Writing For Films

Our latest lecture covered writing from a film-maker's perspective, which includes some themes that are unique, but also some that are universal. One in three ideas will be good, another (maybe) worth persevering with.

This morning our Film Making lecture covered writing for films. Although it was presented from a film-maker's perspective, there were themes that were universal.

From a film-maker's perspective, one in three scripts will be good, one will be so-so, and one will be not worth persevering with. That rule of thumb seems to apply across the board, so it's generally worth outlining three ideas simultaneously.

Very little in film is truly original, so there's no need to add pressure to oneself by looking for originality at the expense of characterization or other key elements. That's not to say that genuine innovation is bad, merely that it's not the be-all and end-all of scriptwriting. The key elements in filmic writing -certainly in Hollywood- are Character, Desire, Obstacle and Goal.

In terms of Character, we are given a character with whom we can identify. It may be that we are shown a Nice Guy.

What -or whom- does he Desire? It may that he is in love with the girl next door. The Obstacle may be the thug with whom she is going out.

The Goal will be how this inherent conflict is to be resolved. Either our hero gets the girl, or if he is beaten up by the thug, he may walk away from the girl, as the hero of Casablanca walks away from the girl, in the process achieving a new Goal.

One key text in this morning's lecture was James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas. The author is a former advertising executive hired by a major company to generate ideas, and he has some interesting points to make. I may well come back to this in more detail in a future blog, but Idea Generation is for a separate blog.

Behind The Scenes

Upsum

I've posted a couple of blogs already introducing the team and outlining some of the issues involved in the making of Doorways, our adaptation of Abigail Green's screenplay.

I've now added a behind the scenes film shot (mostly) by Teagan on Megan's camera. By some nifty footwork I managed to stay out of most of the footage (I hate seeing myself on film or hearing myself talk), although the sneaky bugger got everywhere and inevitably he got me. But it'll give you some idea of the chaos involved around people not turning up, and what goes on as people sit around for ages waiting to do thirty second's worth of film.



More in a day or two.

Some Reflections on Filming

Films are geared toward working in clusters of pre-production, production and post-production activities.

Most students want to work on a little of everything, but it seems to me that films are operations much better geared to batch working. So there are the pre-production aspects -- scriptwriting (without which nothing much can happen) casting, obtaining permissions, writing risk assessments, and obtaining initial music selections.

Production involves five main crew parts; the producer (like the one working hard on the right), director, sound engineer and camera-person, with the clapperboard operator an optional fifth in cramped conditions (in cramped conditions there's no reason why the producer couldn't double up.

Post production involves editing and sound editing (the first one involves the actual film).

More thoughts another time.

Meet The Team

A brief introduction to the cast and crew of Doorways, our short film, including who did what.


While we wait for the editing suite to save the first reel of film to the computer, I've got time to start a blog post.

It seems a good point to introduce the people with whom I've spent most of the weekend, from left to right Sound Engineer Jaeeun Jung and Exec Producer Baylea Hart (while off to the right is the unit's director, Julia Hien)

Cameraperson Megan Kelland;


Runner (and part-time actor) Teagan Lucas

And lastly, our three main actors, Joe, Matt & Emily - Joe is a musician who has done some
acting, while Matt and Emily are first year drama students; all of them turned in outstanding performances.

More tomorrow...

Hanging Around

Last night's post held over this morning, due to poster fatigue; hanging around is surprisingly tiring. Instead I'm going to do a small post, and another on Tuesday.




I was originally going to open with: 6pm on Saturday night; we’ve just finished for the day after8 ½ hours on set.


But it's now 9.40 am on Sunday morning, and I've got half an hour before leaving for the today's filming (which I hope is the last day). Fatigue caught up with me last night...so instead of a post last night and another today, I' doing a short post today and another on Tuesday (tomorrow I have a nine-hour day at uni plus travel time, which is not conducive to blogging).


As you have deduced, we got our permissions on Friday. However, the lead actor had a lecture which he couldn't get out of, so we started later than planned on Friday afternoon. The SU team were -as always- incredibly helpful, and having started two hours late, we managed to finish only an hour behind schedule.


Saturday was another story. Started late (the other male lead was late this time) and just got later.

Filming is an incredibly time-consuming and at time time-wasting process. Perhaps film crews get used to being at the mercy of the public, stopping to allow through traffic, smart-alec pedestrians who ‘know their rights’ and delivery vans – lots and lots of delivery vans...or maybe if you're the BBC or Miramax, you just hurl a wodge of money as compensation to all affected, and have the street closed off.

So if you think you’ll need two hours, allow four. Get ready to do it over and over again --one five sentence exchange required thirteen takes, partly because of Joe Public, partly because it was getting toward lunchtime and energy levels really do drop, meaning that people make more mistakes.

Either way, we wasted an awful lot of time, and for those not involved in the shoot, it can actually be more tiring than those doing the filming and acting. Partly because we have to keep focused for when we are needed, or to keep an eye on the bags.

As producer I combined overall responsibility with guarding the bags, keeping hold of the shot list and interveing in the film-making as little as possible. There were times when I felt a second explanation to the actors about how they needed to approach a scene helped, but I did try to minimize it. It's not particularly sexy, but just as every film needs spear carriers, so every crew needs runners. Only time will tell whether it was the right approach....

T Minus 80

An hour and twenty minutes to go. Either we get the equipment released, or we don't -- it's as simple as that. And if we don't, I have no idea what we're going to do.

80 minutes until we meet our Film Lecturer; my conscious brain is saying don't panic, there's no way he's going to fail you on the course, to rob six people of a chance of a BA for want of an e-mail is overkill.

My hindbrain is screaming eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

I'm not sure which one is winning at the moment. Every few minutes I check my in-box for the missing e-mail; my mouth is dry and I'm likely to fly into a rage with the washing machine or any other inanimate object that baulks me.

The problem is that as producer, it's my role to arrange permissions for our unit over the weekend. So we had to obtain agreement from the Student's Union Bar (which included filling in a risk assessment form), the pub where we'll be filming, the campus authorities and Bath Spa Council. In the case of the latter, they can literally stop a unit filming in the street (it happened to Al Pacino in New York on one occasion).

Because film companies must get written permission to film on both private and public property to cover them against potential legal action, it's mandated for the course as well. So it's understandable that it's a requirement, or the course wouldn't reflect industry practice.

The major problem is one that I didn't even realize was a problem until this morning. The pub, The Raven, has given us verbal permission, but they haven't confirmed it. So, how late are they going to leave it? And what are our chances of walking away with the kit?

It's now T minus 65 and counting down...

Timekeeping

My first ever three-way blog post, covering a detailed analysis of my work patterns, including writing for publication, blogging & reviewing, reading...and my four university subjects.


This will be the first time that I've written a cross-blog post that covers all three blogs --my general one, my specifically SF blog, and this one- but since the exercise that it relates to covers all my activities as a writer, and a creative writing student, it's particularly appropriate. There won't be many occasions though, when my SF blog and this one will overlap.


I've often quoted the hours that I work in broad approximations, but starting on the 1st of November, I started to keep detailed records covering writing (for publication), blogging, reading and 'other,' (ie everything that doesn't fit in those boxes) and of course, my four uni subjects. I've been as honest as I can be, since it's really for my own records.


I'll post up the results at the end of the month when I've correlated them all, but the interim results at the mid-month mark are surprising...perhaps even shocking. But you're just gonna have to wait, aren't you?

Paperwork

We have little time to get all the permits that we need, from permission from the council to film in the street, to written agreement from the pub; fortunately the Student Union bar is a little more media-savvy...

We only have five days until filming is due to begin and we're getting into what Alec Ferguson calls 'Squeaky Bum Time.' Our group has to have all the paperwork in order to be allowed to start filming, and we have very little margin for error.

As producer, responsibility for procuring the paperwork lies with me. Yesterday I learned that some of the salient details had fallen off the application form that I had sent to the Bath Film Office. Without their permission in the form of a permit, we can't film in the city's streets.

Fortunately, they were agreeable to issuing permission, pending us providing them with a risk assessment. They wanted evidence that we had thought about the perils inherent in filming on location.

Meanwhile, I'm still chasing The Raven for their formal agreement; having been taken around the pub by their team, there's no doubting their commitment. But their priority is running a pub, not filling in release forms for a university film crew -- but I shall nag them.

Fortunately, the Student's Union bar is proving more amenable, but they have experience of these events, so filling in permission forms is second nature.

I've left Megan and Julia to get permission from the University, but if the get any problems, I'll help them out.

Last Year's Model

This is what you can do at our level...

As recommended by Megan, here's one of last year's films.


I particularly like the use of music, which really fits well -something that's really hard to do at student level, and the nightmarish way that the perspective keeps shifting; just who is the voyeur? Is it the Claudia? Stuart? The silhouetted man? Or is it each of us that watches it?

If the film has a weakness, it's that the sound on the crucial dialogue is of very poor quality, and that that whole section, when Claudia breaches the fourth wall, is completely out of the blue. They've clearly not heard of foreshadowing -- that, or they felt that it wasn't needed.

And on a lighter note, I recognized that archway through which Stuart ran...we were filming there ourselves ten days ago!

Perfect

A short film featuring the Mighty Marc Warren....


You know how it is when you see that gorgeous girl (or guy)? How envious you feel --even if it's quickly squashed-- of their partner?


Here's Perfect, the ahem, perfect antidote to any such feelings. Because that perfect (wo)man might not be quite so...

Late Submission

Forms and deadlines wait for no man...

Even allowing for my certainty that we had very little time until shooting was due to begin, I've still been on the hop by that oldest of problems -- illness.

With two weeks to go, I should have had the forms asking Bath Spa Council for permission to film in by last Friday; by that time I had already gone down with a viral infection, so I rang the Film Unit in Bath and was reassured that the form didn't need to be in a full two weeks before, that Monday would be acceptable.

The problem was that I wanted to get the others to look the form over first to see if I'd missed anything, or got it wrong, but the virus delayed my getting it out to them until Monday, so it was late Tuesday before I got the form in -- effectively first thing Wednesday.

I can only hope that they'll cut us some slack. Without that bloody permission, we can't film at all. We'll just have to see.

Location, Location, And Once Again...

A good afternoon in all, with a couple of nice surprises thrown in...

We all met at the Hobgoblin in Bath this afternoon at 1pm -- the first time all six of us have made a meeting at the same time. Darren (the landlord) was as helpful and supportive as ever, but we had arranged to look at The Raven so we trooped off there.

Initial signs weren't good -- the bar staff were busy and to be honest we felt a little like interlopers, even when some of us ordered food and drinks. However, when Rod took us all down to the cellar, we noted much more enthusiasm -- even to the extent of his making suggestions.

Out of that came the news that the pub has cctv -- if we can splice that feed into the edit, then we get a win on the editing. And he has an office which he's agreed that we can use.

So we're happy -- we've solved two of our three outstanding location issues.

The Turning Point

In which things change, decidedly for the better...

I mentioned that something very good happened on Monday.

We managed to nail down the script to the point at which it was possible to start storyboarding it, and at that point Julia, Baylea and Jaeeun have stepped up to the plate. As Julia is directing, this makes a lot of sense, and was a welcome respite at a time when I was in serious danger of being overwhelmed by work of one sort or another.

It's a similar situation to the Murder Mystery Evening last year, when Mark similarly took over, and I think it's a very healthy sign. If we can overcome the technical constraints, we should have a pretty good chance of finishing the project.

Move Over, Brad Pitt

A New Star Is Born...

(The main title was ironic, by the way -- as you'll see below...)

I didn't manage to blog yesterday, despite putting in a marathon 12 1/4 hour stint, that finally ended at 8.30 last night. Today won't be quite so long - at least, I hope it won't.

All things considered though, it was a great day.

On the downside, I made my screen debut in a filmed version of The Eager Student. I may have overdone the tired and washed out bit, so that it might have to be retitled The Knackered Old Student. :)

It was genuinely weird, seeing myself as others do. I have a mole on my neck just below my right ear, but I'm used to seeing it below my left. Odd little things like that make everything look a little surreal.

It was slightly unpleasant, if I'm honest. I have fairly low self-esteem which I manage to hide most of the time; maybe if I was used to it, had glammed up, etc, it wouldn't have been so bad...but hey. It's all about the experience.

What I found hardest was not looking at the camera, and having to try and do everything the same from take to take. It's much harder than it looks.

And the upside about yesterday?

Oh no, you don't get all that in one day. I'll post about that tomorrow...