Independence Day jumps through this model like hopscotch:
Act 1: The film opens as Will Smith starts another day as a put-upon suburban guy unsure of his life.
Act 2: …then the aliens invade, which qualifies as a crisis. So he now has to figure out how to get rid of the aliens.
Act 3: He finally defeats the invaders but he ends up also becoming a better family man for his efforts. So it’s back to normal life but now that’s a better normal life.
Twist this model the other way and you get fascinating combinations. Chris Nolan’s Memento simply reverses the whole structure while Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs chops up the model and swaps bits around. In both films you know the end before you know the beginning, but you crave to know why it all happened.
(BIG) SECOND OPINION
Try something different – it’s your movie.
Hold fire – Do you have a problem with the Classic Three Act Structure? You’re not the only one, a lot of people do – it starts well and delivers action or excitement early on. But it gets most predictable in Act 3, when it’s all too easy to see where the movie is going. That’s when it has least room for maneuver: it traps itself into a corner as it tries to tie up the story threads to make a convincing plot, but at the same time create unexpected twists.
The classic structure doesn’t suit everyone. It’s been around a while, for sure, but can it offer what you need? If you feel it is lacking something, try some of these ideas for new ways of laying out your story.
The David Lynch-messes-with-your-mind method
If you have seen a Lynch movie it looks like the director took a look at the Three Act Structure and thought it had about as much use to him as last week’s cherry pie. Lynch’s films are like nightmares constructed out of bits of old movies, served up on daytime TV.
FIGURE 3.1
Try it: Clash a few genres together; work on several lines of story at the same time; make these plot lines collide in unexpected ways; find the absolute strangeness of the most normal suburban towns. You don’t have to explain anything, in fact the more loose ends the better; but it all has to make sense in its own warped way.
THE ANY-DIRECTION-BUT-HOME METHOD
Some new indie directors think the THREE-ACT Structure is so far from life as we know it that it just feels plain wrong to make a movie that way. Some of the most articulate movies like this have been from the so-called “mumblecore” directors. Mumblecore movies are casual, semi-improvised, authentic and low-fi. They feel real, they let people talk over each other, stuff happens, then other stuff doesn’t happen.
In movies like Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs or Zach Braff’s Garden State, the story is so low key it’s under the radar. If Three-Act Structure movies have stories that go forward in a straight line, mumblecore movies zigzag around like the path of a bumblebee (or a mumblebee). For these movies the point is in the traveling, not the arriving. It’s about wonder and awe, at how life really is.
FIGURE 3.2
Try it: Spend a long time on the characters; rehearse and improvise with your actors; thin down the plot further and further to give the characters room to explore their lives and their situations. Avoid endings.
THE LONG-PLAR-VIDEO-GAEM METHOD
If you play any kind of video game you’ll know that plotlines when they exist are not all wrapped up neatly at the end, and the whole point of good game-play is to stretch out the journey the game takes you on, never reaching an end. The enjoyment and thrill is in the voyage you go on, the people you meet, the obstacles you overcome. It doesn’t need to give you a neat ending where the meaning of all these travels is summarized in some cheesy way – because life isn’t like that anyway. It’s like an action-packed version of the previous method.
And it might explain why most video games make lousy films, with scriptwriters trying to fit the long and winding route that is the video game story into the straight and narrow of the Three-Act Structure. TV shows like Lost work like video games, developing a multitude of stories and ideas, making it a neverending mix of possible directions to go in. For movies this can be a great way to avoid clich’s, and concentrate on characters.
FIGURE 3.3
In this diagram, each of the circles arises out of the main central theme in the middle. They don’t have to be entire episodes or parts of the movie – instead they are parts of the whole which you hop in and out of randomly. You might expect to hop onto three or four in each section or each episode of the story.
Try it: Use the road movie guide in Chapter 44 as this is the closest type of movie to the video game. But also spend a lot longer developing your characters, giving them as much backstory as you can think up.
Experts’ Tips
Richard Chance, director, The Day I Tried to Live, UK
“[A script should have] a beginning, a middle and an end, not necessarily in that order. With short films the telling of the tale has to be punctuated, there should sometimes be a twist at the end, like the telling of a good joke that will hopefully remain in the reader’s mind afterwards.”
Ben Rutkowski, filmmaker, USA
“Ask yourself what would happen if the exact opposite thing happened at that moment.”
Jason Korsner, film director, 2 Hour Parking, Los Angeles/London
“I always work from a script, correctly formatted, to give me a good idea as to how long it’ll be. Laid out correctly, it also gives you the best chance to make sure you’ve shot everything and you can note shots in the margin.”
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WHATEVER METHOD YOU US E TO MAKE THE SCRIPT, WATC H OUT FOR THE MOST COMMON PROBLEMS IN SHORT fILMS
Long sentences of exposition, like where you explain the background to the plot. Avoid this by using visual clues to show information.
Over-long scenes. The audience can figure out a lot of the plot without so much help. Many of the best, for instance Robert Towne’s Oscar-winning script for Chinatown, cuts the dialogue just when you think the punch line is coming, leaving us to fill it in.
Too many scenes. Keep it simple and try to take something out of your script every time you redraft it without losing the meaning.
Too many characters. Restrict your short film to three main characters, and maybe a couple more secondary characters.
Over-complicating. Keep the story simple enough to enable you to add ideas while shooting. Keep dialogue simple and instead let your camera show the subtext, the real meaning below the surface.
Dull characters. If you want exciting, real characters, you have to make them unreal, larger than life.
Cheap endings. Avoid quick, hastily resolved endings. Let questions hang in the air rather than wrap it all up too neatly.
Not enough tension. Conflict moves everything forward in a plot. Put things on a collision course: people, events, needs, desires, hopes. People argue, they miss the boat/plane/bus, they want different things out of life, they compete, they win and lose – in short, if it can go wrong, let it go wrong. Everything can be cathartic, so it doesn’t have to be a depressing movie.
Important things in the plot don’t get said or seen – they are instead hinted at or happen off-camera. Make sure the audience is there for every important event. Let us see everything.
Events are toned down. Whether your characters suffer or whether they are happy, it has to be big time, with no half measures. They’ll be on cloud nine or in hell.
FIGURE 3.4 Celtx software enables you to create a script and navigate between it and the visuals.
CHARACTERS
Build your characters’ backstory
1. Real characters. Base them on real people you have known. Think of people you have met; what they did; how they spoke; what they were like when drunk, laughing, eating, driving, and so on.
2. Use details to bring them to life. Include quirks of speech, like words that betray their background in a small town; or small things they do such as practicing an imaginary guitar when bored; or clothes they wear,
such as a scarf with sentimental value.
3. Give them weak spots or hang-ups. These can be brought out in a crucial scene to raise the tension level higher. For instance, a phobia about the color blue, or a memory of a previous date that went wrong, or a nightmare that haunts them.
4. Have opposite elements in a character. Make your character threedimensional by allowing them to have completely opposing forces in their personality. Try to balance a positive trait, for instance courage, with an opposing one, like a messed-up home life. How much the positive outweighs the negative is up to you.
5. Build character dialogue. Everyone has a rhythm in the way they talk, a bit like music. It comes from the place they grew up, from how confident they are, what age they are and more. They have a particular accent; they use words that show what education they had; they might use professional or leisure jargon (like surfing words, or words connected to their job as a football coach). The number of words they use is due to all these things. To create fully rounded, real characters, work with your actors or with some friends and get people to talk and rehearse in character. If you have trouble writing good dialogue, just get a rehearsal going and record the conversations you have. If you record real speech it’s easier then to get the rhythm right.
SOFTWARE
Software can speed up your work a lot. Free, integrated software like Celtx (www.celtx.com) can help you move easily between script and storyboard, and work on logistical stuff like budget too. You can write lines of dialogue and then switch to another page and fill in character development. You can then scan the script later to figure out who is needed for the production schedule, all in one package. Scriptwriting.
Scriptwriting software is available such as the market leader Final Draft (www.finaldraft.com) or online software such as Scripped Writer (www.scripped.com).
Experts’ Tips
Kerry David, producer, My Date with Drew, Agent Cody Banks, College Sucks, Los Angeles
“Story is EVERYTHING! Giving us special effects or some funny lines, beautiful faces, or stylish clothes never makes up for disappointing us in story. I think that the emergence of independent cinema as a more accepted choice for mainstream audiences stems from these filmmakers having unique and distinct voices with genuine stories to tell. We go to the movies to escape and be transported to new and complete worlds, so when they fall short, we are disappointed. The studios try to capture a huge audience with each film. Understandably they have investors to please and they are trying to make money more than they are trying to make art, but we as independent filmmakers can decide to tell captivating stories and hope an audience will find us.”
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Chapter | Four
Budgets
OVERVIEW
Stop your movie milking you of cash – get a tight rein on your budget before you start shooting and keep your film on track.
The budget means the total that the film costs you – or would have cost you – from prep to editing. Every film has a budget, even when you get everything for free. It’s good to get into the habit of doing budgets so that you think in terms of cost on every film you make.
Films divide up costs into two sections. The first (called above-the-line) is to pay those people involved artistically: director, producer, writer, and actors. The second section (called below-the-line) covers everything else, such as set construction, costumes, makeup, equipment, travel, food and so on.
In most low-budget short films the first section is usually zero, since everyone works for free, for the love of the movie. It’s the second section that takes up your cash – the costs of SD (Secure Digital) cards or tapes, travel, food, lights and so on.
THE MOVIE FREEBIE EXCHANGE RATE
Filmmakers are notorious for getting stuff for free. They don’t break any rules; they just know how to ask. In low-budget filmmaking, it is expected that you get what you can for free, but also that you give something back in return. For example, you might get a free use of a camera for a weekend, but agree to help the owner in their own shooting the following weekend.
The problem is, it’s hard to figure out exactly what you should offer to someone if you need their help. How much is a day worth as sound recordist, runner, or caterer? Every country, state or county has its own “exchange rate” so expect certain tasks to go up or down in value. As a starting guide, try these for size:
Table 4.1
You Want You Need to Offer
Loan of an HD camcorder for one weekend, plus spare batteries and cables. Work for one whole weekend on a movie the owner of the camera is making.
Use of a set of lights (one key lamp, two smaller lamps) for two days. A day’s work for the owner, or assisting with preproduction duties such as preparing schedules.
Camera operator for three days. Suggest a collaborative credit, such as co-producer, plus copies of the film. Or offer simply returning the favor by doing the same on their film.
Advice or guidance about an issue affecting your movie, several occasions or on call as a phone-in mentor. A day as runner or driver for this mentor’s production. They don’t make films? Then bake a cake or buy a create of beer.
Actor for two days free of charge. A copy of the DVD plus publicity stills on a CD, and an executive producer credit.
Use of an edit suite for two days at a public arts center. Cleaning of this or other edit rooms, or to assist with publicity or secretarial duties, for a couple of days.
Runner or general assistant for three days. Credit on the film, plus a copy of the DVD, plus food and travel expenses (fix a limit, however).
FIGURE 4.1 Exchange your skills and time for cameras or other equipment. If you borrow a camcorder for a weekend, offer to work another weekend for the owner on their own movie. (Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, ©bjones27 Image#8326566.)
Table 4.2 Budget example columns for self-funded 5 min. short film
Item Description Page of Budget Total
1 Props
2 Set dressing
3 Costume extra pages for
each category when
you have a detailed
breakdown for each
part.
4 Makeup
5 Camera operation
6 Sound operation
7 Travel
8 Electrical sundries
9 Editing sundries
10 Insurance
11 Catering
12 Tapes
13 Overheads
14 Contingency
15 Publicity
MORE FREEBIES
Ask TV news gathering companies if they have old tapes they can give you for free. They use them a limited number of times and then have to discard them, but the quality is still fine for many more uses.
Ask friends, family and supporters to sponsor your film at £1/$1 per second. They buy a second of the movie and get a credit in return.
Get discarded paint and set design materials from decorating companies – they partly use tins of paint and then store them.
Ask your former school or college to loan you space to use as a studio, giving them a big “thanks” message in the end credits. Tell them it’s good for your career.
WRITE THESE TIPS ON THE BACK OF YOUR BUDGET SHEET
1. Be realistic and make a budget you can live with and can actually pay for.
2. Add ten per cent on every predicted cost.
3. Resist mission creep: this means changes and additions you add in impulsively, which end up costing you a lot more.
4. A firm shooting schedule means a tight budget.
5. Shoot only what’s on the shooting script, and only then should you change and add new scenes, or extras.
6. Watch out for shared loans, shared costs, in fact sharing anything with anyone – it ends badly.
7. Get reductions, get free stuff: the main currency of movies at zero budget is goodwill.
8. Total and exhaustive prep work makes for few surprises and fewer extra costs.
9. Cas
h flow is everything – keep an eye on how much you need in daily cash.
10. Never, ever use credit cards to finance your movie. Pay for all costs up front. Remember how bad it feels to pay off last year’s holiday when it was a washout?
ESSENTIAL KIT OR RESOURCES
A spreadsheet program will help to keep costs in the right column, and will reassure people you work with that you are in control. Specialist movie software is not necessary; instead rely on tried and tested ways of having an amount to spend in one column and a second column with costs – then make sure the first stays bigger than the second.
Experts’ Tips
Armen Antranikian, film director/writer, London
“I think it is important to not only see filmmaking as an artistic matter, but as a business. It is important to understand early on that as a creative filmmaker, unlike a painter or musician, expressing your vision without many compromises might cost a fortune. In order to get a film financed and distributed it is essential to understand how the industry works. It has helped me to attend industry events, including film festivals and markets, and read the Trades, such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Screen International, to understand what is happening behind the scenes. It has influenced my creative approach and inspired my future ambitions. Even though it is essential to know about these things as a filmmaker, most film schools will never deal with it.”
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Stand-Out Shorts Page 3