9
WRITING USING MOVING PICTURES
Writing on your Feet
DURING THE ROBOTECH series, the writing and production (all of it) happened all at once. There was always a looming deadline hanging over our heads. To make matters worse, the writers and the actors for that matter during the making of the show were never really totally sure of what it was about. Like the CIA, we were just given small parts to work on and never really got a sense of the whole. This was not in anyway a nefarious plot to hide some dark secret from all of us. It was just the crazy nature of how that show came together. The big picture was really only known by one person, the shows producer the late Carl Macek (1951 – 2010). Carl had a creative vision for the show as a whole and had a sense of how the story was going to play out and would summarize each episode’s footage. Remember, the show was being written to already existing animated footage. What the writers wrote had to fit that footage; they couldn’t just write whatever they wanted. But the challenge was, what to write within that footage and to make sure it all fit as a whole. We used to call Carl Macek “the chees master” because he could look at a small clip or a whole episode in Japanese and then spin off (with extreme detail) what was going on in that particular episode and how it all fit in to the larger mosaic. For the rest of us… not Carl people… it was Japanese anime and we had very little to go on except the visual components of what we were looking at.
To write a Robotech episode, you would start with a plot summary (there was also a show Bible) and a twenty-two minute episode that had been time coded so that you can write the dialogue and effects in sync. One way to do it was to read the summary, and then try to figure out how to get that done ahead of time as if you were writing a script for a movie. But that really (in my opinion) doesn’t work because you have got to consider the footage. Remember, you are only writing the dialogue and reactions. Pretty easy... right?
Let me say, writing for anime is not for the faint hearted. You have got to be true to the characters (or the fans will fry you) and you have got to put words in the character’s mouths that fit. The real challenge is to try to find words that makes sense and at the same time fit into the characters moving mouths. If it were not written “in sync” then it would have to be written correctly in the studio by the director… trust me you don’t want that to happen.
A second method is to understand the framework of the story as stated in the summary. Know where you are going and where you have to end up and then let the characters tell you what they are saying. What I mean by this is essentially writing on your feet. Let the physicality of the characters determine what they say. It’s a lot easier, because you are not burdened by the structure of a preexisting script. Sometimes having a script is harder than “not” having a script. Once in a while, on some shows, we would get scripts written in English directly from Tokyo and they would be literal translations like “Hey watch it man or I will beat you into many pulps!”
(Audience laughter)
Even with their script, you have no story. Well you actually have less than a story so you are better off throwing the literal translation out and let the characters do the talking. Just play the footage and start talking for the characters as they move through the frames. What happens then? At some point the story and the characters start to emerge clearly and a framework is established. The same process happens with you view a movie with subtitles. In the beginning you read every word and then after a while you begin to understand character and situation over and above what is being written in the subtitle. Now, my experience with letting my characters talk has only one problem, sometimes they sound like me and say things that maybe I would say. This happens a lot in the dubbing studio when you are working very late at night… you are tired and suddenly your not voicing what is written but instead putting in your own “very in sync” lines. During the Robotech series, my character Rand is in the middle of an Invid invasion when he rides his version of a motorcycle up to another character’s mother and says something (I don’t remember what was actually written) but I said, and it fit perfectly “GET A JOB.” We recorded the correct line as well but somehow GET A JOB made it to the final cut and was aired as part of the show when it played on television. Of course, the Robotech fans, were not fooled for a minute and knew it was a mistake… but the fact is, the line still remains today and when I see Robotech fans, they ask me to autograph their pictures with “Get a job…”
So the immense power of writing on your feet is evident. But I will give you another example that is even sillier than GET A JOB. I was writing and co producing a series called The Adventures of Dynamo Duck for FOX KID’S NETWORK. I was part of a writing team that had to convert over three hundred hours of raw animal footage based upon the French film maker Jean Tourane’s idea for a children’s television series Saturnin le canard about the duckling Saturnin who had all kinds of adventures. The series was produced using real animals, dressed up with sunglasses, hats and other props that lived inside a miniature world. A small duck was the main character, fighting crimes of the evil Dr. Mortek (a monkey) and other assorted villains. The animals wander around on miniature sets with scale models of trucks and other vehicles. The duck’s name was changed to “Dynamo Duck.”
(Audience laughter)
Remember, this was not “wild life” footage – this was a duck wearing a bow tie driving a little car and or flying a biplane. None of the animals were hurt – nothing like that. But this series was totally written on its feet!
(Audience laughter)
Basically, our first step was take all the raw animal footage and cut into smaller workable sections. We did this in a studio at my home doing what they called back then “paper cuts” and then would assemble the raw material into actual episodes. I think we did about two hundred of them. Each episode had the same reoccurring characters (ducks, gerbils, frogs, goldfishes, weasels) but each had a different stand-alone storyline. Almost all of the writing was done “on its feet” working off the visual images that were contained in the footage that was cut for each episode. There was no way we could, apart from the footage, come up with “gags” or setups with payoffs at the end as you would in a traditional script. Also, remember, we had to tell a story. There had to be a narrative structure with a beginning middle and end. My writing partner for this project, Gregory Snegoff worked for hours creating what finally became the basis for all cut footage and dialogue spoken for each episode. After we created the framework, we gave some of the episodes to other writers to complete specific “in sync” sections of dialogue. You may be wondering “How do you write “in sync” dialogue to a duck or a gerbil?” That is a seminar all into itself and Greg Snegoff is the master at putting words or sounds in the mouths of just about anything you could imagine. An example for the Dynamo Duck character, the actual duck used in the filming (there were probably several) would from time to time shake his head. We wrote actual lines every time the duck would move his mouth (no computers here) and then (no matter when) if the duck shook his head, we would insert a “sheesh” to the line. Here we are working directly off of the visual image. So the visual image is the key.
There was one episode that featured a whole group of little yellow ducklings waddling about, dressed in little pirate hats. So, we decided to use the footage we had and do a pirate story. We cut the footage and wrote a short summary of the storyline that should go with it. All a scriptwriter had to do was write dialogue. The writer who was assigned came back a few days later and said, “I can’t do this anymore!”
(Audience laughter)
“I don’t know what to write? I’ve used my three pirate jokes and now I don’t know what else I could write for them to say?” My reply? Stop thinking in terms of literal narrative (duck jokes or pirate jokes) (he was in fact an excellent writer) with a setup and pay off. Just watch the footage and let it lead you to a situation and the rest will take care of itself. Writing on your feet is a moment-to-moment kind of a thing. That’
s the best approach to this sort of writing. Because he had written the same way all his life, he just couldn’t grasp it and many writers approach their work in the same manner.
And so my point is, sometimes we have this overall concept of something we want to tell and we can’t do it because we are locked into the idea itself and don’t know where to start. How many times have we had the blank page and no matter what we right we say to ourselves over and over again…“no that’s no good” “no that’s not right…” Instead, think about just taking it moment to moment. It could be a simple little thing we you start with a situation where two characters come into a space. And that’s all you’ve got to start with. The say, “Hi how are you?” Your two characters are on a bus stop and one of them is a CIA agent. Then, Go! And all of a sudden the two begin to connect and react to one another in that simple space. One speaks, then the other back and forth back and forth. Now, out of that exchange a couple of things can happen.
One, it totally dissolves into “nothing.” That’s part of being an artist. Two, it can begin to formalize and become something else. It flowers. But it becomes something totally different. Your CIA agent and the person they meet by chance at a bus stop fall in love. And now all of a sudden, it’s a love story. And you go, “Whoa, okay? I’ll take that.” Then you start building it from there.
10
WRITING USING YOUR FIVE SENSES
Writing on your Feet
SO, WHEN WE get up and start moving our characters, it gives us some opportunities. Number one, we can listen to them engaging our sense of hearing. Now, every one of us has a different sensory order. We all have five senses, but some of our senses are stronger for us, than others. How many of you think that? How many of you think that your senses are not equal?
(Audience reacts.)
So I would personally say that I am more of a “visual” person than a listener. So, I might remember what you look like but I may not remember your name. I can say that I am visually oriented. Second place for me would be “touch.” So I like to touch things a lot when I shop… and after that maybe “smell.” Listening for me is probably on the bottom of the list. My wife often says to me, “You know you never listen to a word I say!” and I respond, “What?”
(Audience laughter)
Now I know you are going to say that’s a guy thing. Maybe and maybe not and sometimes you can create characters that are of different sensory centers. For example, a female character tells her male lover, “You never tell me you love me.” And the guy responds, “What are you talking about? I washed your car yesterday!” So she’s saying I want to “hear” you “I’m auditory” while he’s thinking, “I’m visual baby; here’s your car, I cleaned it. I could have been watching TV.”
How many have heard this? The male character says to his female lover, “I love you so much!” and she snaps back at him “Don’t tell me you love me… show me… stop drinking with your buds every night.”
It can work both ways. When we put our characters on their feet, we are engaging all of our senses instead of just doing it all in our head. We are engaging auditory, touch, maybe smell… let me ask you this… in your own universe, and do certain places have specific smells attached to them? And don’t those individual smell sometimes evoke certain emotions or memories for you?
(Audience member, “Oh, yeah… yeah.”)
I used to live in Hawaii (there’s a certain floral smell about that place) and I’m not talking about people working at the lei stands waiting for you when you get off the plane. No not that… Hawaii has a certain smell to it (like gardenias) that is unique and I could be walking at the mall in Los Angeles – somebody will walk by and they are wearing a gardenia type of perfume and it takes me right back to Hawaii. New York has a smell too… actually more than a couple of smells.
(Audience laughter)
and some of them…
(Audience laughter – audience member comment)
There is a smell in New York which I will never forget smelling as a child when my father drove over the Kosciuszko Bridge which was a truss bridge connecting New York City’s boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. When we drove over it the smell was something like rotten eggs mixed with a dead animal. It was horrible. My dad told me that we were driving by a meat processing plant and that’s why it smelled so bad. And now as an adult, when I smell something even remotely like that I am right back there, a child again in the back of my dad’s car, going over the Kosciuszko Bridge!
(Audience laughter)
So, smell does have a way… not that I’m saying we should spray ourselves.
(Catalano acknowledges audience member)
Yes? You were going to say something… I thought you were waving at me?
(Audience laughter)
What about auditory? We hear our characters… and what about touch? We watch how our characters respond physically to one another… we watch how they touch one another. We can also experience a visual picture as two characters relate physically that tells us the story. If two characters enter a space and you are writing them, let’s use our example of the CIA agent and at the bus stop.
(Catalano approaches an audience member to illustrate)
(Audience laughter)
Don’t worry… I won’t actually touch you.
(Audience member laughs)
I am playing your role and I sit down and I do this…
(Catalano assumes a specific physicality – sits very close but doesn’t touch.)
And you go, “Wait I’ve never thought of this. The CIA agent, ever so slightly, touches her. What does this mean? That’s for you to fill in with dialogue and narrative.
Forget about writing it… all you have to do is observe what is around you… that’s what actors do. Why was I sitting so close? Maybe, I was passing a small data chip to her… or maybe, I am trying to assassinate her. Let the characters on their feet create the visual picture and physicality while you fill in the rest with dialogue. And by the way, this is not fiction… this is real.
I sat on a crowded train once in New York and there was a guy reading a newspaper standing very close to me as the train moved.
(Catalano stands close to an audience member but doesn’t touch them.)
He was like this.
(Catalano moves closer to the audience member but doesn’t touch him)
While he never actually touched me, which was pretty hard to do since the moving train was tossing us back and forth, he was able to get close enough to smell me. I thought I smelled okay for that time of day.
(Audience laughter)
But this guy reeked to stale cigarettes smoke and mothballs. Not a very fragrant combination. We were so close to each other that you could barely put a sheet of paper between us. And yet, we did not speak or acknowledge on another. One could argue that the universe that they move within governs the distance between two people on a crowded train. That is… the train is crowded and so complete strangers exist, not acknowledging one another at all even though they are less than one inch apart. Maybe because they are so close, they can smell one another. One reeks of stale cigarettes and beer; the other of cheap cologne. What does that say about each character and how can you explain this? It can only be explained by the nature of the physical universe they live in. Now take this same scenario and move it to a place like Los Angeles. I was on line and a supermarket and I’m waiting on line and some guy is behind me… the check out person was moving very slowly.
(Catalano motions the check out person – audience laughter)
You know, one of those things. And the guy standing behind me has moved right up against me trying to make the line go faster. And the way he decided he was going to do that was to move up real close breathe down my neck and brush up against my butt. He did it once, then again and then a third time when I finally turned around and looked at him: “Don’t touch my butt! It’s not going to make the check out person move any faster.” I felt that he was invading my space because
in Los Angeles, where we are in our cars all the time and not closely packed together in trains – the amount of personal space we assume is much larger. If this same person were that close to me on a crowded train, maybe it would have been appropriate. So this is all part of writing on your feet.
All of this comes into play when you write this way. This heightened feedback and not all of it is going to be useable. Some of it is not going to work for your story. So, this method is going to tell you what to leave out as well. It is merely an experimental exploration that will provide to you a multitude of choices. You may say to yourself, “I like this, let’s see where it takes me.” Or “I don’t like this so I will not go in that direction.” It’s a wonderful way to start your adaptation to a screenplay or your book. Take two characters or even one character and place them in a situation (the who, what, when and where) and then see what they do. Let the characters and the universe you have created for them take you on a journey. In a moment, we are going to try a few of these.
11
MANIPULATION VERSUS SELECTION
Writing on your Feet
YOU CAN, AS a writer, participate within an improvisation. But many of you sitting here today probably don’t want to do that. You say to yourself, “I don’t want to get up, I am not an actor.” Or “I don’t want to improvise my idea to a room full of writers.” This is not a problem. If you are shy and you don’t like getting on your feet, get actors to do it for you. If you don’t want to share your idea, you can start your story from scratch or you can define a specific who, what, where or when. So if I said to you I have absolutely no idea about what I want to write about. I have no story. I have no characters… in short, I have nothing. But, I’m going to get two people and put them somewhere and create their physicality and maybe the universe they inhabit and start them off with just a word. Not even an important word… just a word… maybe something like “rosebud.” That’s it. I start the improvisation with that and from that starting point you go. You might have on your first page “CIA agent walks up to a bus stop and sits down next to a woman carrying a small leather bag close to her, like a rare book. He sits down very close to her (just like we have done today) and just says one word, “rosebud.” You may wonder what does that mean? You don’t have to know. Once the characters begin reacting to one another the meaning of “rosebud” begins to emerge. Then, you try the same setup with two different people and experience that situation as it evolves. There may be similar qualities or the situation may go in an entirely different direction. As the writer or creator, you use a process of selection rather than mental manipulation. What am I saying here? What is manipulation?
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