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The Short Bible

1. Keep It Short

How short (or long) should a short film be? Back in the day, when I wrote my first short, the going length was 30 minutes. Festivals and distributors were more tolerant of that length and in fact wanted to see it. However, now with platforms tight for space and in the thick of Blip Culture (as McLuhan predicted) shorts really do need to be short.

Depending on the platform for which your short is intended, it can be anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes. And 15 minutes is pushing the outside time edge. That’s because if you want your short to play in festivals, it shouldn’t go over 15 minutes. Festival programmers are especially cramped for space and won’t slot anything longer than 15 minutes. In fact, the optimum time for a short film is 12 minutes.

Festival programmer and consultant Thomas Ethan Harris (we’ll hear more from him later) says most festivals like Sundance program 7 to 10 shorts per program and if your film crosses the 15-minute mark, it won’t play at many festivals. That’s not good because you want as many opportunities to show your film as possible. We’ll get more into the festival scene in a later chapter. Right now, though, know that it’s essential that your short be festival friendly, and that starts with making it no longer than 15 minutes.

This kind of finagling requires that you develop your story carefully by outlining it first and making sure you’ve thought through all the possibilities. Because you need to tell the story as quickly and efficiently as you can but still give a lot of bang for the buck, your storytelling needs to be tight and powerful. You can get that figured out when you outline to length. And keep in mind, if you do write something to length you won’t have the heartache and sometimes impossible task of taking things out.

My students always argue that they can’t possibly say what they want to say in that amount of time, but by the time we’re through developing, outlining, and writing the script, they see that it’s possible and usually perfect for impact and execution. In fact, they often find they can do what they want in less than 15 minutes.

That’s because writers often spend too much time writing scenes that are unnecessary, redundant, or repetitive. The usual culprit is dialogue, which often runs way longer than it needs to. [We’ll deal with that in a subsequent “should.”] Too much time is spent introducing characters. Too much time is spent on exposition. All of these pitfalls can be avoided if the writer concentrates on telling the story in the most visual way possible.

Keep in mind that audiences are very sophisticated these days. They are used to getting information in small increments. That means you don’t need to explain as much or be as obvious. In the old days (the great classic movies of yore) audiences were willing to sit still for expanded dialogue-heavy scenes with intricate exposition. Not today. Get it out and get it done! You’d be surprised what you can do in even two minutes if you are ruthless with yourself. Case in point—that Levi’s movie by Michel Gondry. But that doesn’t mean your film has to be paced like a commercial. There are other options that can work just as well.

2. Pace Yourself

The pace of your film is extremely important. Audiences need to be introduced to that pace in the first act. In a feature, you can write a rather slow first act and then pick up the pace gradually. In a short, you don’t have time to do that so you need to be pretty sure about the pace early on. That means establishing the mood right away visually and, if you need to, through dialogue. The pace you set up determines how the film will be shot. So if you are taking a long leisurely time describing things, you are indicating that the camera movements need to mirror that leisure. But remember, just because a film is slow paced, it doesn’t mean that it has to be boring, long, or tedious. Think of it as a seduction. You want the audience to be intrigued and interested right away. It’s a kind of flirt until the actual clothes ripping off at the end of the first act.

Naturally, if you are writing an action piece or a mystery or some other kind of film that lends itself to showing what it’s got right away, you have to do that. Make sure that the audience thrills to an action scene or is mystified very quickly. The same is true for comedy. Make sure that you get laughs as soon as possible. No time to dawdle here. Remember that people looking at your film see a lot of what they call “product” so if they aren’t interested, intrigued, captivated, or mesmerized in the first few minutes, you’ve lost them.

3. Stay on Structure

This pacing issue dovetails with structure. As I mentioned earlier, shorts do have a specific structure—beginning, middle, end. That means they have three acts. As in all movies, act one establishes the genre, presents atmosphere, introduces characters, and puts forward the main “problem” or defining situation of the movie we’re about to see. In features, the first act usually runs about 30 minutes, ending around page 28 to 32 of the screenplay. That’s because you’ve got 120 pages to work with and you can take your time doing everything you need to establish the characters and the story. Act two, running from pages 30 to 90, unfolds the story with subplots and twists. Act three, where everything is resolved, begins at page 90 and can end anywhere (100 to 110) to page 120. The third act can be quick and short.

In order to make this perfectly clear here’s how a feature is outlined to structure using plot points. A plot point is something that moves the action forward about every five movie minutes. It can be one scene or even two or three short scenes. Using the fact that one minute of screen time roughly equals one page of script, one plot point will take about five pages.

In the writing of the movie, you may find that some points take fewer pages and some more, but as a rule, the general page count is five pages a plot point. That means in a two-hour movie, you’ve got 24 plot points to tell your story.

The following outline template organizes the plot points in a two-hour movie into a format that’s structure perfect.

Full-Length Screenplay 24-Point Outline

ACT ONE (Goal: To Establish Genre, Characters, Atmosphere, Problem)

1.
2.	(Page 10 hook)
3.	(Page 15 inciting incident)
4.
5.
6.	END OF ACT ONE (p. 30)

ACT TWO (Goal: To Further Develop Characters, Working on Solving the Problem with Twists)

7.
8.
9.	Second Act SPIKE #1 (p. 45) (substantial movement in early Act Two to propel attention)
10.
11.
12.	MIDPOINT (p. 60) (The middle of the movie. Major move forward.)
13.
14.
15.	Second Act SPIKE #2 (p. 75) (Substantial movement to propel to end of act)
16.
17.
18.	END OF ACT TWO (p. 90) (Move toward Resolution and tie-up)

ACT THREE (Goal: To Solve the Problem, Tie Up Relationships, Bring Home Issues)

19.	BEGINNING OF ACT THREE.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.

When you’re filling in the outline, you may not know all the plot points, but you should definitely figure out the major points, that is, plot point 6 (End of Act One–page 30), plot point 9 (Spike #1 in Act Two—page 45), plot point 12 (Midpoint—page 60), plot point 15 (Spike S#2 in Act Two—page 75), and plot point 18 (the end of Act Two—page 90).

You may know plot points 1, 2, and 3 but not 4 and 5, and then you may know 6 but not 7 and 8. The plot points you leave blank are where you can slot in your subplot.

Short sentences are used to create the outline. Scenes may be included in point form under the defining sentence of the point. For example:

1. John and Alfreda meet when John walks his pet dragon into Starbucks.
   • They become entangled in the dragon’s leash.
   • The dragon escapes as Alfreda faints (she’s terrified of reptiles).
   • John kisses her passionately. It’s love at first sight and to hell with the dragon!

In a 90-minute movie, the template will vary slightly, still keeping to structure: Act One will end at about page 20 to 23, the first spike in Act Two will be on page 35, the midpoint will be at page 45, the second spike will be at page 60, and the end of Act Two will be at page 75. Act Three goes from pages 75 to 90. If the movie extends past two hours (not a good idea these days—studios hate that!) the plot points will change accordingly to make the second act longer— sometimes by adding a third spike—and will make the third act longer too.

Short films are structured the same way but with different page counts and without the spikes, because programmable shorts run anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes so there is no time for subplots. The act breaks in a short behave as spikes to move the action forward, although there can be small spikes throughout the second act of a 15-minute short. That’s not something to be concerned about. This will happen naturally with the flow of the story.

The first thing to do is write a paragraph synopsis of your story. Then outline your story in point form. Take a look at the outline. If it runs ultra-long and doesn’t fit into a preferred short length, you will need to trim as necessary. Think carefully about each plot point to determine if it’s really necessary to tell your story. Remember that extra or extraneous scenes to make a point already obvious will cost you money and precious time. Be ruthless and tough. This outline needs to be a lean machine to produce a lean and tight short film.

Keep in mind that you’re going to outline and write to structure. I’m a great proponent of writing to length and structure. If you don’t do that, you’ll end up with a first draft that is ungainly and difficult, if not impossible, to trim. (We all hate destroying our bon mots!)

Your outline should look like one of the outlines I’ve modeled here. Again, keep the outline short and in point form so you can play with it. It’s important to remember in all models that the first act of a short film is crucial and must be quick and powerful, drawing audiences into the film as soon as possible. Act One should be relatively short. And you might not need a lot of pages for a quick resolution in Act Three. You can play with that too if you need to give your Act Two more weight.

Model One: Fifteen-Minute Movie

• Act One: pages 1 to 5
• Act Two: pages 6 to 12
• Act Three: pages 13 to 15

Model Two: Five-Minute Movie

• Act One: page 1
• Act Two: pages 2 to 4
• Act Three: page 5

Model 3: Seven-Minute Movie

• Act One: pages 1 to 2
• Act Two: pages 3 to 6
• Act Three: page 7
• In this one you can make Act Two shorter if you want and make your Act Three two pages.

Model 4: Ten-Minute Movie

• Act One: pages 1 to 3
• Act Two: pages 4 to 8
• Act Three: pages 9 to 10
• If you want to make Act Two a little longer, you can extend it to page 9 and do a quick resolving Act Three in one page.

You get the idea. You can adapt the models to 12 minutes or any other programmable length.

As I explained earlier, the key is getting into your story as early, efficiently, and as quickly as possible. In features, that’s done by creating a 10-page hook (as the outline template shows) that will grab the audience within the first 10 minutes of the film. In shorts, the first act is really the hook and it’s got to be powerful, direct, and elegant. Audiences shouldn’t even be aware that they’ve been grabbed by the eyeballs and can’t look away. They’re just simply along for the ride from the gate.

Here’s an example of how to outline the same story for different lengths using a sample paragraph synopsis.

Synopsis:

Okay. So now let’s outline this rather simple story in a few ways.

Model One: 15-Minute Movie Outline

Act One:

Page 1:	Man gets out of a car where three other unsavory guys are sitting. He pulls on a ski mask and walks over to a dumpster behind the bank and puts on a ski mask.
Page 2:	A few minutes later a woman arrives on the back of a motor bike. She waves to the person driving off, walks to the other side of the dumpster, and puts on a mask. The guy doesn’t see her.
Page 3:	They bump into each other and argue about whose bank it is to rob.
Page 4:	They decide to team up and pull the job.
Page 5:	They pull the job. The girl gets in the guy’s getaway car, meets two other gang members, and they take off.

Act Two:

Page 6:	They arrive at the gang’s hideout. Money is divided and dynamics revealed.
Page 7:	Sleeping arrangements. Girl is thrown together with guy.
Page 8:	After witty banter they sleep in separate beds.
Page 9:	Gang plans another job using girl as integral part of plan.
Page 10:	Girl and guy get closer. She tries to talk him out of job.
Page 11:	He refuses and they fight.
Page 12:	They make up and go to bed together. She agrees to do the job.

Act Three:

Page 13:	They approach another bank and case it.
Page 14:	They put their masks on and begin to enter the bank when the girl pulls out ID and cuffs.
Page 15:	The guy pauses and also pulls out ID and cuffs. He’s been working undercover too. They laugh, put their masks on, do the job anyway, and they take off with cash and handcuffs.

I twisted the ending. I could have chosen to give away that the girl was an undercover cop by revealing this fact in the second act and intercutting between the gang stuff and the girl talking to the cop shop. The only danger with that is that it might make the movie longer. But if I really wanted to do that, I could cut the gang stuff altogether. But that’s not an option because I need the gang stuff to explain why she doesn’t bust him right away. She’s undercover to bust the entire gang and so goes along with him. In this case, I think the undercover surprise is best left to the third act.

Model 2: Five-Minute Movie Outline

Act One:

Page 1:

Girl and guy meet at dumpster and argue about whose job it is. They decide to team up.

Act Two:

Page 2:	They do the job and drive away in the guy’s getaway car.
Page 3:	At the guy’s hideout they meet the rest of the gang. Girl and guy flirt and get close.
Page 4:	Girl and guy have wild sex and she tries to convince him to go straight. He refuses.

Act Three

Page 5:

They both go to the bank and cuffs are pulled out by both of them. Laughter, etc. Quick cuts as they both bust the gang or rob and take off.

Model 3: Seven-Minute Movie Outline

Act One:

Page 1:	Guy and girl show up at dumpster behind bank separately and pull on ski masks. They notice each other and argue about whose bank job it is.
Page 2:	Argument resolves when they decide to team up. They pull the job.

Act Two

Page 3:	Girl gets in his getaway car and they drive off.
Page 4:	They arrive at the guy’s hideout and meet the rest of the robbery gang.
Page 5:	They plan another job as girl and guy get romantic fast.
Page 6:	She begs him to call off job and go straight. He refuses.

Act Three:

Page 7:

They approach the bank in masks when the girl pulls out her ID and cuffs. He laughs and does the same.

I didn’t include the crooked cop thing in this one although I could have just as easily done that. There would be enough time to show them pulling off the job in a quick cut and riding into the sunset over credits!

Model 4: Ten-Minute Movie Outline

Act One:

Page 1:	Guy and girl show up separately at dumpster behind bank and pull on ski masks. They notice each other and argue about whose bank job this is.
Page 2:	Argument resolves when they decide to team up. They rob the bank.

In this case Act One is the same as in the seven-minute movie. Acts Two and Three are where you can take a little more time.

Act Two:

Page 3:	She gets in his getaway car and they drive off.
Page 4:	They arrive at gang headquarters and discover the gang is notorious and is planning more jobs.
Page 5:	Girl and guy start to flirt and it’s obvious a relationship is forming.
Page 6:	Gang decides to use girl as integral part of a new plan for an even bigger job.
Page 7:	Girl and guy get it on and she tries to convince him to go straight because she wants to go straight too.
Page 8:	He makes an effort to get girl out of the job but the gang insists she do it. She agrees.

Act Three:

Page 9:	They approach an even bigger bank. Cuffs come out. Mutual laughs.
Page 10:	They pull the job and ride off into the sunset. Quick cut to both of them on a beach in Bali!

In this story, you can begin the bank job scene in page 2 and carry it over to page 2½ if you need to. The act break transitions over these pages and that’s okay.

When you adapt this structure to a 12-minute movie or any other length, you just have to make each plot point something that moves the action forward in a page or page and a half. Be creative but keep in mind that you don’t have time to go off on tangents or give characters’ back stories. We’ll demonstrate how to introduce characters quickly and visually in point five of The Short Bible.

4. Keep It Visual

You need to determine that your short film will be as visual as you can make it. I know that you think this is a no-brainer when it comes to writing a movie, but, believe me, it’s the single most problematic aspect when it comes to screenwriting. That’s because the involvement with telling the story sometimes overshadows the mechanics of how to tell it strictly through pictures and not words.

Our history of storytelling is very audible. Visual storytelling always did exist via painting, sculpture, architecture, and dance, but in the computer years it’s really exploded. Storytellers have so many more tools available to them. Sometimes that means words go by the wayside. This isn’t a good thing either. The talent of the screenwriter lies in being able to make words visual and, by doing that, facilitate the making of a film that is highly so.

The only way screenwriters can do that is by seeing the movie in their minds and describing what they see. I tell my students to do this all the time. It’s no use being intellectual about writing a film. That just doesn’t work. The trick is to let the movie unfold in your mind’s eye and then simply describe it. If you do that, your screenplay will be highly visual.

That goes for writing dialogue too. You’ve got to be able to hear it in your head and speak it out loud before you write it down. If you don’t do that, it won’t be natural. More about this later.

When you do this visualization, you may notice that things don’t always turn out as you planned them. That’s because you are giving your characters and story a life with movement and that movement may take an interesting and unusual direction. Rewrite your outline and go with it. You’ll be glad you did. And the way you can use visuals most effectively right from the start is to give as much information as you can about the story, and especially the characters, in as visual a manner as you possibly can.

If you want to really push yourself you can try an experiment. See if you can write your story entirely without dialogue. I’m not advocating making a silent film, but I am pointing out that sometimes we don’t need words to let the audience know what’s going on. Try the following exercise.

Exercise

Come up with a scene in which your characters have an interaction that furthers the plot of your story. Write this scene entirely without dialogue. The goal is to make sure that we know exactly what is going on without having to use dialogue.

5. Control Your Visuals

The old Hollywood saw that screenwriters are a necessary evil, only necessary to throw the story together so that the director and his minions can conjure up the movie on their own terms, is still somewhat in vogue today. Screenwriters can buy into that by being vague when they create visuals. When they do that, directors feel free to usurp what’s written on the page and morph the movie in their own way. Unfortunately, they can do this anytime they want, but screenwriters make it easier for them to do that, giving up the power of their own vision by being obtuse or imprecise.

To really make sure that our ideas get onto the screen, we’ve got to be as precise as possible when creating our scenes. That doesn’t mean that we’ve got to overwrite our descriptions, but it does mean that we can’t be so vague as to let others take over what the audience sees. It’s important to remember this: what you write is what you get! For instance, in a film about a chef worried about losing his restaurant, beginning students usually write something like this:

Int. Restaurant Kitchen – Night

Not good. Although this may seem like an adequate enough description to get the scene going, it actually leaves too much to chance regarding the exact visuals necessary to further the story. The writer has not owned his or her movie and failed to relay exactly how he or she saw the scene. Things are implied rather than described. In order to take control, the description should go like this:

Int. Restaurant Kitchen – Night

Writing the scene like this, without writing actual angles, dictates the shot. We’ll first see Tom in a medium shot by the stove. When he starts dropping things, the shot widens so we can see him stoop and hit his head. The moment he looks around, the shot widens even more to include the apron-clad worker. Then the shot cuts to the worker in perhaps a medium close-up and cuts back to Tom when he grabs the handle of the frying pan. As he screams and pulls his hand away, the shot could widen. Or the shot could go wide to include the worker when Tom grabs the handle and stay wide.

This doesn’t mean that you have to determine angles as you write. But what it does demonstrate is that the way you write it indicates to the director how to set up the shots, and if that director is you, then you’ve done a lot of the work of creating your shot list as you write the script. This goes right back to visualizing your scenes carefully in terms of how you want to see them and adding detail to get control of your shots. We’ll use this example later in Chapter 8 to demonstrate how this kind of writing makes compiling shot lists easier.

You may think that this takes too much time in a short script, but keep in mind that you aren’t writing the script to cheat length. You are crafting a film that must be exquisite in its every detail and to do that you need to take great care with each visual you present. An accurate description will give you subtext you need in your film.

In the little chef scenario the details we provide are essential. We learn that the chef is overweight (his uniform is bursting at the seams), uses real butter to cook with instead of lard or commercial fat of some kind, is nervous on a continuum (he drops the knife and then the butter and then he hits his head), is concerned about how others see him (the reaction of the worker whose reaction is also important because it demonstrates that he realizes the chef doesn’t want to be seen as vulnerable) and is preoccupied enough to hurt himself (he grabs the hot frying pan handle without thinking). His scream indicates pain. We need all of that to get the real flavor of what’s going on internally as well as externally. This kind of writing makes your screenplay richer and your work directing much easier.

6. Quickly Clarify Characters

In a feature you’ve got lots of time to introduce your main character throughout your first act. You can give us lots of detail up until the page 10 hook but then you can expound. You don’t have that luxury in a short film. You’ve got to let your audience know your main character and get interested in that character as fast as you can. This isn’t that hard to do if you have your wits about you and use visual storytelling to transmit as much information as you can without action or dialogue. You can, of course, use action but you also need to make use of small gestures, wardrobe, and production design to get your character across quickly. If you do that, you won’t have to create convoluted and elaborate scenarios or throw in hideous expository dialogue to get the job done.

In The Big Lebowski and the first Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl, that was done beautifully. I know these are features with lots of time to develop characters, but in spite of that, so much was revealed in so little time that they’re stellar examples of how you could use those techniques in your short. You should look at the openings of these movies before or after you read this.

The Big Lebowski

The opening is very Shakespearean in that it gives us 2 minutes and 33 seconds of voiceover describing the location of the movie and Lebowski, the main character, before we even see him. And when we do actually see him, it only takes 1 minute and 10 seconds to tell us lots about him.

The first time we see Lebowski, he looks like a bum. His hair is long and shaggy, his beard is unkempt, he’s wearing sunglasses and an open bathrobe over a t-shirt and boxers. He casually ambles into a deserted, brightly lit supermarket. Because it’s deserted, we assume it’s night time which make the sunglasses he’s wearing even more of a statement. Could he be stoned? Light sensitive? Copping an attitude? Probably all of the above.

Already we’ve got a lot of information about him. His wardrobe tells us he’s nocturnal, sloppy, doesn’t care what people think of him, and is comfortable in his own skin. But we soon find out that he might indeed care about how he’s perceived because when he walks in, he looks around.

He approaches the dairy case, picks up a carton of half-and-half, examines the expiration date, picks up another carton, and compares the two. A quick shot of the clerk, who looks bored and indifferent, indicates to us that she’s used to his shenanigans and is nonplussed. He’s done this before. He puts the original carton back and then, looking around again (he seems to want to check if he’s being watched and so he does care about how he’s perceived), opens the carton and sniffs the contents. He pauses and ponders. Here’s someone who doesn’t make quick decisions. A few minutes later we see flecks of half-and-half trapped in his moustache. Smelling wasn’t enough. He’s had to taste the half-and-half to make sure it was okay.

At this point I usually ask my students what all this stuff with the half-and-half indicates. Usually only the brightest will realize what that is. Take a moment and see if you can figure it out.

Here’s the answer: it shows that he has serious trust issues. He doesn’t trust the date, he doesn’t trust his own nose, and so he’s got to sample the stuff. Here’s a guy who has to experience things to believe them.

Now we get to finances. He leans over the counter and writes a check for 69 cents. The fact that it’s an uneven amount of change is quirky. The clerk is again unfazed. He’s a guy who doesn’t carry cash. And as he’s writing the check, he looks up at then President Bush talking about Iraq. That shows that he’s interested in world events to some extent and also that he’s easily distracted. And that he does pay attention to his surroundings.

Remember, all of this took only 1 minute and 10 seconds and no dialogue!

When we cut to his house exterior (it was night after all), he’s carrying a bowling bag and trotting up to his door. Clearly he’s in a hurry to get there. Maybe he does have some place to go.

As he opens the door, he senses something—another clue that he’s aware of his surroundings.

And then he’s mugged by a thug who pushes him into the bathroom and plunges his head into the toilet, spilling the half-and-half.

In the ensuing conversation, we learn that he takes ad-versity with good humor (“Where’s the money Lebowski … ” It’s somewhere down there, let me take another look”). He’s fearless and confident. He posits proof that he’s single by indicating the absence of a wedding ring and that his toilet seat is up. And by the way, we notice that the toilet paper roll is empty. Here’s a guy who isn’t too fastidious. Or is he? He does complain when thug #2 urinates on the rug. There are some things he does care about in a random sort of way. And, of course, here’s where he tells us what he likes to be called by everyone … The Dude … not Lebowski. His moniker and image are important to him. He puts his sunglasses back on and continues to make sardonic quips.

We’ve really learned a lot about the character so far, and remember, we’re only 1 minute and 10 seconds into the actual movie. That’s the kind of economy I’m talking about when I say it’s important to introduce your characters quickly and efficiently. You don’t need lots of pages to do that. This film, in fact, didn’t even need the 2-minute, 33-second voice-over at the top to get us into the character. We were hooked the moment we met Lebowski, and it took a total of only 1 minute and 10 seconds to do it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

We get the same kind of speedy character revelation in the first minute of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie when we meet Jack Sparrow. That movie opens moving in to a medium close-up of Jack. We’re not sure where he is but we can tell a lot about him by the way he looks: a braided beard, beads in his hair, a well-worn hat and coat, a leather strap slung over his shoulder. He looks kind of dreamy, as if he’s lost in thought and the thoughts aren’t exactly happy ones but he looks only mildly sad and pensive. This has all been transmitted by Depp’s acting here.

That’s why you’ll need to get an actor who can transmit a lot of information using facial expressions and inner acting work. We’ll talk more about that later.

A wind blows up, and Jack is distracted. He looks down and then grabs a rope tied to what is clearly the mast of a ship and swings down. He’s athletic and familiar with this practice.

When he lands, it’s not on the deck of a magnificent ship but in the hull of a miserable little boat that’s quickly filling with water. Without hesitation, he grabs a bucket and bails. And then he’s distracted again by the hanging corpses of three pirates. Even though the boat is in desperate danger of sinking if he doesn’t keep bailing, he stops what he’s doing to pay homage—an overblown kind of homage where he lifts his hat and waves. He’s certainly showy about the way he does things.

We already know that he’s a little bit of a fop and a little pretentious. His clothes are outrageous and his movements seem contrived and overblown. He clearly fancies himself as a kind of theatrical gentleman but because of his homage to the hung pirates, we know that he’s a pirate too.

When he pulls into a busy port he again stands proudly on the mast looking out into space. He’s confident and in command. And then we notice that the mast is barely at the water line since most of the boat is below the water. Unperturbed, just as the mast reaches the dock, Jack steps off onto it without even looking down. He’s so sure of himself he doesn’t have to take ordinary precautions. And besides, what will all the people on the dock think if he does? Here’s another guy whose image is ultra-important to him. He’s not ashamed of his pathetic boat or his circumstances.

We’ve been given lots of information in 1 minute and 5 seconds and not a word of dialogue has been spoken.

Because this is a feature, we get a lot more information through dialogue and action in the next 8 minutes and 14 seconds of the film that brings us to the page 10 hook. We learn that Jack is in disguise, not adverse to bribing and stealing, great with words, likes making witty banter, and enjoys making fools of people who he later takes into his confidence. (The two men guarding the ship wind up intrigued by his stories.) We also see that he is brave (he jumps in and saves the girl) and experienced (knows to rip off her dress and corset) and fearless. This information builds on the first minute of the movie and elaborates on what we already have surmised. In a short we can also do this while getting directly into the action.

For example, if the short movie was about a pirate commandeering a ship, we could end with Jack making a fool of the two guards and making off with the ship. Or if it was about rescuing the girl, we could cut down the dialogue with the guards, have him board the ship, immediately save the girl, and then run off with her into the sunset. In any case, we could still know very early on who Jack is.

But in order to do all of this with our characters, we need to construct a character biography to let us know who we’re dealing with. And to do that, you have to know who you’re dealing with.

Writers get into trouble because they really don’t know their characters well enough. And to do that it’s important for writers to think deeply about psychology and, yes, their own inner lives. Because all stories are formed by the writer’s psyche, it stands to reason that all the characters the writer creates are different versions of himself. The old hippie adage “you got to be it to see it” really rings true here. Unless the writer can feel deeply the inner workings of all the characters he creates, the story, which arises from character, will fall flat.

Knowing Your Characters

To really understand your characters, it’s necessary to create character biographies that have substantial back stories—events that shaped who they have become before the start of the movie. Superficial character traits created as lists just don’t cut it. For example, you may knock off point-form character facts (appearance, height, birthplace, parents, etc.), but that list won’t help you when it comes to writing situations in which your characters have to react. Rather, it’s essential to write the backstory as a short story and include in that story things that you could use (even obliquely) later on in your screenplay. I always like to start with an incident from the character’s youth and build from there. For example:

My bio story goes on to describe her relationship with Mark, who also flew into rages, but the difference was that he didn’t feel the guilt. Soon they were an item and before too long went on a kind of rage-spree that created all kinds of chaos.

The short script will take place in a halfway house where Joan has been placed after release from prison. It’s about how a relationship with a counselor there helps her turn her life around. From my prose back story I can use the fact that she has a big connection with Mark, who taught her not to feel guilty that she has never had a bicycle, that her family was poor, that she gets jealous easily, and that she was early on capable of making friends. That’s quite a lot of information that could help me in my short script without actually appearing in the script.

And because the script will be short, from the onset I’ve got to demonstrate Joan’s personality and proclivities. I don’t have much time so I’ve got to know her psychology pretty well. That’s why, in addition to my prose character backstory, I need to use a character template, and because character is usually expressed through emotion that reacts to situations or creates them, I will have to know how my character experiences certain emotions and displays them. Having an effective character template helps with that. For each emotion, a paragraph will key us in to how the character demonstrates a particular trait and the reasons for it.

Character Template

The rest of the template appears next.

Once you’ve got a solid backstory prose piece and a completed biography template, you can use the information from that to build solid and complete characters that will give your story greater meaning and impact.

Exercise

Complete the following template for your two main characters.

• Sorrow/Grief
• Joy
• Anger/Rage
• Fear
• Love
• Frustration
• Hope
• Greed
• Loss

Now based on these emotions, write about your two main characters’ feelings about, reaction to, and experiences with the following:

• Authority
• Women/Men (Sex)
• Poverty
• Wealth
• Injustice
• Violence
• Honesty/Truth
• Pleasure
• Pain

Next, choose the specific characteristics you want to emphasize in your short script. Remember, you need to really understand your characters but you may not be able to demonstrate all their characteristics in a short script. Your understanding and knowledge of them will provide important subtext even though in your particular short script you may only be able to overtly demonstrate some of their proclivities.

And because you’re not writing a feature, you need to keep in mind that you might not have the time to develop these characters as slowly as you’d like to. So remember to use the “tricks” demonstrated by The Big Lebowski and Pirates of the Caribbean to do that visually and quickly.

You don’t need to be elaborate—just inventive and visual.

7. Minimize Characters

Short films can’t have huge casts. Because we’re pinpointing stories and don’t have much time to develop characters, we can only concentrate on three at the most. Writers who fill their short scripts with too many characters end up confusing audiences and trivializing their stories with what they think is necessary character interplay instead of moving the plot forward and creating substance.

Keep on the lookout for characters you can get rid of because they don’t really contribute to the story. Characters like waiters, siblings, parents, or gaggles of pals may not really make much difference to the scene. Writers often forget characters they’ve introduced by leaving them out of scenes even if they are in the room when the main characters interact. That’s a good reason to axe them. We’ll see how to do that in Chapter 6.

Exercise

Check your script for characters that are just standing around while the principals are speaking or involved in the action. Get rid of them and see what happens. You’ll often find that your scene is leaner, meaner, and much more effective.

8. Minimize Locations

Shorts don’t have the time to bounce from place to place. Too many locations in a short can confuse audiences and make for a jumpy film. You’ve got to get to the meat of a scene quickly and elegantly, and that’s difficult to do if you have lots of scenes in lots of different places. Those places will also add considerable expense to your budget and increase your shooting time drastically. If you have lots of locations, you’ll also require so much editing that your film might look scattered and it may throw your pace off. Better to have your scenes filled with action instead of making that action consist of changing locations. Think carefully about what various locations will add to your story. If they are essential, then use them. If they are only so much window dressing, eliminate them.

Where you set your story is, of course, important. But that depends on what your story is really about. If, for example, the location is a character in your story (if your story is about truckers, you’ll have to go on the road in trucks or if it’s about fishermen, you’ll have to use boats), you are kind of stuck. The key here is to cheat locations whenever you can by intimating them without actually having to work in them.

For example, if you do have a trucker movie, maybe you can get away with creating a truck cab in the sound stage and doing your interiors there. You can use stock footage of trucks on highways (pricey but not so much as actually renting a big-rig), and you can cheat by shooting close. But keep in mind that unless the location is important to your character and story, you can always change it.

If your story is about a trucker in conflict with his wife because he’s away so much, you might not even need to show him in the truck necessarily. You might want to concentrate more on the relationship and the arguments involved instead of showing how the guy actually spends his time. This requires you to again keep uppermost in your mind what your story is really about.

Sometimes locations actually get in the way of stories by providing too many opportunities to waste time by exploring that location. Although you might be attracted to long lazy shots of a truck barreling down a deserted highway at night, you need to decide what that shot will actually do for your story. How badly do you need it? Will it further the plot or the character? Is it essential to your message? If you’ve decided that you can’t do without it, prepare to spend the money. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but more often it can.

I had a graduate student who was making a film about illegal aliens being smuggled across the Mexican border in a truck. Initially, he was going to rent a truck and shoot in that because most of the shots were interiors. This would have cost plenty. After discussion, he decided to build a truck interior on the sound stage and use a truck only for a couple of shots when exteriors were called for. This saved him hundreds of dollars and didn’t interfere with the story.

Keep in mind that certain locations can create huge problems. It’s best not to use them if you can help it. Horror can happen anywhere you shoot. That’s what insurance is for. But some things are just irreplaceable. So think about the places where those things might be. Irreplaceable objects can all go up in smoke, so to speak, and your careers along with them. Try and cheat those locations wherever you can by shooting tight or simply re-creating or changing the venue. More on this in Chapter 6.

9. Keep Dialogue Pithy

Dialogue isn’t easy to write. That’s because language is varied and complicated. Every person talks in a different way. That means each character in your script needs to talk in a different way and that creates a definite problem for the writer. How can we differentiate characters by the way they speak if we have little time to develop their characters in a short script? This is pretty challenging, and there is no simple way to do that. Here’s a little game I play with students and it works well.

Exercise

Dialogue “Game”

• Come up with two unrelated professions.
• (Example: Lawyer and Garbage collector)
• Have them engage in an encounter with each other (adversarial or not) solely through dialogue.

Example:

This example is a little obvious but we can clearly delineate classes, for example, simply by their vocabulary. I realize that I’m generalizing that garbage collectors are poorly educated, but for the sake of this exercise, please forgive the generalization. I’m merely pointing out that you can use vocabulary to establish a subtext background that includes character. In this example, for instance, we can surmise the garbage collector’s view of the people on his route, and that he is very aware of the economic inequality between him and his “clients,” and that he resents this.

Conversely, we can see that the lawyer is a person who tends to take things personally and who also believes that the “rules” don’t apply to him (re: the two-can limit). This can make for an interesting story down the road that can be quite funny or poignant. And keep in mind that we’ve created a specific language roadmap for actors to follow when they deliver the lines. They may not say the lines exactly as written, but they will know how to deliver them to keep to the specific character’s style of speaking.

In this way we’ve used dialogue to convey character and further our story and we’ve done it quickly. We could have been even shorter and just had the lawyer ask why the collector was only emptying two cans, but if we did that we’d lose some of the character development—he takes things personally and uses “fancy” language. You’ve got to be careful and not make your dialogue so short that it becomes throw-away or staccato.

Avoid Throw-Away Dialogue

Some writers have a knee-jerk propensity to write throw-away dialogue. This is dialogue that is entirely unnecessary to further character or story and is usually entirely reactive or space filling.

For example:

Bill hauls off and punches Joe in the face.

Lots of throw-aways here. We can make this scene a lot shorter and more dynamic like this:

Joe pulls a crumpled slip of paper out of his pocket and hands it to Bill. Bill looks at it and punches Joe in the face.

“Oh,” “sure,” the verbal phone number, and “what was that for” are all throw-aways that can be compressed into a much smoother verbal exchange. Make sure that every piece of dialogue counts for something. This is true in features but especially true in a short script. Every word coming out of the character’s mouth should reveal character or further the plot in some way. Furthering the plot, however, doesn’t mean that it can be ultra-expository.

Limit and Finesse Exposition

Sometimes we do need exposition. We may be writing a sci-fi about a future world and need some exposition to explain that world or its workings. We may need to be expository about how a piece of complicated equipment works or even tell a character’s backstory because that backstory is crucial to the current situation.

For the most part, however, exposition needs to be hidden or presented in such a way that we get a greater insight into the character delivering it and at the same time further our understanding and enjoyment of the story.

A common mistake is, of course, when characters tell the audience what’s happened in the past when both characters know it. For example:

UGH! Of course the wife remembers the incident. This is all for the audience’s benefit and takes us out of the story. This dialogue is too obvious and not engaging. We can say the same thing much more effectively:

Now this becomes a plot point too in that the wife has discovered the husband has been cheating. It also reveals character on the part of the wife because of her snide comment. If characters ask each other to remember (unless it’s an obscure thing), you can be sure that you are writing that for the benefit of the audience and not those characters.

Make Thoughts Visual

The only way we know what’s going on in a screenplay is by what characters say or do. A screenplay is not a novel so we can’t go on and on telling the audience what the character is thinking. Shakespeare popularized the soliloquy to let audiences know that and it worked then but not so much now. Some writers do make the stylistic decision to let audiences know what characters are thinking through voiceover. That’s okay if it appears throughout the movie. Think of Terence Malik’s Days of Heaven. Voiceover was a mainstay of that film, and it worked really well, even making the movie a stylistic icon. But usually, voiceover is a crutch and should be used with great discretion. At its worst it’s used to “describe” what’s going on in the visuals. Visuals should be strong enough to stand alone.

You can show us what characters are thinking by how they behave. It’s always more effective to demonstrate a character’s anger by having him kick a chair or say, “I’m so angry I could eat an iguana!” than by having him say in voiceover, “I was so angry I threw a temper tantrum” and then showing the tantrum. It’s also possible to demonstrate a character’s decision-making process effectively through some clever visuals.

For example, in the Academy Award–winning screenplay Juno, Juno makes the decision not to get an abortion in a rather clever and highly visual sequence of events. First, when she arrives at the clinic she sees a lone protester (Su-Chin) holding up a sign reading “No Babies Like Murdering.” Through some conversation we discover that the protester is a classmate and we also discover that Juno has had her share of “mental” issues she doesn’t want to talk about. As she continues toward the clinic Su Chin keeps haranguing her.

In the next scene she’s greeted by a blasé receptionist who feigns concern as she texts. That doesn’t deter Juno, and she sits down to fill out forms. Now sound enriches the scene because as Juno looks around at all the pregnant women in the room, she notices little else but their fingernails scratching and picking as the audience hears enhanced sounds of that scratching and picking. Suddenly she gets up and bolts. She hasn’t said a word but entirely through visuals and their accompanying sound, we know that she has changed her mind. As she runs out of the clinic Su Chin shouts after her “God appreciates your miracle!” Juno doesn’t answer.

This is a really skillful demonstration of how visuals can be used to indicate a character’s state of mind. The next scene does have her explaining her decision to her friend but that’s an afterthought. The powerful realization has come across, and the audience gets it without the main character having to say a word!

The atmosphere of the clinic helped in that. So you can do a lot with atmosphere in a short film to give the audience information and move your story forward. And so does the action of the characters before, while, and after they speak.

Enhance Dialogue with Visuals

Screenwriters need to think like filmmakers. I find that my screenwriting students refuse to read action that occurs between bits of dialogue because they really want to hear what characters have to say. To production students, those action lines are important because they fill out the look of the film and provide a great deal of subtext. Screenwriters who want to write for production need to learn this to get a better grip on their movie and to better visualize the film. Writers who don’t do that are not visualizing enough.

Don’t overdo the action between dialogue bits, but keep it in mind because it is vital for giving a visual sense during dialogue exchanges and informing those exchanges. It cuts down the danger of boring and static shots focused on speakers who aren’t doing much, and it includes valuable reaction shots, which sometimes are desperately needed. For example:

Okay, we would like/need to see Arthur’s reaction to Rachael’s bombshell. Better to write:

Now we know by his actions that Arthur is truly devastated by the news.

Action lines can be very useful in breaking up large chunks of dialogue. Because audiences don’t necessarily want to see monologues, we need to give some visual oomph to them by breaking them up. You can go only so long before you need some movement in your shot. It matters little that the character holding forth moves his arms or flails or uses other body language. The important thing here is to realize that huge blocks of dialogue are repugnant to those who read scripts and those who watch films. Instead of launching into soliloquies, use pauses and actions to punctuate and enrich your characters’ rants.

As an example, let’s look at a speech by the Duchess of Berwick from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. It was written in 1892, but it’s still amusing (Wilde, 2005, pp. 15–16). Even though it’s from a different medium, I purposely chose it because of its complexity and length. Here’s the original written as movie dialogue:

As you can see right away, this is a very daunting chunk to get through. The temptation is to skip a lot of it, particularly since it’s in a kind of style that isn’t in modern speech. But it contains an important bit of exposition—Mr. Windermere is keeping a naughty girl and spending lots of cash on her, and Lady Windermere is just being told about it! As it gives rise to what Lady Windermere will do next, skipping over this would be disastrous to the understanding of the plot.

Breaking this up would have helped considerably! For example:

The duchess shakes her head sadly and clicks her tongue.

She gazes longingly at Windermere’s portrait hanging on the wall behind Lady Windermere and sighs deeply. Lady Windermere looks perplexed and opens her mouth to speak but the duchess is relentless.

Lady Windermere shakes her head and is about to speak again when the duchess presses on.

The duchess takes a handkerchief out of her ample bosom and mops her brow.

Lady Windermere looks appalled. She fans herself furiously and shakes her head but the duchess doesn’t notice and goes in for the kill.

She reaches out and pats Lady Windermere’s hand sympathetically.

The scene plays much better broken up. And obviously this speech is meant to reflect the character of the duchess as well as the flavor of the times and give the audience some laughs in the process. This demonstrates how to break up dialogue in general. Now it’s important to consider how to say what you want to say in a short film without having to go to such lengths. You’d have to shorten a speech like this dramatically while still leaving in the salient points.

Exercise

This isn’t easy. Shorten Lady Berwick’s speech to its minimum leaving in character indicators, salient points and the laughs. You can modernize it as well!

Make Dialogue Character Inclusive

Some writers get so caught up in an interchange between two people in the room they lose other characters that may be present. For example, they may begin a scene with three or four characters in a room but once an interchange gets going with two of the characters, the other two people somehow disappear. If other characters are in the scene at its opening, either lose them by having them leave or include them in the action breaking away between dialogue. Interspersing the action really takes care of you later on when you are actually shooting and in post. Even if you don’t use some of the action you shoot, you’ll have enough coverage in case other problems arise. If you write the scene using other characters as cutaways you give yourself a nice little bit of just-in-case.

10. Exploit Atmosphere

Atmosphere can do a lot for your film. It defines genre and mood, but also it can really move your story where you want it to go quickly and easily, especially in a short film. From the first image on the screen, the audience can be catapulted into the feeling of the film if that image is powerful, evocative, and redolent with the things you intend to explore. For instance, the first establishing shot of a run-down creepy mansion has for eons represented a horror scenario. Your movie may not have a creepy mansion in it but you still want to chill us right away and spook us.

Consider the early Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow. Burton’s a master of atmosphere, and in this film Andrew Kent Walker and Tom Stoppard’s opening scene is shot to spook. Even the opening credits are presented in a potentially scary way with lots of wavy letters emerging from smoke under ponderous music. This takes about half a minute. Then the film begins.

The first shot is of what looks like drops of blood. We soon learn that these drops are sealing wax on a contract—an ancient-looking thing completed in a dark room. We wonder what’s going on and then we’re plunged into a scene filled with mist in which a carriage rolls along a road flanked by dead vegetation. The coach is driven by a mysterious rider and is going along at a fast clip while inside, a decrepit aristocrat in wig and brocade jacket looks fearfully around. This is accompanied by the same ponderous music.

As he looks out the carriage window, the aristocrat looks terrified. His eyes focus on a figure, which turns out to be a scarecrow with the head of a pumpkin. Suddenly, lightning flashes and thunder rumbles. A weird metallic sound captures the aristocrat’s attention. He looks outside and up at the coach driver who is now HEADLESS!

The aristocrat blanches and leaps out of the coach. He runs through the overgrown field terrified and stops short at the pumpkin-headed scarecrow. He shudders as a metallic sound rings out again. The pumpkin is splattered with blood! This opening sequence takes 2 minutes and 45 seconds and firmly establishes the kind of film we’re going to see.

This is interesting because the script actually starts with the next scene in the film—a wharf in the dark. This carriage ride opening was to set the tone and atmosphere firmly in the audience’s mind from the onset and to create curiosity and it does just that.

Tim Burton uses atmosphere to good advantage in all of his films. Consider this when you write and shoot your movie. Because you’re writing a short film, you don’t have time for a premovie atmosphere grab. That means you’ll have to incorporate your atmosphere establishment in the first moments of your movie.

We can, in fact, think of the opening sequence of the Burton movie as the first act in a short. We establish atmosphere and the mystery (we can shorten the carriage ride) and then the second act can go on to establish a character intent on solving the mystery and finding a chief clue. The third act can be a solution to that mystery. In any case, the crucial atmosphere of the film has been established and audiences have bought into the dynamics right from the start.

11. Shun Subplots

In a feature, subplots make great transitions and can allow for the main plot to simmer. Shorts have no time for simmering. There is absolutely no room for a subplot in a short. Subplots involve other characters and additional plot points so they are too cumbersome and time consuming to fit into a short film. We’ll see that in a later chapter when we demonstrate how to create a short film based on a feature. A short film deals in the essence of a story. It can only deal with one storyline at a time!

12. Save Money

This seems like a pretty obvious commandment, but you’d be surprised how many people I know who’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars on their short films in the hopes that they could somehow convince people by sheer force of cash on the screen alone that a feature was in their future. Frankly, people who fund features are looking to save money so they won’t be incredibly impressed by an elaborate show of wealth in a short. If you want to impress and have your short act as a feature springboard then the more important thing is the story—how it’s executed—than how it looks. If you’re making your short to show off your technical skills, you’ll need to make sure it’s technically wonderful, but story and its execution are still the most important things. We’ll speak more of making your film specifically to showcase your strengths later on. Right now, though, keep in mind that you don’t want to break the bank and exhaust your future resources … resources you may want to use to fund that feature.

I had a few students who learned this the hard way. One person spent $45,000 on her 10-minute short—she hired professionals and used elaborate costumes in a period piece. The film looked great but went nowhere because the story and direction were weak. Keep in mind that Hollywood has incredible technical resources. Lots of people are available to make a film look good, and there’s lots of money available to hire the best cinematographers, production designers, and costumers, but studios and production companies are always on the lookout for that scarce thing, originality, and stories that really compel and work. That’s what you’ll need to get a foot in the door. The rest is eye candy and can be bought. So demonstrate your talent in the right areas and NOT in how much money you can throw on the screen. And speaking of money…

Reference

Wilde, Oscar. Lady Winderemere’s Fan. London: Nick Hern Books, 2005.