Just what is a fact film, anyhow?
In contrast to the theatrical release feature film, the traditional entertainment “movie,” the fact film is one designed primarily to inform and/or influence and/or inspire. A “message” picture, it sells ideas in virtually every field of human knowledge. Thousands of such films are made each year, by hundreds of producing units, at a cost that runs high into the millions.
(This is where you come in, of course. Someone has to write a script for each and every one of those thousands of pictures. In consequence, opportunities for the writer are far greater than in the entertainment film field. But more of that later.)
The feature film in most cases is based on a story, fiction. It’s produced in the expectation of making money directly, from paid theatre admissions.
The fact film, on the other hand, ordinarily is rooted in life, reality, nonfiction. Most often shown in classrooms, union halls, churches, club meetingrooms, and the like, it’s paid for by a client/sponsor whose main object is to communicate knowledge, arouse interest, or induce belief, on topics ranging from how to increase production of telephone components to discouraging suicide to demonstrating improved methods of garbage collection. Titles from one distributor’s brochure on my desk include The California Condor, Stroke, The Wall Street Connection, Learning by Doing, Himalayan Journey, and Ways of Dealing with Conflict in Organizations.
All of which is not to say that some fact films may not entertain to a greater degree than some features. Or that some features may not inform or influence more than some fact films. Or that fact films may not be designed to cash in at the box office or on TV, or that features may not stand first and foremost as propaganda.
Overall, nonetheless, the fact film zeroes in on information/influence/inspiration. To function effectively in this role, it must be properly organized.
Next question: How do you organize a fact film?
You prepare a proposal outline, a film treatment, a sequence outline, and a shooting script.
That is, sometimes you do. But sometimes you don’t, for each and every producer—indeed, each and every film—tends to be a law unto himself/itself. Procedures differ from shop to shop, and if there’s one item you need in your survival kit, it’s flexibility.
The general principles set forth here are sound, however. Adapt them to each specific situation as it arises and you’ll have no trouble.
Or at least not too much.
Back to the fact film and how to organize it:
Step 1: the proposal outline.
The idea for a film may originate with a producer, a writer, an advertising agency, within the potential client’s operation, or wherever. Eventually, however, Idea has to be cast into some kind of comprehensible form.
That form in most instances is what is termed a film proposal.
Heart of the proposal is the proposal outline. Often, it’s where the writer makes his first appearance, for he’s likely to be the man (or woman) called upon to get the key facts down on paper.
The proposal is exactly what it sounds like—a bid to make a film. Ordinarily, it lays out the specifications for the project, and sets forth the basic concept the picture is supposed to communicate. In so doing, it establishes a foundation of agreement between client and producer … tells the potential sponsor what he may expect for his money, and lets the filmmaker know what he’ll be called on to deliver. The document involved—that is, the proposal—may be short or long, simple or elaborate. (The trend is to the short and simple.) All points are subject to negotiation.
For you, the writer, all this probably will first come into focus at a preliminary conference, to which you’ve been invited by producer/agency/client. (How you get that invitation is something we’ll take up in a later chapter. Same for financial arrangements and how you get your money.)
On to the conference!
Hopefully, it will be small—six or eight people at most. Big conferences tend to spell trouble. It’s just too hard to work things out or get agreement when 20 or 30 participants are involved.
So: Here you are, sitting down with Client and an aide or two … producer and partner … ad agency account executive … maybe a couple of other intermediaries or abettors of uncertain status.
The business of conference strategy is another item we’ll take up later. Right now, for you, the issue is one of digging out certain critical information. Simply put, you need to learn three things: the topic of the proposed picture, its purpose, and who will comprise its audience. But like most things that are simply put, that tends to end up just a bit too simple. So let’s go a step further and focus your probings into ten specific questions:
1. What’s Client’s purpose in making the proposed film?
2. What’s the film’s topic, and what does Client want to say about it?
3. Whom does he want to say it to?
4. How much does that audience already know about the topic?
5. What does Client want Audience to do when the lights come on?
6. What are the film’s technical specifications, including conditions of use?
7. What’s the budget?
8. Are there any particular cost factors on which Client has his heart set?
9. Who’s to be your technical advisor?
10. Who has the power, the muscle, the final say?
At first glance, it would appear that some of these matters are primarily problems of the producer, rather than the writer; and first glance would be right. But experience also says Writer too had better bear them firmly in mind, lest later his neglect of matters apparently outside his bailiwick should box him into unanticipated—and uncomfortable—corners.
Now, what is there to say about each question?
1. What’s Client’s purpose in making the proposed film?
Shall we be blunt? There is only one reason anyone makes a fact film, and that reason is dissatisfaction. That is to say, Client wouldn’t be spending his money on a picture if he were happy with the way things are, the status quo. Always, he seeks change … change in somebody’s state of affairs and/or state of mind, even if the issue is only to bring new awareness of the nesting habits of the rosy-breasted pushover. To that end, he proposes to produce a picture.
This is a matter of vital concern to you, because it poses one of your major tasks: to discover what it is your client is dissatisfied with in his present situation and how he’d like to see it changed.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy. A good place to start, however, is with the question of purpose.
Said question is one you should raise early in the meeting, pinning down what the film is supposed to achieve in the most practical terms possible: “Who do you want to do what?” “Why is this film being made?” “What are you trying to prove?” Then, listen with all three ears—and not just to Client’s words.
Your answer, you see, if you’re properly perceptive, will come through on at least two levels. The first will be the film’s ostensible purpose; the other, its true purpose.
Ostensible purposes will be obvious indeed, and frankly stated: “We want to improve our company image.” “We want to sell more widgets.” “We want to help kids understand ionization.” “We want to reduce crime in the streets.” “We want to teach doctors how to cope with staph infections.”
True purposes may prove more difficult to zero in on: “We want to make the competition look like small potatoes.” “We want to do a little empire-building—corner a bigger share of next year’s appropriation.” “We want to take the edge off those things that damn’ Congressional committee said about us.” “I want to register as a comer—improve my chances for that promotion.” “I want to make time with that cute doll in Department 7 by getting her a part in this picture.”
Obviously, you won’t always be able to pin down the true issues behind production of a film. Indeed, upon occasion you’ll find situations where everything is out in the open, sans guile. But it’s still important that you have your antennae up and quivering for any clues Client or his colleagues may drop as to their motives. After all, making the competition look like small potatoes may involve trying to buy $100,000 worth of cinematic flash and glamor for $30,000. Empire building or over-ambition may rouse antagonism in people in a position to sabotage the project. That cute doll in Department 7, on film, may prove an utter disaster.
Being aware of such, it’s possible you can walk wide around the traps these gambits represent… not to mention improving your chances of preparing a script that satisfies both Client goals.
2. What’s the film’s topic, and what does Client want to say about it?
Every film’s pattern of organization is built on the same two underpinnings: a topic and a point of view.
The topic element is simple enough. It’s the answer you get when you ask, “What’s this film to be about?”
Back comes the answer: “Ulcers.” “Wire rope.” “Executive aircraft.” “Cockroaches.” And there’s your topic.
Point of view is something else again. Assuming there’s a client/sponsor, it’s his subjective attitude towards the topic. You uncover it by asking, “But what about ulcers/wire rope/executive aircraft/cockroaches?”
Now quite obviously there are a number of possible answers to these questions. Take cockroaches, for example. Is Client for them or against them? Does he look on them as pests, or playmates, or the firm foundation on which he’s built his extermination business, or potential laboratory livestock for cancer research?
Your goal as writer is to sift through all such possibilities until, ultimately, you come up with a core assertion: a clear, concise statement of precisely what point the film is to sell to the audience.
Again, this will not necessarily be an easy task. Client and colleagues may themselves disagree, for instance—I once ached through a college chemistry faculty’s eight-hour debate as to precisely how to define the pH system for measurement of acidity and basicity of aqueous solutions. Or, no one may have thought the matter through beyond the “Let’s make a movie about our new framistan” level. It’s entirely possible two or three sessions may pass before you arrive at the right answer.
But then, who said writing film scripts would be easy? The big thing is that if you know what you’re after and you keep plugging, sooner or later you’ll come up with the right core assertion, the key point your client really wants to make: “Modern farm equipment gives you extra hours—and time is money.” “Those happy, happy college days. I grew up here. I found the real me.” “Get more fencerows for bobwhite. Help our quail to find an Oklahoma home.”
I can’t overemphasize the importance of this phase of your work. Pinning down the right core assertion takes you a giant step along the road to building a solid script, an effective film. Failing to do so is a virtual guarantee of later headaches.
Two hints: It will be to your advantage if you research your film’s topic thoroughly at your earliest opportunity, both on your own and in company with your technical advisor. Only as you know your subject can you hope to capture its essence in a razor-sharp core assertion.
Also, often, it will help if you throw out hypotheses as to what Client seeks vainly to put into words: “You mean, then, that when an Indian wears one of these ceremonial masks, he feels that he and the god are one?” “So the big edge Angus have over other cattle is that they’re natural polls?” “In other words, it’s the man and not the gun that does the killing?”
You’ll miss the target more often than not, of course. But the very fact that you’ve injected a fresh viewpoint has a tendency to jar Client loose from dead center. That helps him—and you—to come up with an intelligent statement that captures the heart of what your picture’s all about.
3. Whom does he want to say it to?
Implicitly or explicitly, every film has a target audience—a particular group Client seeks to inform or influence or inspire, whether it be eighth grade science students, suburban Parent-Teacher Associations, potential polar bear hunters, or oil field drilling contractors.
Quite possibly you’ll have trouble finding just what group this is, because Client, lost in ego inflation, will claim that “everyone” or “the general public” or “the whole Yew-nited States” is his bull’s-eye.
This just won’t do. You must narrow the field. Why? Because you’ll need one mode of attack for salesmen, another for engineers, yet a third for consumers.
Further, what fascinates a network TV audience may very well drive surgeons (or artists, or numismatists, or pro football players) to snorts of disgust.
In general, the broader the audience, the harder it will be to hit it with anything meaningful. A mass audience is infinitely more interested in dramatic action than it is in content.
The narrower your audience, in turn, the greater your chances of really striking home. Tailoring your presentation to viewer interests, attitudes, and feelings, you can maximize appeal and impact.
One final point: Be sure the audience your client says he’s seeking is actually the one to shoot for. Why? Because Client won’t accept blame for steering you wrong if you miss the target. He’ll just say the film’s a failure.
Thus, once upon a time, I took on the scripting of a film for an expensive summer resort. The audience? Young swingers, the way the owner told it.
Prowling the grounds, however, I soon discovered that the clientele was middle-aged at least.
Had Client been lying to me, then?
Not really. It was just that, aging himself, he zeroed in on the younger patrons to the point that, in his mind’s eye, the older majority faded to minor significance.
4. How much does the target audience already know about the topic?
The greater the prior interest of an audience in your subject, the less your need to fancy up the presentation.
Embellishing a film that’s intended for an audience of experts frequently will alienate that audience. If you’re writing for surgeons about a new operative technique, dragging in Dr. Kildare will outrage them.
If viewers know and/or care nothing about your topic, on the other hand, you’d better scratch around till you find a way to hook their interest. Then, Symptomatology of Undetected Diabetes becomes Diabetes and You Too, complete with a high-school girl who tires too easily to make the swimming team and a fat widowed mother looking for a husband.
Don’t take it for granted that your client is correct in his assumptions about audience knowledge. He may assume too much or too little.
How does a scriptwriter learn whether his potential viewers are interested in a subject, or know about it?
He puts on his hat and goes out and asks questions of said viewers. He does not take it for granted that their tastes and level of information are the same as his—or his client’s.
Neither does he kid himself that giving heed to audience consists merely of eliminating polysyllables from narration about how to operate a new-type manure spreader.
5. What does Client want Audience to do when the lights come on?
Action—audience action—is ever and always your ultimate goal when you script a fact film. So it makes good sense to try to decide just what action will best relieve your client’s dissatisfaction with the World That Is.
Perhaps Client’s dream of paradise is to see Audience head en masse for a mobile chest x-ray clinic. Or to watch brain surgeons step into the operating theatre tomorrow morning with total confidence in their mastery of a new technique. Or a sales staff move to the attack selling boxer shorts. Or customers clutch pens in frantic haste to sign insurance policy applications.
Isn’t this all the same as film purpose? No, not quite. Purpose tends to drift up into generality and abstraction on occasion. “What do you want the audience to do when the lights come on?” yanks goals back down to earth.
6. What are the film’s technical specifications, including conditions of use?
Is this picture to be sound or silent? Narrated or lip sync? Color or b&w? Live action or animation? 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm? What length? Under what conditions will the film be shown? Do facilities exist to bring it to the target audience?
Yes, you do need to know these things. They’ll have an influence on the kind of script you write.
Thus, shooting lip-synchronized sound involves an infinity of problems absent in the narrated film. For one, you the writer have to come up with acceptable dialogue! A five-minute picture can be highly effective for some topics; impossible for others. Color can make some pictures—yet spoil a mood piece. Sound seldom is the best when a 16mm print is shown in theatre-size facilities. The list goes on and on.
Here the main part of your function will be to keep quiet while Client and Producer wrestle this weighty question. But you do need to pay attention, because the size of the budget will play a large role indeed in determining what you can or can’t include in your script for the forthcoming epic. Awareness now will help you to avoid shocks later. But more of that elsewhere.
8. Are there any particular cost factors on which Client has his heart set?
In general, this too is a matter which you can leave to the producer. But you do need to keep your ears open.
Consider, for example, the client who stands fast in his determination to have key scenes shot at his cabin in the woods, where the sun and a Coleman lantern are the only sources of light. But that’s all right, because Client wants this to be a historical sequence, featuring Abe Lincoln’s boyhood and starring Bob Hope as the friendly neighbor—you know how name talent adds audience interest! And then, of course, Client really wouldn’t mind if you included him in a few brief bridging scenes; after all, his stutter isn’t that bad….
Well, you get the idea.
9. Who’s to be your technical advisor?
Now hear this: There’s no such thing as a film on which you don’t need a technical advisor.
That is to say, some people have more expertise in a given area than do others.
Expertise is a thing you need, even if the film you’re scripting is a saga of a freshman’s college year, A Trip to the Zoo with Jen and Jerry, or the doings of a housewife in her native habitat. So insist that your client assign you an appropriate technical advisor—a man or woman who knows the film’s topic intimately and has the ability and willingness to talk about it freely.
How can a good technical advisor help you?
Well, he can save you endless hours of research, for one thing. He can catch slips which otherwise would make you look like a fool and maybe cost you future assignments. He can clue you in on company/organization/agency personalities, policies, problem areas. He can brief you on specialized terms, help you brighten narration or dialogue with “insider” touches. Oh, there are so many things he can do!
To manage all these chores, however, he’s going to have to be the right person—one who’s interested enough in your project to want to help.
Your client, in turn, must be willing to make this paragon available to you, so that you can reach him when you need him. An international authority is worthless if it takes you three days to get an appointment, or if he never seems able to spare you more than five minutes.
Public relations types may prove splendid technical aides, or they may be a total waste of time. It all depends on whether they really know the operation. My own all-time favorite tech advisor was a metallurgical engineer who’d transferred to Sales.
Have your technical advisor assigned before you leave Meeting No. 1. It can make all the difference between a good, pleasant, profitable job of which you can be proud, and a financial disaster on which you want to slash your wrists.
10. Who has the power, the muscle, the final say?
Whether your client be a business, an industry, a governmental unit, an association, or what have you, know in advance that a pecking order exists within it.
It’s important to you to determine precisely who speaks with the voice of authority where your script is concerned. Failure to do so can have horrifying results, in terms of your doing your work under the impression that one man is in command, when actually another has the final say. As a case in point, I once worked up an entire treatment for a group I falsely assumed represented an organization, only to have the treasurer, who viewed them as dissidents, refuse to pay a nickel for it.
Along this line, it should be mentioned that at all stages of any script work, it is highly desirable—indeed essential—to get approval signatures from the client; and to make it clear in your contract or letter of agreement that later deviations from such approved handling will result in increased charges.
* * *
At last the preliminary conference is over. You go away and do some thinking; some checking with your technical advisor.
Part of your cogitations should be devoted to a question too often slighted: Is this material best presented on film?
It would be nice, you see, if film were the answer to everybody’s problems. Regrettably, sometimes it doesn’t work that way. If you, the writer, are to keep out of hot water and impossible assignments, you need to know the factors to consider.
Thus, film has these advantages:
a. Film shows motion.
A horse running, a machine operating, a fight in progress—all come through vividly on the screen.
b. Film reveals what the eye can’t see.
With time-lapse photography, you can watch a year of plant growth in a minute. Slow motion reveals how the magician performs his sleight. Animation lets you see the moving parts within an engine.
c. Film transcends time and space.
It enables you to stretch a minute to ten or reduce it to nothing … to jump from the North Pole to the South, from New York to London to Moscow to Peking.
d. Film enables you to pinpoint the exact audience you want.
If you prefer that only psychiatrists or coffee shop managers or demolitions experts view a picture, you can so stipulate. Many films have been made whose sole audience was to be a seven-man board of directors or the president of a company.
e. Film is reusable.
Which same is why live TV drama went down the drain. Once a play’s filmed, you can run it over and over, not to mention selling or renting prints to each new station as it opens. Similarly, fact films can be shown to generation after generation of school children, to each new group of employees, and so on.
f. Film repeats accurately.
This obviously is a tremendous advantage. Memory is fallible, and no speaker does precisely the same job every time. So, if you’re a college football coach, you don’t need to rely on your recollections of last week’s game. Good and bad plays, filmed and shown in slow motion, can help you pinpoint errors and devise more effective strategy.
g. Film is visual.
The importance of this comes into focus when you realize that assorted studies indicate human beings learn at least 75 per cent by sight.
h. Film may have color or sound.
Color isn’t always an unmixed blessing, but there certainly are some things you can’t show properly without it—the look of growing grain, for instance; or diseased tissue vs. normal; or paintings, fashions, hair colors, etc.
Sound, in turn, may change the whole world film reveals, as well as our reactions to it—witness the horrors perpetrated via TV laugh tracks.
i. Film emphasizes, emotionalizes.
By filling the screen with the right details, you can create virtually any feeling you want in an audience. Consider the World War 2 German newsreels used to soften up countries soon to be invaded: Their graphic portrayal of the destruction wrought by Panzer divisions and Stuka dive-bombers so terrified viewers that they fled at the first rumor of attack.
j. Film may offer extra attention value.
A good case in point is film or video tape in suitcase units that include both projector/player and screen/CRT. “I want to show you a film,” says the salesman who brings it. “The time involved will be precisely ten minutes. If you’re not interested in my proposition after you see the picture, I’ll leave without a word.” An incredibly high proportion of the time, the prospect will agree … which clears the way for a 10-minute presentation put together by master sales psychologists and seen sans interruptions by secretaries or phone calls.
So much for film’s advantages. Now, what about the disadvantages?
These break down into three categories: subject factors, production factors, and use factors.
a. Subject factors.
(1) STATICITY…. which is just a fancy way of saying the subject doesn’t move. Consequently, film’s wasted on it, even though camera movement may lend it some air of vitality. An example? Consider the film which shows a painting. True, you can zoom in on specific details or pan across it while a narrator comments, voice over. But the subject is still static, still poorly adapted to filmic treatment.
(2) COMPLEXITY. Your topic is The Causes of Poverty. Granted, you can make a film about it. But the problem itself is so complex, so subject to controversy, that you can deal with it only by resorting to a simplistic treatment that does it less than justice or even distorts the facts. There’s just too much ground to cover in one picture. So, either break it down into smaller bites or leave it alone.
(3) SIMULTANEITY. Remember The Thomas Crown Affair, or the Mannix titles? Using split screen techniques, several pictures are shown to the viewer at the same time. While gimmicky and often fascinating for the moment, such tends to confuse more than to enlighten in many cases. If you can break the simultaneous element down into a series of sequential developments (“This happens … and, meanwhile, this is happening … and this … and this …”), fine. But if you have to show 17 things happening at once and there’s no way of separating or categorizing them, forget it.
(4) LENGTH. Much as in the case of complex subjects, you sometimes are confronted with topics which demand such a length of film (and running time) as to make them impractical—and this in spite of the fact that, upon occasion, the entire history of the United States has been compressed into a three-minute montage.
Consider, for example, various psychological/psychiatric case studies. Months—perhaps years—of psychotherapy are involved, with little clear-cut progress at any given moment. Any film you make of such will either have to oversimplify, or to deteriorate into an Andy Warhol sleeping-the-happy-hours-away movie.
(5) ABSTRACTION. Art has a concept called “negative space.” But I’d hate to have to film it. Same for the philosophy of Zen or statistical analysis.
Understand, films can—and probably have—been made in defiance of virtually every one of these factors. But they do complicate the writer’s life by forcing him to oversimplify or to make use of strained parallels or false analogies.
b. Production factors.
(1) COST. NO doubt about it, movie-making costs money. But more important than cost itself, by far, is the ratio of expense to return. In other words, it doesn’t matter if a neo-Cleopatra costs $50 million, if the box office returns total $250 million. On the other hand, a $15,000 industrial film may prove a disaster for a small company’s public relations man if the firm’s president secretly views the whole project as a needless frill and is anticipating a bill for $5,000.
(2) TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. Closely related to cost is the fact that virtually anything in this world can be filmed if you’re willing to spend enough money. But entirely apart from expense, if a crane shot is essential in a factory sequence and you haven’t got a crane, you’re in trouble. Even a baby elephant that refuses to behave can throw your budget—and story line—out of kilter, as I once witnessed during the filming of an episode of Ziv’s old Science Fiction Theatre.
(3) TIME PROBLEMS. A friend of mine was forced out of the film business because he hadn’t given proper weight to the fact that the writer of a picture he’d contracted to produce had set sequences in each of the four seasons—which meant production was going to have to extend over an entire year.
Similarly, it may prove impractical to schedule filming of a particular rock festival, to obtain the services of a particular actor for a particular time, or to push through the editing or processing of a film to meet a deadline.
Any number of producers have bucked these odds, you understand. But you do need to consider them before you sign on to do a script.
(1) LACK OF VIEWING FACILITIES. Most of us take screens and projectors for granted. It’s a mistake. The sheepherder or pipeline walker your film is designed to influence may never get to see it, simply because there’s no place to show it. In the same way, many educational films win few viewings because teachers don’t want to bother with requisitioning, setting up, learning to operate, and operating projectors.
Or how about the picture shown in a packed union hall, with the air conditioning turned off because it interferes with the sound? And that’s not even mentioning lack of competent projectionists, erratic power sources, broken film stuck together with cellulose tape, and a dozen other potential disaster areas.
When VHS units are available, problems may arise involving screens too small for the entire viewing audience to see easily, poor light and sound quality, poor lighting in the viewing area, inadequate sound for large viewing areas, and small, indistinct images on the screens.
(2) LACK OF PRINTS. You know about a good film on some phase of chemistry, or algebra, or history. You’d like to show it to your pupils. But can you get a print when you need it, or will you have to wait till the class is seven weeks past the topic? For my own part, when I was teaching scriptwriting at the University of Oklahoma, at least half the pictures I wanted to show students as classic examples of particular techniques had been withdrawn from circulation. (Today, however, this is less of a headache, simply because video tapes are so accessible, inexpensive to purchase or rent, and easy to store.)
(3) PROBLEM AUDIENCES. How do you show a film—effectively, that is—to an audience that doesn’t speak the narrator’s language? How do you show it to primitives in New Guinea who haven’t yet learned to see in two dimensions and so view the images on the screen as mere flickering shadows? How do you show it to Kurd tribesmen who’ve never seen or heard of a refrigerator and so don’t know what the one in the film is for? How do you show it to guerrilla-indoctrinated campesinos who think the film is part of an imperialist plot against them?
Summing up, then, film is a great thing—but not at all times nor in all situations. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do when someone comes to you with a great idea—and yes, he does have money and is prepared to pay you—is to forget film in favor of still pix, slides, a brochure, or even just a simple sheet of printed instructions.
Now, three frequently raised questions:
1. Is it really necessary to organize a film completely before the shooting starts?
Or, to put it more bluntly, why bother to write a script at all? Why not just go out and shoot whatever footage comes handy and worry about organization later?
No, this is not a rhetorical issue. The world is full of would-be filmmakers eager to plunge into production with no time wasted on preplanning.
Trouble is, any writer could retire on the money spent by befuddled clients on “shot-off-the-cuff” films that never reached the screen. For there’s more—much more—to making any film than simply shooting pictures. Both time and money enter, and the question that always arises is what shots to shoot, how to shoot them, and in what order to arrange them in order to end up with an effective film.
There, of course, is the issue. It’s easy enough to make a fact film. But to make an effective one—in terms of audience, purpose, and client satisfaction—is something else again.
The shot-off-the-cuff film begins by being wasteful. Instead of tying up the time of one man—the writer—it ties up the time of an entire crew. Then, lacking a carefully laid-out script—which is to say, lacking adequate pre-planning—it racks up fantastic bills for raw stock and processing.
Later, when editing time comes, this waste grows even greater because, lacking a clear-cut concept and chain of logic, it’s hard to put the thing together. In addition, many vital shots are bound to turn up missing, simply because no one realized that this closeup would prove essential, or that jump cut would require a covering cutaway.
Finally, like a joke told by an inept comic, all too often the whole thing somehow ends up both looking like amateur night and missing the point the client wanted to make.
Yes, it is important to organize a film as completely as possible before the shooting starts!
2. Doesn’t this kind of pre-planning limit the director’s creativity—his opportunities for improvisation, capturing the insights and inspirations of the momentt
Alfred Hitchcock speaking: “When I hear of a man shooting a film off the cuff, making it up as he goes along, I think it’s like a composer composing a symphony before a full orchestra. I like to improvise in an office, not on a stage in front of a hundred technicians.”
Actually, of course, having a well-planned script is a help rather than a hindrance to a competent director. In the first place, in all likelihood he’ll have worked with the writer and/or studied the script in detail, incorporating his own pet notions in the process. In the second, he’ll still be able to improvise within the framework of the script, should something that develops on the set or location give him a fresh idea.
The only thing he’s really barred from doing is based on the ethics of his relationship to the client. That is, he shouldn’t abandon the script’s plan of action, its line of development. That plan, that line, has been worked out with painstaking care so that it makes the client’s point. To throw it out the window during filming is to betray the trust the client has placed in him.
3. What do you as a scriptwriter do when you find yourself stuck with a pre-shot film?
A film shot without a script, that is; and yes, it does happen, and writers are called in to help cope with the problem. In fact, often it’s an entirely legitimate situation: The circumstances were such that it simply wasn’t possible to plan things in advance, as in the case of some friends of mine who spent six weeks with the Lacandon Indians of Chiapas, four days on foot from the nearest road. They had no real idea of what they’d find when they arrived, so they flew by the seat of their pants, as it were—shot footage of everything that looked interesting and hoped it could be cut into some kind of meaningful pattern later.
Similarly, you some day may find yourself confronted with 9,000 feet—four hours plus—of 16mm film taken by Joe Bigbux on his African safari, or a mile or two of catch-as-catch-can shots of Guatemalan guerrillas in action, or reel after reel of coverage of the various steps in the construction of a new housing development.
You meet such challenges in much the same way you’d attack any other picture topic. That is to say, you hunt for a point of view, an angle: some kind of core assertion that makes sense and captures the idea. But you do it within the limitations of the footage at hand.
Thus, in the Lacandon Indian epic cited above, I ended up with the core assertion, “The Lacandones are a people trapped between two worlds.” The unifying concept behind endless footage of kindergarten children was finally sifted down to “Play is children’s work, a tool for growth.” A mass of ill-assorted campus shots gave birth to “A school’s spirit is what shapes its students’ futures.”
What—? You lack essential footage? Well, I agree that can be a problem. But sometimes there are ways around it. We’ll take them up in a later chapter.
* * *
And so, at long last, this first phase of your thinking’s done; your questions answered, your concepts organized. It’s time to put your proposal down on paper.
How to go about it? A system that’s worked well for me is simply to ask the producer for a copy of his favorite presentation. Then, I follow that pattern.
Make it a rule to keep your writing style as clear and simple as possible. Also, incorporate your core assertion, if you’ve developed one that satisfies you. (If you haven’t, it’s no sin to hold off on it till you write your film treatment.)
At this point, just in case you haven’t found another model, a format may prove useful—not the only possible format, you understand, nor even necessarily the best. Indeed, many presentations will be much more elaborate. But a handling such as this one is acceptable in most situations.
Among items often (but not always) included are:
Heading: designation of your presentation as a proposal… working title, so labeled.
Content outline: purpose of film, audience, summary of key data to be included.
Specifications: length, color, sound, animation or major special effects (if any).
Shooting schedule: where and when the picture will be shot.
Production schedule: any and all deadlines, up to and including delivery date for the finished film.
Budget: details as required.
Approvals: producer, client, dates.
What does an actual proposal look like? Here’s an example:
Film Proposal
WHAT THE TEACHER SEES
(Working Title)
This 16mm film is intended for teachers in the elementary schools —primarily those teachers with relatively limited experience. Its purpose is to give them an approach to the problem of pupil health appraisal, and to provide them with key data needed in order to make such appraisals intelligently.
The film will be approximately 20 minutes in length, and will be shot in sound and color. Both voice-over narration and lip-synchronized dialogue will be used.
On the assumption that client will provide technical advisor and all players without cost to producer, budget is estimated at $27,500, This estimate is subject to revision upwards if animation is required. Additional charges for travel will also be made if filming outside the Oklahoma City area becomes necessary.
Revised version prepared for
OKLAHOMA STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Approved:
For the Producer _________________Date ______________
For Department of Health _________Date ______________
So there’s your proposal, signed and sealed. What comes next?
Why, obviously, you proceed to your film treatment.