Part I
In the first joy over the invention of moving pictures, it was believed that this unfettered form of storytelling was an art of limitless freedom. One could go everywhere with the camera. One could bring railroads to the screen; film battles, ships, coal mines. One could make long pictures and short pictures; adapt novels and plays and short stories, epics and dramas. Rarely was it acknowledged that the motion picture might have its own form, imposing its own artistic restraints upon the creator’s imagination.
As a book on playwriting tends to be a compilation of facts — facts which were assembled during hundreds of years of playwriting and play-analysis — so a book on screenwriting must concern itself with the “finding” of facts. The one looks into the past, the other toward the future. The proper method to employ, therefore, is one of pragmatic investigation. Thus we intend to start on the ground and to proceed systematically through the entire material. We shall discard all aphorisms or fragmentary thoughts. We shall not take anything for granted, even though it may have been in practical use for a long time. Instead of making statements on the basis of experience, we shall endeavor to derive and prove them.
Moreover, we shall carefully refrain from expounding any aesthetic theories. It is not the purpose of this book to advise what to write, but merely how to write. We shall touch the content of the story only insofar as it is limited or conditioned by the characteristics of the motion picture. Attempts to prescribe general artistic theories are likely to fail since they are bound to be personal opinions, subject to the changing moods of the time; moreover, they infringe upon the creative imagination of the writer.
Indeed, no inhibition is intended by exploring the dramatic laws that pervade this extraordinarily fluid medium. To illuminate them more clearly, we may emphasize a specific rule without, in each case, enumerating the possible exceptions which creative freedom may allow to the individual writer. And after defining a term, we shall not continually repeat all its expansions or qualifications. For instance, by storytelling we may mean more than a mere plot. A Chekhov play tells a story about its characters without rushing them through a series of suspenseful incidents.
In the same way, every filmmaker is apt to give his script a different style, according to his own artistic vision; but each of those treatments will contain the bones of a dramatic construction. While it is true that many experienced writers create “oblivious” of any theory, it does not mean that their work does not embody the elements of structure. Someone who wants to learn a language must learn its grammar; someone who knows the language speaks it in the way it is prescribed by grammar even though he is not conscious of it. And the master dramatist may effectively break the rules of grammar to characterize, for instance, the dialogue of an illiterate peasant. There is no doubt that innovators like Ingmar Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Bu
uel, are well grounded in basic techniques, whether or not they choose to disregard some of them to achieve original effects.
In what way, then, does the screenplay differ from other forms of expression?
Suppose your mind had been stimulated by a gripping story which cries out to be made as a motion picture. How do you go about organizing the still formless content in the best possible adaptation to this new medium?
To learn how others have done it, you might go to your neighborhood movie theatre. And as you are watching the film unspool, you observe not only your own reactions, but you sense that the spectators around you are also responding to what they see on the screen.
The screenwriter may have wanted you to feel suspense, or sadness, or compassion, or he may have tried to arouse your laughter. You may comply without knowing immediately why. But sometimes you may laugh in a supposedly sad scene and be bored in a merry sequence. Besides, you may have a great many reactions which are unwanted by the writer. You may feel that the picture does not move, you may be interested in parts, or you may get very tired toward the end of a picture which is actually short.
And after leaving the movie house, you may have a wide variety of feelings, ranging from satisfaction to dissatisfaction, from tenseness to relaxation, from happiness to depression. You may have the feeling that you have been fooled or that you were taken for “a ride.” You may think that you have been sent away before your interest has ceased to exist. You may have the impression of being let down.
Why did the writer fail by causing the unwanted reactions? And did he succeed in other areas by pure chance?
By now you might be tempted to conclude, along with many experienced filmmakers, that those ornery pictures are absolutely incalculable and unpredictable creations. The contrary is true. In the following chapters, we shall try to analyze the reasons for certain reactions on the part of the spectator. We will find that they are provoked by certain causes and that these causes always have the same effects. The constancy of this behavior can be generalized in dramatic laws.
Going home from the movie house, you are eager to get to your typewriter, for you can certainly do better than the writer of the inept horse opera you just saw. So you thrust the white paper into the typewriter, fully prepared to write FADE IN in the upper left-hand corner. But before you type the first letters, you hesitate in order to choose the very best opening scene. Perhaps none springs to mind that would seem excellent enough to be retained. Or else several possibilities fight each other to a draw. Meanwhile the hesitation grows more prolonged than you expected.
The page remains blank.
You sharpen one pencil, then two. You check the typewriter ribbon, or computer disc, both of which happen to be in splendid working order. Suddenly, you are inspired by the memory of a great motion picture you once saw. But gradually the comparison to your own beginning leaves you more hesitant than before.
And the page remains blank.
Instead of feeling dejected, be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break — by not attempting to rush directly into the final screenplay. Consider the completed motion picture you recently admired as the end result of many intermediate steps. After all, you would not endeavor to leap up to the top floor of a skyscraper: you are more likely to enter the building, cross the lobby, and then ascend floor after floor, whether by elevator or afoot. The attempted jump would get you nowhere; the laborious and protracted climb will surely lead you to the top.
By not demanding overly much of yourself from the very beginning, you can let the basic idea ripen and mature. You will develop it in stages, from outline to shooting script. And at each progression you will have a chance to shape and perfect it. The grasp from one draft to the next is no longer beyond your reach.
You can now give your imagination free rein, because you are no longer apprehensive that your first concepts will be subjected to harsh criticism. There will be plenty of time later on to improve and delete. Indeed, the closer your work approaches its final form, the more your critical faculties will come into play and gain in ascendancy over the spontaneous invention that you permitted to flow over the dams in the beginning stages.
Most great artists have had the ability to balance their creative energies with comparably outstanding self-criticism. Without it, their most powerful projections would have been dissipated. But in the creative process the critique should not be too stringent too soon. If the inhibiting reflex is released simultaneously, often by fear of disapproval or ridicule, it will have a stifling effect. So permit yourself the joy of the initial fantasies and fancies, knowing full well that you will have to shape or correct them subsequently.
And suddenly the white paper in your typewriter is not blank anymore.
Instead of writing FADE IN, you might jot down: “What I have in mind is the story of a boy in trouble, who sets out to … “
To do what?
As in a crossword puzzle, you will fill in your own reply. And from each answer, you will find that new questions arise. By meeting their demands for clarification, you will not only flesh out the sketchy story idea with which you started, but you will end up with more material than you can use. An embarrassment of riches, however, is easier to resolve than the awesome void of the blank page.
Here, then, is the plot of this book: A person wants to know how to write a screenplay. And the first question he asks is: “What is a motion picture?”
What is a motion picture?
The motion picture is basically a story told to an audience by a series of moving pictures.
This definition lets us distinguish three elements:
- The story — that is, what is told.
- The audience — that is, to whom the story is told.
- The series of moving pictures — that is, the means by which the story is told.
The novel or the stage play also tells a story. How do they differ from the motion picture?
For years this difference was a much discussed problem. Since all three can tell the same story, the variation cannot be in what is told. Nor can the difference be caused by the audience, because the human being to whom the story is told may be the same in all three cases. Consequently, the difference must lie in the form. The story itself is affected by the form. Not that it can be changed, because the events represented should be true to life and not true to form. But since the manner in which the story is presented differs, not all stories can be told in all forms.
Our initial task then is to start modestly with an examination of the physical characteristics, for they determine the means by which the picture expresses itself. From these means of expression we can proceed to the manner in which the motion picture can tell its story and to the effects which this manner has upon the motion picture audience. And last, we can investigate the quality of the story material with respect to the possibilities of expression and the audience to which it is addressed.
These considerations lead to the division of the present book into three parts. The first part is “The Form.” Its purpose is to investigate the physical characteristics of the motion picture with regard to its means of expression. The second part is “The Dramatic Construction,” it examines not only the manner in which incidents of real life should be represented by the specific form of motion pictures, but also the effects of this representation upon the motion picture audience. And the third part, “The Story,” investigates the content of the story material and the practical application of all our findings to the motion picture script.