages
25. Location Location Location
26. Creating Inevitability in the First Ten Pages
27. Let’s Go to the Movies
28. Instant Gratification
29. Write Like You’re a Pole Dancer in a Strip Club
30. The Road Not Taken
31. Your First Ten Pages Description, Action and Dialogue
32. A Rose By Any Other Name Having the Right Title
33. Begin at the End
Book 5: Book to Screen
34. Rejection
35. Know Where You Are Going – Identify your Market
36. Working Your Way to Yes
Book 6: Acting it out
Improvisational Techniques for Writers – Part 2
37. Using Improvisation to Develop Your Characters and Story
38. Improvisation as a Creative Journey
39. Improvisation as a Creative Tool
40. Using Physicality to Create Characters and Tell Your Story
41. Page to Screen - Description Action and Dialogue
42. Let Your Characters Experience Your Story Through Their Five Senses
43. Developing Character - The Three “P’s”
44. How Bouncing a Ball Can Become Flying a Kite
45. Acting it out
Book 7: Writing Great Dialogue
46. Writing Great Dialogue
47. Production Distribution Exhibition
48. Description Action Dialogue
49. What Does Dialogue Do?
50. Other Qualities of Dialogue
BOOK TO SCREEN
How to Adapt Your Novel Into a Screenplay
COMPILATION OF SEMINARS HELD AT THE 25TH ANNUAL WRITER’S CONFERENCE
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
FRANK CATALANO
INTRODUCTION
I WANT TO welcome you to BOOK TO SCREEN and the 25th Annual Writer’s Conference. It has been a great weekend!
Okay, we are a very eclectic group today from all parts of the country so this is going to be a lot of fun. What I want to talk to all of you about today is the conversion of a novel to a screenplay. There are several different ways I want to approach this topic. But first, for those of you that I haven’t already met, I wanted to provide to you a little bit of background information about me. Before I forget, I am also sending around a sheet so that you can put your name and an email address so that I can send you written notes from today’s presentation. That is of course optional – you do not have to provide contact information.
My name is Frank Catalano. I am a college professor teaching at the School of Theatre (now School of Dramatic Arts as of 2012). I teach acting, writing and theatre and all different kinds of elements of presentational performance. I also teach Humanities courses that include visual and performing arts: painting, sculpture, film, television and audience studies. My acting classes are both on camera and stage. As a theatre producer/playwright I have had productions at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in Los Angeles and have had shows produced in New York City and other parts of the country.
In addition to academia, I was an executive at Warner Brothers Studios and Lorimar Productions probably the longest. I had various positions including consultancies, packaging, marketing and writing. I had what is called a first look writing agreement at Warner Brothers for the development of motion pictures and television productions. Working at a movie studio is a great experience. The studio provides a framework to develop everything you write although they are not obligated to produce it. So you set up shop there, you write, you work with other writers sometimes. But, the hard part of that process is that not very much gets actually made. In a large studio universe, producing w
as something totally different than writing. I just primarily focused on the writing.
I am also an author. *I have two books out: Art of the Monologue (2007). It’s a theatre book for actors with original monologues and a large section on monologue performance theory. I’ve also had plays produced and published. I have a new play being published right now and I have a brand new book coming out this month called The Creative Audience – The Collaborative Role of the Audience in the Creation of Visual and Performing Arts (2009) and so it is not being sold in the lobby.
*Since this 2009 presentation, Frank Catalano has published the following books:
Art of the Moologue (2007)
The Creative Audience (2009)
White Knight Black Night – Short Monologues for Auditions (2010)
Autumn Sweet – a Play (2011)
The Resting Place – a Play (2011)
Rand Unwrapped – Confessions of a Robotech Warrior (2013)
Che Che – A Screenplay (2013)
Short Monologues for Auditions (2013)
Today, in this final presentation I want to put together all of the seminars we have had this weekend. So some of this is review and there will also be some new material.
So, let’s get started.
WRITING GREAT CHARATCTERS IN THE FIRST TEN PAGES
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
25th Annual Writers Conference
WORKSHOP TRANSCRIPT
HOW TO ADAPT YOUR NOVEL INTO A SCREENPLAY
BOOK 1
Frank Catalano
1
PAGE TO SCREEN
Writing Great Characters in the First Ten Pages
THE PRESENTATION OF your work to others is almost as important as the idea (the work) itself. That’s what I was thinking of before I came here today to meet all of you. What would be the best “frame” to put this seminar in? WRITING GREAT CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST TEN PAGES? What does this title actually mean? Let’s think of it this way. We have all probably been to McDonalds or Burger King?
(Audience laughter)
I know you have. You probably won’t admit it.
(Audience laughter)
And what are you getting? We “hope” that it’s a beef patty. Right? And why did we go there? Because eating fast good is a fast and inexpensive way to eat. We didn’t go there for the atmosphere. Now let’s take that same beef patty and place it in a really fancy restaurant. In Los Angles, we have Wolfgang Puck’s Grill in Beverly Hills. Now let’s take that same hamburger patty and maybe change the shape of it a little so it doesn’t look like a patty. We add carrots, potatoes, garnish sauce and other things around it. Present it in soft amber lighting, candles, and violin music playing… and now that hamburger patty that was under a dollar costs thirty dollars.
(Audience laughter)
But what has changed? Nothing. The only thing that’s changed is the frame that the “patty” has been placed within. And this is important to stress. It is not a lie in the sense that I’m not taking out the patty and putting it in my pocket and replacing it with a filet mignon steak. No, it’s the same patty. What has changed is the point of view and the framework of the presentation. That is the most important thing. The idea remains the same. By extension, the process for writing characters or converting characters from a novel is quite the same thing. It’s all how you frame them at the start of your story.
I want to explore the differences between the two mediums. So with that in mind, how many of you are active screenwriters?
(Audience member raising hand)
I’ve got one… I’ve got two. And you?
(Audience member: “Off and on…”)
But you have written screenplays. Have any of your screenplays been put into production?
(Audience member: “No, but it’s been work shopped.”)
Okay. How about you?
(Audience member: “I’m going to make my own film.”)
Great! Wonderful. And you know what? That’s the future. When you go to Warner Brothers and other majors and they might tell you, “Well, we just don’t know what to do with your project… it doesn’t fit in… it just won’t work for us.” Then there people, right out of film school, that don’t know the rules (that’s a good thing). They aren’t aware of what they are supposed to do or not do because the schools they attend never prepare them that way.
(Audience laughter)
They go out and they create a short film, a trailer or series of webisodes on YouTube and now they have something tangible to show the world. The discussion can be quite different then. “I have four films up on YouTube or Vimeo and have 50,000 or 100,000 hits. Would you like to view it?” What are they actually looking at? Yes, a sample of the writer’s work. But they are looking at much more. The work they view is a movie or series that would probably have never been made. So this is a very good way to go if you are developing your novel into a screenplay. You can do the same thing. You can put up portions of your work (trailers). When I say post, I mean shoot scenes or readings and put them up.
So, what do I want to say about writing great characters in the first ten pages? It’s a catchy title. I’m going to be straight with you.
(Audience laughter)
It really should be WRITNG GREAT CHARACTERS FOR THE MEDIUM or WRITING GREAT CHARACTERS FOR A PRESENTATION. But then, you wouldn’t come. But you are saying “What about the first ten pages?” Let’s talk about that. Writing great characters, we all want to do that. That’s a given… and we are primarily fiction writers (novels) and you have your characters set up in your books and within that medium, you have a certain methodology of development and narrative. You have the ability to to stop in the middle of a story and go into the childhood or a past event, which tells the reader something significant about your character. However, in film (and I will break down film into television and film) you don’t have that luxury. There is a general framework in feature film writing of approximately how long the screenplay should be and then on the production side how long the final film should be in relationship to the audience expectation. How long is an audience willing to sit in a darkened theatre watching a particular film? Probably, two hours for a normal showing of a story and maybe longer say three hours for a larger subject like Gandhi (1982), Dances with Wolves (1990) or Titanic (1997). There is an expectation of run time here. In film, you can’t meander off the main narrative for very long or risk losing your script reader or audience.
2
WHAT AN AUDIENCE EXPECTS OF YOU
Writing Great Characters in the First Ten Pages
WE’RE ALL AN audience at some time or another. When you go to the movies and we all go, what would you think if I were to say to you – ask you – what is the appropriate run time for a motion picture? In other words, if you get all dressed up, walk out the door and you buy your ticket for an 8:00 PM showing and you attend the whole showing, when do you expect to return home? Assuming you don’t stop somewhere after the movie.
(Audience response – two hours… about ten o’clock.)
Yes, ten o’clock. And what if you’re going to the opera?
(Audience laughter)
Nobody here goes to the opera? Are you with me on that one?
(Audience laughter)
I went to the opera CARMEN at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (home of the Los Angeles Opera) with Placido Domingo conducting and I sat there with my daughter. After Act 1, Act 2, there was a short intermission and I said to her, “Honey that was great!” I thought it was over because two and half hours had passed. She smiled at me and said; “Dad, it’s just the intermission.”
(Audience laughter)
“There are another three acts.” Three acts? So, I went straight to the bar.
(Audience laughter)
Okay, anyway… so there is a certain audience expectation, which is somehow attached to the medium in which a work of art (film, television show, novel) is presented. No one wrote this down. There are no traffic cops there if it is not
followed. But there is an unstated expectation. Certain media or mediums evoke a specific audience expectation. There is some evidence typically in motion pictures that this is the case.
If we were to go back in time to let’s say 1939 when 90 million people went to the movies every week. When you attended a movie in 1939, you looked up at the theatre marquee and it might have had a particular actor’s name above the title. Something like “Judy Garland in the MGM Sensation – THE WIZARD OF OZ.” But above it all would be the name of the studio that owned the theatre – Paramount, Warner’s, MGM/Lowe’s, Fox or Universal. These were the five major studios at the time. My point is the production entity which might have been Paramount or Warners – any one of the big five owned the production of that film, hired (as contract employees) all the above the line (as non contract employees) and below the line creative people. They also owned one hundred percent of the distribution and owned the physical theatre – the brick and mortar building where the film was exhibited.
(New female audience member enters the room – but there are no seats. Catalano, provides his own.)
Here take mine. Chivalry is not dead.
(Audience laughter)
Why don’t you sit right over here?
And they owned the physical theatres (brick and mortar), which meant… if the movie (run time) ran long, they didn’t care. If the movie was bad, they didn’t care.
(Audience laughter)
…of course they want the films to be good. But really, it didn’t matter because they knew they had 90 million plus people a week going to the movies. No matter what.
(Audience laughter)
No, seriously… and it was given. They could put a chicken chasing a worm up on the screen and they knew they were going to make their numbers. Why? They owned the very seats the audience sat on. They owned the candy, the popcorn. They owned everything and were able to keep all of the money they made after costs. What about today?
Today, let’s use the same example. Paramount is part of a larger corporation – Viacom that owns the studio, may own the distribution of a particular film. However, they no longer own the physical movie theatres. Studios had to give up ownership of exhibition (movie theatres) in 1948 by order of the Supreme Court (Paramount Decree). Movie theatres today are owned by exhibition entities independent of the producing company of a particular film. What this means is that all those multiplexes we go to are separate corporate chains that Paramount (Viacom) has to negotiate with to place a film for exhibition.
Book to Screen Page 1