So these three P’s become part of the “Who” you create within an improvisation. You might not want to do all three at once within a short improvisation, but these three P’s could be a useful tool to develop your character within several improvised scenarios. The overall goal is to develop multifaceted characters that have many levels rather than one-dimensional stereotypes. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to develop your character, make choices about selecting certain elements to develop.
Lastly, I want to say this about improvisation – have fun!
Now when I say have fun, it really sounds like a very cliché statement. But what I really mean is to find the joy in the creative process. Creating anything, can sometimes be very frustrating because we have a certain idea in mind and when we try to take that idea a put it to paper, it somehow loses something. Improvisation is all about, letting things flow and then selecting out what is created what will work for your idea. I know it’s very hard for some of you to just let go and see where your characters and story will take you. But if you will let that happen you will discover things that are within you that you don’t even know exist. Not every idea you have is going to be great. A lot of your ideas might just be okay and then some of them might be awful. But that’s where we come in, we let the creative juices flow and then select only those ideas that work for us. Find the joy in this… let it be a place you go to over an over again to explore. So let’s try some?
(Audience laughter)
Are we allowed to mess this room up a little bit? I just want to move the seats out this way so we can make a circle. I won’t ask you to sizzle like a piece of bacon or bark like a dog… so don’t worry. Right about now, you’re saying to yourself: “Where’s the door… I’m a writer not an actor… why did I sign up for this?”
(Audience laughter)
“I could have been in the agents seminar.”
(Audience laughter as they move chairs)
Okay… excellent… just as long as we can a nice round circle to work in. Does anyone have a problem standing for a few minutes?
(Audience reply: “No.”)
You mean I have to stand? I’m outta here! Okay, there’s a lot of us… so we will have to squeeze this circle a bit… but we’ll get it done. This is the closest thing (we are about to do) to being a piece of sizzling bacon… and then that’s it. I am going to tell you why we are doing it… what we are about to do is an exercise in accepting what you receive in an improvisation. No matter what you get, you will have to use it as given to you. Some of you are going to see this coming around the circle toward you and think that you have a wonderful idea and then before it gets to you, someone else has done what you thought of. Once that happens, you have to come up with something else. No repeats… this is quick and easy without any dialogue. What I have in my hand is an ordinary pen. What I am going to do is make this pen into something. It can be the total object or just a part of it… a handle or something like that of a much larger object. Okay? What I am asking you to do is take this object and create something out of it other than a pen. We will start with me… I am going to make something out this pen, and use it. Then, I’m going to pass it to my left and you will take what I have made, use it… then make something else out of it and pass it to your left. If you don’t know what I am handing you, give it back and make me keep working on it until it is clear to you. Now, remember no repeats. So once an object is created, it cannot be repeated.
(Audience laughter)
Just let it happen. You can do so sound effects if you want… like “ho ho!”
(Audience laughter)
(The group silently creates different objects and passes them to their left as instructed)
Okay, great. You need to use what she has given you first.
(Audience member with Scottish dialect makes a bagpipe: “Oh, bloody hell, I can’t play this thing!”)
Okay, we have a few actors in the group today.
(Audience member: “I need to put this into your mouth… louder… louder!”)
(Audience applauds)
That is a perfect example of using the object as an extension of something else.
(Audience laughter)
(Audience member creates a vibrator then groans in ecstasy)
I bet none of you thought we would see that one.
(Audience laughter)
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HOW BOUNCING A BALL CAN BECOME FLYING A KITE
Acting it out
OUR CIRCLE EXERCISE was a warm up and a nice evolution of receiving something using it and taking it to another level. Now one more time around with a bouncing ball.
(Audience member: “Where’s the ball?”)
Oh? I forgot to tell you. You are going to create the ball.
(Audience laughter)
The ball that we create is just the starting point. Now what I want you to do is create a ball. Not too big. Not too small. Something the size of a basket ball and I want you to start by bouncing on the floor. Just like you would a basketball. Like this.
(Catalano demonstrates)
Okay, now you try it.
Just bounce the ball and then pass it back to me. Okay, so now I have just caught a bouncing ball from her – now I want to have you think about accepting what you get… sometimes when you get something in an improvisation, you just don’t change it on the spot. Okay, now we have established a bouncing ball as our starting point but remember what we talked about. The bouncing ball is just the starting point – then the physical “bouncing” can evolve into something else quite different. The hard part here is for you to let it evolve on its own and not try to force something on it. Just let it evolve on its own and see where it leads you.
We are starting today with a bouncing ball but this could be a more complex idea that starts out one way and then becomes something else. An improvisational scene works the same way -- you can place your characters into one idea and on its own evolves into something totally different.
(Catalano passes the ball to the Audience member)
One more time if you don’t mind.
(Audience member bounces the ball again and passes it back to him)
Okay, she passes me a bouncing ball. I am just using this physicality of bouncing a ball, but slowly it starts to change.
(Catalano mimes bouncing a ball)
Now as we speak, this ball (or physicality) is taking on a life of its own and slowly becoming something else. What will it become? I’m not sure.
(Catalano’s movements start to change)
It’s clearly becoming something else… but I am not sure what it is… because I’m talking to all of you and I can’t do two things at one time. It’s okay to not know what it’s going to be… it’s okay to not “think” too much about this. You’re just allowing it to happen and let it become something else. As it changes my physicality begins to evolve.
(Catalano’s movement change slowly)
I truly have no control over this other than I am using the energy of the physicality to take me to another physicality.
(Slowly Catalano’s movements change from bouncing a ball to flying a kite.)
I had no idea that I would be flying a kite today and now we have something entirely different.
(He stops moving.)
So what happened? I started out bouncing a ball and it evolved on its own into flying a kit. So my part within the creative process with this simple example was to allow it to happen on its own and then to “select” what it became as it evolved. I could have let it go longer and it might have evolved into something else. This is the process you must undertake when you utilize improvisation to expand your characters and storyline of your novels. It will also assist you with the adaptation process in converting your novels into screenplays or plays for the theatre.
Now, I would like you all to pair up and try this exercise on your own. You don’t have to start with a bouncing ball. You can pick any physical activity. Once you have established that activity then pass it on t
o your partner. Don’t pass it on until you both know what it is. If the person receiving doesn’t know send it back.
(Approximately five minutes passes as audience performs both parts of the exercise.)
Okay, so now we know how a bouncing ball can become flying a kit. You can do the same process of discovery using words along with your actions. Shall we give it a try?
How much time do we have left?
(Staff member indicates a short amount of time.)
We will do a shortened version with words because we are almost out of time for today.
I want you all to stay in your groupings of two. Identify who is “A” and who is “B.”
Good. Now I want the “A” people to come up with a word. Don’t say it.
Does everyone have one? Good. Now start your improvisation with that one word just like you did with the bouncing ball. Just say the word and “B” just respond with a word. Keep going until you have evolved into talking in sentences.
Okay, go!
(Approximately three minutes pass.)
Okay, please take a seat.
How many people here within this short period of time started to develop characters and a situation -- “Who” and “What.”
(Several audience members raise their hands)
What kind of relationships did you discover?
(Audience members raise their hands)
(Audience member: “Husband and Wife.”)
Okay.
(Audience member: “Shoe salesman and customer.”
All right!
(Audience member: “Boyfriend and girlfriend breaking up.”)
Ouch!
All right, in that instance we have both characters and situation.
Great.
Our time is almost up for today. We have to give up this conference room to the next program. I want you all to know if there any questions about any of the concepts that we have discussed today, that I am available just outside
45
ACTING IT OUT
USING IMPROVISATION CAN help writers to think out the box. When we get up on our feet, it forces us to use all of our senses and try ideas that we might otherwise reject if we sat in front of our laptops thinking about it.
This is an important point. As writers we have the tendency to think too much. So Acting it out is way to cut the thinking or intellectual process off. It allows our other creative sources to kick and take us to places we might no otherwise go. When we intellectualize we edit and when we edit we stop or slow down the creative process.
When we act out we find that every story has a who, what when and where automatically. On our feet we experience it in the same way the audience experiences it. If we let our creative juices flow, our role then becomes one of a selective process. Where we can select from those ideas or elements we discover. Getting up on our feet and acting it out makes us look at our ideas in many new ways. Which take me to my next point – that is listening.
We talked about listening today and through listening we should find a creative means of acceptance. We discussed that we have to accept those elements introduced within an improvisation. Remember our example of the elevator. One actor says can you press the 14th floor and the other rejects it and says they are on a bus stop. We instead have to look at the creative process as we act it out as one where we accept every element with a “Yes” and then we using our own creativity use an “and” and add something to it. In this manner, we can discover elements of our original idea that we may never have thought about. This is a simple process that allows us to go on a journey and not always know where it will lead.
It’s also important to make interesting choices and avoid being literal. Remember our example of the improvisation about the apple. The original word was “apple” and then the entire scene was about the apple. Instead we talked about raising the stakes and making the apple represent something quite different. In this case, the apple would just be the starting point. We can raise the stakes through intensifying our character’s desires or motivations to do what they do and of course provide internal or external obstacles to prevent them from achieving what they want. Audiences like a happy ending where everything works out -- but they also want to work for it. We don’t want to make it easy, funny and without any tension. Even comedy has tension. If we all just agree to agree we really don’t have drama.
Now we have come full circle. Remember that improvisation is a tool for writers to use to create more interesting stories and characters. This means that not everything you discover will work. Improvisation just takes you there and presents you with a choice. You have to select those elements that work for your story and reject those that do not. That is the essence of the creative process.
Think of Thomas Edison and his greatest achievement of perfecting a light bulb.
Edison: “Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”
Using improvisation and acting out your ideas is your method of experimentation.
I want to thank you all for being such a great group today! Give yourselves a hand! Thank you again for attending ACTING IT OUT as part of the 25th Annual Writer’s Conference.
(Audience applause)
WRITING GREAT DIALOGUE
SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
25th Annual Writers Conference
HOW TO ADAPT YOUR NOVEL INTO A SCREENPLAY
BOOK 7
Frank Catalano
46
WRITING GREAT DIALOGUE
Writing Great Dialogue
THE PURPOSE OF today’s seminar is writing great dialogue that can be writing dialogue within the context of a novel, play or a screenplay. Now most of you are fiction writers here today. If you take what you have written and develop your material into a screenplay, you would have to take your fictional work, which may be between 300 – 400 pages and have to reduce it down to a screenplay of 120 pages.
Your task would be to take your story, characters and description and fit them into an entirely new format designed for a new media. I want to say up front that I’m not counting pages. I don’t do that. So if your screenplay turns out to be 130 pages that’s fine with me. There are no hard fast rules of engagement here, where you fall through a trap door in the floor into a pool of alligators if your screenplay is longer than 120 pages.
(Audience laughter)
What I am saying is that if you write your screenplay in the appropriate format and it is for a full-length motion picture, it is going to come out around 120 pages. An excellent format book for appropriate screenplay format is The Complete Guide to Standard Script Formats, Part 1 by Judith H. Haag and Hillis R. Cole.
If you adapt your 400-page novel into a screenplay and it is 200 pages, it is too long for the intended medium of a motion picture. It might work as a mini series or limited series. A mini series can fun from three to four and half hours. A limited series would be more likely one-hour episodes with a smaller number to completion of each season. Let’s say eight to ten. It is not the same as a mini series that are really extended movies for television running on the average three to four hours in length.
The target page number for motion picture screenplay is approximately 120 pages, which will translate into a roughly two-hour film. Okay, so who makes up these rules? Why does the motion picture format have to be that length?
If it is coming through the door as a “spec” script, it will be looked at differently than a project, which is studio, developed or brought in by a well-established producer or writer.
Now even though you are writing a script that originates from a novel that you authored, it will still be considered a spec script. When it is read, and it will be read or covered, the reader will want to access your ability to convey characters and story for the film medium. We discussed this earlier this week that fictional writing is quite different than cinematic storytelling.
In short, they will want to be able to connect to your story and characters within what will be a two-hour presentational framework. It is generally accepted that the running time of the average motion picture should be approximately one hundred-twenty minutes. As a screenwriter, you must decide what elements of your novel to include and make decisions the will enable you to you’re your story in that amount of time. That’s the creative reason, but there is also a business reason to craft your screenplay within 120 pages.
47
PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTION EXHIBITION
Writing Great Dialogue
THE CREATIVE PROCESS, which takes a motion picture from its inception, to production to distribution to finally showing at your local movie theatre, can be divided into three categories.
Production:
This is the development and implementation of the creative idea that includes the writing, the production, actors, directors, designers and producers, which participate in the making of the movie. Once the movie is completed and studio management approves the final cut of the negative, the film is locked. They used to call it “in the can.” But that’s not really true anymore because most if not all films are digital. The can no longer exists… it’s now a digital file. But the process remains the same. Once the final cut of the film is approved it is ready for distribution.
Distribution:
This is the marketing and “distribution” of the film to individual outlets such as movie theatres. If the film were intended for other outlets such as streaming or DVD, this would be the same process. This process includes the marketing, posters, and advertisements, talent interviews that promote and distribute the final film to the public. Years ago it also would include the physical creation of “prints” of the film on celluloid to be distributed to movie theatres around the world. Once the film is delivered and the marketing is in place, the process of exhibition takes place.
Exhibition:
This is true to the meaning of the word. It is the physical playing or showing of the final film (print) to the public. In short, it’s your local multiplex or cinema. It is the brick and mortar movie theatre, the seats, the popcorn, the candy, and the tickets. All that sort of thing. The showing of the film to the public.
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