4 Pre-production

 

Quick start guide: Production tools and aesthetics

How to get to the part you need now

First choose your route:

First work out your story
1 Write your own script	Chapter 4:4, page 100
2 Using a timeline	Chapter 4:8, page 136
3 Action and pace	Chapter 4:4, page 111
Then visualize your film
1 Visualizing your film	Chapter 4:7, page 132
2 Sketching with video	Chapter 4:7, page 135
Then storyboard the film	Chapter 4:8, page 136

First work out how much money you can afford for your story
1 Working out a budget	Chapter 4:1, page 71
2 Devising stories for low budgets	Chapter 4:6, page 124
Then write the script
1 Steps in scriptwriting	Chapter 4:4, page 100
2 Classic structure	Chapter 4:4, page 100
Then get a crew
Recruiting	Chapter 4:2, page 80
Then visualize and storyboard your story
1 Visualizing (whole chapter)	Chapter 4:7, page 132
2 Storyboarding (whole chapter)	Chapter 4:8, page 136

First work out how much you can afford for the movie
1 Getting investment	Chapter 4:1, page 71
Then recruit a basic crew of two or three people
1 The small crew	Chapter 4:2, page 81
2 Pay or no pay	Chapter 4:2, page 82
3 Recruiting	Chapter 4:2, page 84
Then work out how long it will take
Making a schedule	Chapter 4:3, page 96

Work out what your video is about
Project 18, ‘Polymedia movie’, for ideas	page 289
Then visualize it
Visualizing (whole chapter)	Chapter 4:7, page 132
Then sort out copyright issues
Copyright	Chapter 9:12, page 359

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Part 1: Logistics and crew

1.Working out a budget

DV is less expensive

The size of your budget should be part of the decision-making process from the start of the development process. How much or how little you have will play a key role in deciding what kind of film you make.

A DV film is going to cost far less than its conventional analog or celluloid forerunner. Moreover, getting high quality, or even broadcast quality, images is now within reach of most micro-budget filmmakers, throwing up the possibility that a first movie by an unknown director will be of sufficient technical quality to find a buyer, leading to distribution. Until now, the best a low-budget director could hope for was to work on 16 mm film, which could be blown up to academy 35 mm at great expense should the film find its way into theatres. Soon, however, the debut DV director could be showing a film on digital projectors, beamed from satellite to theatres, saving huge costs previously spent on printing copies of the movie on celluloid.

Equipment

Getting hold of equipment also used to take some ingenuity. Expensive film cameras, rolls of film, lights and editing units were all guaranteed to take up a large slice of a budget, but digital camcorders are now getting cheaper with each new model and arriving with added features. Editing software is likely to have been bundled free onto your PC, while others still can be downloaded free from the Internet.

A common way of getting hold of equipment is to use facilities at weekends. Ask local companies or production houses whether you can borrow cameras, lights or other items when they are not being used. It sounds like a tall order but it is surprising how often it works.

Developing a budget

Once you have your basic equipment you can start to divide costs into the two main areas used in feature-film budgeting: above-the-line and below-the-line.

Above-the-line

Above-the-line refers to those people in a production who contribute to the main artistic aspects of the film. Therefore, the director, producer, writer and cast will be allocated a certain amount of the budget, often taking up one-third of the total above-the-line.

Below-the-line

Other areas such as design, props, lighting, consumables and all other production costs are entered separately, ‘below the line’. In big-budget productions it is more likely that above-the-line takes up a disproportionate amount of the budget.

In low-budget productions, however, it's likely that since you as director will occupy several, if not all, of the positions above-the-line and are probably giving up your spare time to get this together (in other words, you are not getting paid), you could find yourself with a budget sheet that has almost no abovethe- line costs. In this case, it is the below-the-line costs that will be disproportionate since these are almost immovable, such as transport expenses, videotape, props and so on.

Figure 4.1 Budget for stories that require few props or extra items, as in this scene from Neo's Futureshock.

Budgets influence stories

If you fall into the category of filmmaker who has little or no disposable income to invest in a film and wish to simply get what you can for as little as possible, then it would be useful to let your available budget affect the kind of film you are going to make. It's not too cynical to suggest that you centre a story around the props, locations and people you already have access to for free — in other words, objects you already own, places you can use as settings for the story and actors who will act for free or non-actors who may not expect to be paid.

Certain types of film are going to cost more than others. If you take a look at the synopses of films currently doing the rounds at film festivals or online cinemas, it is common to find certain genres represented more than others. Epic genre movies are rare, but plots centring on relationships, road movies or crime all figure highly, as they involve few post-production effects or extravagant locations and props.

Perhaps even more noticeable is the originality of these films. An unusual story, an unfamiliar or quirky take on a subject, all result from a need to grab the audience's attention by means other than expensive special effects. In a sense, ingenious and creative ideas for films excuse you from the need to raise large budgets; the value of the film is in the way you have used the medium itself rather than what you have spent on it.

Reducing costs

The least expensive kind of film varies, then, according to what you have access to, but there are a number of other points that can help in reducing the budget of any movie. If we now look at the kinds of subheadings found in a typical budget we can start to look at ways that costs could be kept to a minimum.

Above-the-line

1 Screenplay. Write the film yourself, from your own original material.

2 Producer. On a larger production, a producer acts as business manager and administrator, pulling the various financial, legal and logistical threads together. Getting involved in these aspects of a small production yourself gives you an essential schooling in the business side of the industry.

3 Director. Direct the movie yourself. You can still collaborate with other people on a movie as long as you all forego payment.

4 Cast. If your story requires actors there are a number of ways of involving a cast while keeping costs low. Acting on film can be good experience, adding to an actor's résumé and many are willing to work on small productions for free provided they have no other commitments but may, entirely reasonably, leave your production in mid-shoot if a paid job comes up. Deferred payment is another route, in which you say that you will pay everyone if the movie makes a profit. If your cast and crew believe strongly in the project's merits they will see this as equivalent to holding shares in the movie. But try to be as open as possible with people about the possibility that any money will be forthcoming; most independent movies, including successful ones, see little profit.

Below-the-line

1 Sets. Use locations rather than sets. For instance, if you need an interior set of an office, find a suitable real location rather than building the set yourself in a studio. Compromise in your aims so that you can use real settings; if a room is not quite right, it is still saving you much money.

2 Props. Build your story around props you have access to or can acquire cheaply.

3 Costumes. Again, follow the same ideas as for locations; set the film in the here and now, avoiding period costumes.

4 Laboratory. For films shot on celluloid, this is one of the largest expenses, together with film stock, while DV filmmaking removes this whole item from the budget.

5 Stock. Following on from the last item, however, the amount of videotape you need is greater than that used on similar-length movies shot on celluloid. Buy the highest quality you can afford and expect to shoot more than you will use. You should try to use tapes a limited number of times in order to keep recording quality high and consistent throughout shooting. DV tapes are built far better than previous analog tapes so should withstand re-recording many times. Reusing tapes no more than 10 times should be a reasonable aim. When shooting you should try to keep all the takes you film, regardless of the amount of space this may occupy, and avoid the temptation to rewind and record over the bad take. In early projects, you may need up to an hour of bad footage for every minute that you will edit, but as you become more experienced in making movies this will fall dramatically.

6 Editing. Provided you have the hardware and software necessary to get your tapes onto your PC, edit them and put the finished film back onto tape or whatever format you need; you are making a huge saving compared to the budgets used in non-digital films. A typical film in the late 1990s costing less than $500 000 — classified as low-budget — saw editing costs take up 10 per cent of the overall budget. If you edit the movie yourself and do so using your own desktop editing unit, you are making big savings.

7 Sound and music. Use original material, avoiding complicated and expensive copyright fees. Try asking local musicians to collaborate with you in scoring your film. Or — as director David Lynch did — simply try creating your own music, which is infinitely more straightforward since the days when Lynch devised the unearthly sounds for Eraserhead with the easy availability of musicmaking software.

8 Insurance. In larger productions insurance is a non-negotiable item. It is essential to protect the production company against claims from injuries or worse incurred by cast or crew during filming. It can also cover loss of tape or stock, delays in production caused by damage or illness to sets or people and damage to others' property due to production. In small productions where many of the roles are unpaid or filled by the director/writer/producer, it may not be necessary to set up such packages of insurance. Your own household insurance is unlikely to pay for equipment lost or damaged on location, so it may be useful to set up an extension to your existing cover. Actors receiving payment will expect some cover in the event of injury on set. It does not follow, however, that unpaid cast will exclude you from blame if injuries stop them from taking a paid job right after your production. If insurance cannot be arranged, try to come to some written agreement with crew and cast prior to filming.

9 Additional costs. Just about every micro/low-budget film comes in over budget. It is almost a rule that the smaller the budget, the more likely you are to need to be flexible. This is mainly because of the notorious ‘additional costs’. Notorious because they creep up on you and end up devouring half the film's budget on items such as extra gaffer tape, photocopying, petrol, parking tickets, mobile phone calls. One particular budget from a filmmaker who was aiming to bring in a 10-minute film for under £120 went far beyond this when the line ‘additional costs’ was added. End-of-shoot drinks and food alone added 50 per cent to the budget, while unforeseen petrol to ferry around unpaid actors and crew added 20 per cent.

How much money is needed?

As we have seen, at a certain low level of budget it is desirable to work out what funds are available and then look at what kind of film is possible. This is part of the creative process and to a certain extent plays a part in most directors' minds at whatever level they operate. Even on larger budget films it is usual to find the movie plot compromised by a lack of funds. However, to most filmmakers, if compromise is the difference between getting a film made and not getting it made, then most would rather make a few changes. If you know your film and what you are aiming at in the movie then it should be possible to make changes without necessarily cutting back on your ideas.

If you have managed to involve crew and cast without payment and follow the ideas listed above for reducing costs, the main immovable costs are videotapes and items seen in front of the camera — in other words, sets, dressing and locations. To be safe, add 20 per cent onto the cost to allow for unforeseen extras, but even then the cost of a short, self-made film can be less than a small family's weekly food bill (but with a greater lifespan). To give an indication of the kinds of figures we are talking about in short films, there has been a flourishing of movie challenges or competitions that throw down the gauntlet of making a movie for less than $100.

Getting investment

Raising money for larger productions as a completely unknown filmmaker is complicated but not impossible.

Even unknown filmmakers can, and do, raise money from companies, charitable agencies, family friends and state arts agencies. If you go for this option, approach it as a business proposition. This means putting together a business plan, résumés, showreel, budget and screenplay. You can never be too professional about this, so think about devising a company name and get some headed paper and even a website domain name to demonstrate that you see this as a serious venture, reflecting your own commitment to it. Become professional: get yourself a suit, turn up to meetings on time and be well prepared, projecting the image of someone they can invest money in. Getting together a business package is going to need some investment itself, but many banks are very keen for the custom of the small business and will send free of charge a range of material showing how to put together a good-looking package, and some may offer discount vouchers from local companies for costs such as printing.

Compiling an investment package

The following should be included.

Résumés (curriculum vitae)

These should reflect the talent you have managed to coax into your project. Ask for detailed résumés from your crew and include any references that suggest that these people know what they are doing, or have studied somewhere to be able to do this, or have raised finance previously. Keep these short, summarizing the important information, and include photos where possible. If you or anyone in your team have received any publicity from any source, include it to suggest that you are, as a group, on the way up and are worth investing in.

Showreel

This is a selection of clips of the projects you have worked on so far, usually on VHS tape. Include those of your team as well. It is an extension of the résumé and is your chance to show that you do, indeed, know what you are doing and have picked up a camera before, that you have all the skills needed to finish the movie.

If neither you nor your team have made any movies yet, then don't be shy about it. Include it if you have the material, even if it consists of half-finished drafts for movies and experiments, but don't worry if you have none.

Background material

A range of development material will help convince the potential investor that you have planned the film and have a hard-working and realistic approach to your work. Include a screenplay if you have one, a short synopsis describing the film in only a few paragraphs, artwork, sketches, storyboards, even possible advertisement designs for the film. Also include some indication of the assets you have that help in making the movie, such as editing software, mics or cameras.

Budget

Make your budget as detailed as you can, giving estimates at the conservative, upper end of the scale to be on the safe side. Investors will be more impressed by a realistic budget than a cheaper one with no hope of success. You should not have to seek extra funding halfway through production, even if much of Hollywood does exactly that.

Getting private backers for your film is not easy but there are enough anecdotes about well-established directors who have gone to great lengths to get cash for a first film to convince that it's worth a try. The young Sam Raimi, unable to secure funding for his first feature, sent investment packages to all the doctors and dentists in Michigan, eventually raising enough money to make The Evil Dead (1982), figuring they would not be put off by the amount of spilt blood in his movie.

Copyright

Be careful if you are sending out material that you feel could easily be imitated or copied by someone else. Your movie belongs to you even though you haven't shot it yet, so copyright the story or treatment and any other information or material you want to safeguard, including company name. Simply state at the foot of each sheet that copyright is owned by you and that this material cannot be reproduced in any way, including electronically. Doing this makes you look more professional, and therefore good value to a potential investor.

Beware investment firms

You may also hear about companies that specialize in getting funds for new businesses. Such companies will invest in high-risk projects for gain, but even they often draw the line at getting involved in the notoriously unpredictable film business. There are, however, some who only work in entertainment and will advertise their services on Internet filmmaker sites, offering to raise finance for your film. Beware about committing yourself to deals if you are unfamiliar with this territory. It is common for you to lose 50 per cent of your profits — should there be any — to your backer, but this may be no more than what you would pay out to other private backers. To be on the safe side, don't take part in such a scheme unless you fully understand what you are signing and can repay any loans with or without your movie making a profit. And certainly avoid signing anything that puts your property or other collateral on the line if you can't repay. If you are keen to take this route, it may be safer to seek out someone from a law background rather than a credit/loans background. Many law firms have specialists in finding investment for entertainment projects, but this is more common in cities where the film industry is prominent.

Funding a movie on credit cards

It is now common to hear of films made at the low end of the scale that have been financed entirely on credit cards. But it is becoming more common still to hear of filmmakers saddled with insurmountable debt as they struggle to repay borrowed money and rising interest. The temptation is great: fill in a few forms and you get sent cheques for all the money to make your movie. But try to think of the long term; think of how you will finance your next project if you are having to work day and night to fend off the debt collector. Before you commit yourself to using credit, think first about the absolute worst-case scenario; consider what would happen if your film does not recoup any of its costs and you end up borrowing more than you first thought. If the figures you come up with look manageable then proceed, but exercise caution.

The Crunch

• Make use of what you have free
• Some genres and stories are expensive
• Don't spend beyond your budget
• Avoid credit card movie-making
• Cover many filmmaking roles yourself
• If you want investment, plan well and make a package.

2. Collaboration and you

Billy Wilder's famous aphorism that making a film is ‘a collection of creative people, in a profit-driven system’ is apt; to many filmmakers theirs is a collaborative art form, involving a balancing act between various creative people and the commercial needs of the industry. Our culture has grown to expect a work of art or a cultural product to be ‘authored’ by just one person. This may be partly due to commercial demands and partly due to the cult of celebrity. Either way, it is misplaced. Film is and always has been a hugely collaborative effort.

In this section we are going to take a look at how to recruit a crew, how people can work best together, and what to do when problems turn up. If Chapter 3 was all about the machinery of filmmaking, this chapter is all about the relationships involved.

Options

First of all, we need to see what the options are in making a film in terms of crew. You are either going to work alone or as part of a crew, and between those two options there are a number of other possibilities, such as part-time crews, shared jobs and so on.

Solo

In practice, working solo is rare. Certain forms of work will be more suitable and others will be almost impossible unless you are solo. But in general, most filmmakers will work with others at least in a loose arrangement. Documentary filmmakers may find that working solo — actually operating the camera on location — is the best option, as it allows greater flexibility of movement, particularly if travelling. Artist filmmakers who work with video in an art gallery setting may also find that the personal nature of their approach demands a more intimate way of working that doesn't involve other people.

In narrative short movies, it is entirely feasible but exhausting to make a film alone and with no other production staff apart from actors. But this may become restrictive: as the ambition of your plans grows so too does the need to draw in other people who share your enthusiasm for a project. Sound may be especially harder to record. In this sense, the scale of your project is directly linked to how many people you need to include.

On the negative side, working solo has its own set of problems. It can be harder to stick to your plans if you are on your own. Filming has a notorious tendency to steer you from your intended route, with the result that you may end up with drafts for two or three films rather than finished footage for one. But like-minded people can be a steadying influence, restraining the more extravagant changes of plan you might have and acting as a sounding board for the testing of new ideas.

Figure 4.2 Working with a small crew can be effective. Spanish director David Casals discusses the next shot with the crew.

What sort of crew?

If you decide that you need to work with people to get the best results, then you next need to think about what sort of crew is right for you and how it is going to operate.

The small crew

A large crew can be cumbersome and unresponsive to changing situations, while working with a small number of people can be more flexible, almost as much as with a solo effort. But there is also a very different kind of working atmosphere when your crew, including yourself, can be counted on one hand.

Let's suppose you find yourself working with a camera operator (a director of photography), a sound recordist/mic operator and a runner. When you work with this size group the dynamics are very different to those when you are the director for 12 or 15 people. A small group will naturally want to be more involved in decision-making; its intimacy will mean that very little that anyone does is kept from the other members. You may also find that decisions are worked through together, and consensus is more likely to be sought by everyone. To this end, it is quite likely that members of a small crew will try to find a compromise when disagreements arise, again simply because they will feel more group ownership of the project. It could also mean that your crew will stick with you and will want to see the project through to completion, even if not being paid. It is possible that if you try to impose a different sort of dynamic on the small group then discontent may be more common, as members feel less a part of the route you are taking. So, if you opt for a small crew, bear in mind that you will need to operate in a less dictatorial manner to get the best out of everyone.

Medium crews

Working with larger numbers of people will place far more onus on you as director to be more organized and confident about what you want. Simply getting everyone to be in the right place at the right time and to keep within budget or to schedule is a huge feat. It is not uncommon to have unpaid crews even when on this scale and it may be possible to attract more professional or more experienced crew members if the project is larger. But, at the same time, all eyes will be on you as director to be in charge. You may also find that it is possible to have two or three people more closely associated with the film from its earliest stages who work with you in a more collaborative relationship and function pretty much as the smaller crew described above. But beware of excluding others on the fringes of the crew from decisions. You may make decisions alone, but make sure you talk to all your crew constantly, informing them of what is going on as plans change.

Pay or no pay?

Other people can help you find fast solutions to many problems, simply because they share your aims and have a vested interest in your shared success. In a production where the costs start to exceed your monthly disposable income, sharing the costs can be a necessity. Working with other people does not necessarily mean adding to your costs, particularly if you adopt an approach where you see yourself as collaborating with other filmmakers rather than employing them. From this point of view, costs become shared rather than just falling on your shoulders.

In many low-budget films, including shorts and longer productions, it is common to have unpaid crew members. Within the filmmaking community there is a great deal of debate as to the ethics of this, with some filmmakers pleading that non-payment is the only viable way to get films made in a cash-starved and cash-hungry art form, while others argue that payment ‘professionalizes’ the low-budget sector, and therefore enables it to be taken more seriously. For most crew members — editors, camera operators and so on — getting their first paid job is a major breakthrough in their careers. Jobs are few and hard to come by, and it is possibly a fact of low-budget filmmaking today that a small minority of directors exploit low expectations of crew members by avoiding raising funds for payment.

Figure 4.3 In any set it is important to consult and discuss decisions, even though you have the final say. David Casals with actor and crew member.

There are options for payment that don't need you to pay upfront at once. This is called ‘deferred payments’ and has attracted much notoriety with filmmakers, who call it a contradiction in terms. It works by offering crew members a fee when or if the film makes a profit. It could, for instance, get sold to a cable TV station or receive payments from web screenings. But it is highly unlikely that any short film will ever make money. Agents who travel the film festivals looking for new talent are keenly aware of this and will buy films to sell to agencies such as airlines or TV stations, while taking up to 50 per cent of the resulting payments. They know as much as anyone that the short filmmaker is not in it for the money and is simply looking to use their movie as a calling card to the next step upwards.

Being candid about your lack of funding and payment is better than promising cash that never turns up. At the lower end of the industry people will work for you for free provided you can convince them that your film is going to be of the quality that will help them get noticed and look good on a showreel or résumé. This doesn't mean you can presume non-payment. In fact, to offer something goes some way to making your production look professional. One posting on an Internet recruitment site for filmmakers was open about what was on offer: ‘Editor needed, familiar with Final Cut Pro, for short film. This is a greatlooking film and although I can't offer payment you will be blown away by the footage. It'll look great on your CV (résumé).’ An editor was found, the film completed and all parties happy with the experience.

Paying your crew does, however, make it easier to expect ‘performance’ from the people you pay, easier to ask them to work long hours during bad weather and turn up on time, and easier to make sure that actors don't leave your production for a paid job midway through filming (and who could blame them?). Also, be careful about paying some members of the crew and not others, tempting if you have both experienced people and first-timers working together. It can split a crew apart when it is discovered that some are being paid for what others do for nothing, and your production could end unceremoniously.

The low-budget strata of the film industry is more dependent on mutual co-operation than any other and to a large extent has succeeded in producing a constant stream of new talent precisely because its participants are ready and willing to help each other make movies. Whether you can pay or not, the success of your production is likely to fall on how much respect and goodwill there is between all members of the production. Honesty and openness are integral to this.

How to recruit a crew

Recruiting people to work with you can be a time of self-discovery. You will find out as much about yourself and your skills as other peoples'. To get the most from the experience, be as honest and realistic as you can, avoiding the desire to ‘talk up’ a project or make yourself look more experienced than you are.

The most effective way to recruit is to use a bulletin board in a website or place an ad in one of the mailings that are now an essential part of the low-budget landscape. Mailings are the better option because they have an urgency to them and are targeted very precisely. It goes like this: filmmakers, actors, anyone involved in the business at whatever level — students, beginners and professionals — subscribe to a daily email. Under subheadings they can check out new productions that are recruiting, equipment that is for sale, or just look at general questions on technical or day-to-day issues of filmmaking. The people who place the ads leave an email address so subscribers can either respond directly (which is more common except for debates and general questions) or leave a message on the next mailing for everyone to see. In the UK, Shooting People.org has been the pioneer in this field. Its daily bulletin goes out to over 30 000 people, mostly in the UK. A New York version has grown steadily over the last few years and there are other plans to expand the service. Try also Talent Circle (UK), IndieWire (USA) or Australia's Screenhub.

How to post a message

If you choose to post a message on a site, check first whether it will appear for one day only or whether it stays indefinitely until you remove it. Bear in mind also that the sites have certain rules that prohibit certain messages, so check out the main site if in doubt. If you get a good response to your message, post a follow-up message thanking everyone — this is good for the site and helps it continue. Follow these points in preparing a message:

• Be specific. How many people do you need? Do they need skills in certain areas or is this a collaborative film where each member needs general filmmaking skills? Give a clear outline of the film, a ‘pitch’, but don't be tempted to make the project sound bigger or more grand than it is.
• Be honest. If you are new to filmmaking, say so. Similarly, be blunt about whether you can pay anyone, about how much time you can commit and what equipment you actually have right now. And don't worry if your posting starts to sound too particular; just about any set-up will attract some response.
• Timing. Give exact details of dates you provisionally intend to work on and whether any follow-up dates would be needed.
• Distribution. Don't give false hope of where your film will end up. Avoid aiming too high or appearing to be unrealistic about your chances of success.
• Contacting you. In asking for replies, try where possible to use email addresses rather than land addresses or phone numbers. It is useful to set up an address specifically for a particular project that is terminated when you end the production. You could make this a remote access address, such as Hotmail or similar. On a note of personal safety, it would be advisable to agree to meet in busy public places rather than at your home address, taking the same kind of precautions you might expect in lonely hearts ads.
• Budget. Giving details of a budget is no longer an indication to the level on which you are working. Ambitious short films can be cheap, as can even feature films. Since DV has taken hold of the lowbudget film world, budget sheets have smaller figures and more ‘nil cost’ entries than ever, without compromising too much on quality. Don't be worried about going further and describing yourself as a low- or no-budget filmmaker. Rather than put people off, this term now has come to denote a certain underground, maverick approach to the craft and with it the suggestion of something innovative and challenging.

Who are you looking for?

Ask yourself what skills you have and then look at what you don't. Go about recruiting people who are going to add to the production rather than those who are simply going to double up on what you yourself can already handle. If you are confident in more than one area, you may feel that placing yourself in one particular role is a better use of your time than trying to cover all bases.

Look at the roles outlined in the section on working with other people and identify which you want to work in and which you can hand out to others. In terms of numbers, as a broad guide, a crew of four would be sufficient for a small-scale, low-budget short film, not including actors.

This would consist of:

• A camera operator
• Director
• Editor
• Sound operator.

Not all of these people will be necessary throughout the project, but you may find people who want to be involved in all aspects of the project and who don't limit their time to their role. This sort of blurring of a job description is rarely seen higher up in the industry, as the inclusion of a pay cheque in the equation formalizes a person's relationship with a project. Your film can only benefit from involving people who want to be kept involved on a larger scale, but some may be uncomfortable spreading out artistic input among the whole crew.

What kinds of roles are needed?

Throughout the film industry a certain number of clearly defined roles have evolved within a film production. To a certain extent these have developed in line with the demands of the medium to emulate business, with a hierarchy of roles:

• Director. Acts as artistic controller, holding the project together with a single vision of the style and tone of the movie.
• Producer. Runs the production as business manager.
• Assistant director. Helps organize shots, does some additional shooting and schedules everyone.
• Director of cinematography. One of the most important roles on set, this person is responsible for lighting the set and the operating of the camera. However, in practice, the DP rarely operates the camera, but is responsible for every photographic aspect of the film, and for managing the camera crew.
• Continuity. Person responsible for the perfect matching of all elements in a scene, so that when edited the different takes work seamlessly together.
• Sound mixer/boom handler. These jobs cover, respectively, the correct mixing of sounds during filming and the adequate placing of the camera on set.

All about groups

In large productions managing sums greater than the turnover of many businesses, this hierarchy of roles is an essential way of remaining on target and within budget. But in the low-budget sector there are opportunities and benefits from doing it differently. Although this hierarchical structure remains the default method, for many it belies the reality where roles merge and responsibilities change. Many low-budget films work on a pared-down model that places the director (who has often written the script), the producer (who shares artistic commitment to the film and is rarely a simple business manager) and the director of cinematography on a more or less equal footing. One person may well have instigated the project, but each of this team must feel central to the decision-making process. Once a project is established, other members of the crew may be recruited.

At this level there is a lot of overlap in roles. After a couple of years of working on shared or lowbudget productions, most people build up a sizeable range of skills — sound recorders become competent with a camera, camera operators become good editors, and producers develop a passing knowledge of it all. Indeed, it may be difficult to find skilled people who have no interest in any other part of a production than their own specialism.

A basic crew, by skill not job description

If you find that you can't hire all the people you need, look at what skills the people you do have can offer. At its most basic a small crew needs to consist of:

• Someone who understands cameras and lighting
• Someone who understands sound
• Someone who is good with editing
• Someone who makes sure everyone is pulling in the same direction
• Someone who others trust to make the final artistic decisions.

To find out what everyone can offer the production, ask each member to describe in order their top three skills so that you know what each person is essential for and what they can double as.

The kind of people you need in low-budget groups

The list above is based on technical needs of the production. But what about the group itself? If you are spending so much time working with a bunch of people, how you can be sure you are all going to get along, or more appropriately, that when you don't get along, it is for the right reason?

The need to operate without pay cheques and contracts requires filmmakers to renegotiate the power structure within a production. Without money greasing the wheels of production, you need to rely more on consulting and bargaining. Low-budget film crews have fewer members working as a crew and are therefore more flexible and responsive to new methods of working. They can devise new methods without having to worry too much about contractual implications and can encourage the spread of creative input across the film crew.

• The group needs one person who understands the idea behind the film better than anyone else, and this is usually the person who first devised it.
• It also needs several people who each understand and contribute to the overall creative drive of the film.
• These people must be able to cover each of the technical and artistic roles outlined in the more traditional model above, but it is likely that they will overlap in skills.
• Rather than placing the director at the top of a vertical hierarchy, this person may be placed at the centre of the group, having equal contact with each person and acting as conduit for the suggestions and contributions of each member.
• If there is a hierarchy in this model, it places the ideas and aims of the project as paramount and insists that all members agree at the outset what the aims are for the movie and abide by them; members are subordinate only to the general blueprint of the film rather than to an individual.

Groups that work well

There are particular mixes of people that work well together, quite apart from the technical or traditional roles that are seen in the conventional kind of filmmaking group. A bunch of reflective, ponderous people won't get a movie made, finding themselves stuck in the development hell of the coffee shop. On the other hand, a group of firebrands, hot-headedly chasing every new idea, will also find themselves trapped, this time by too many directions to go in. The artistic process of making a film is as reliant on the combination of various characters as on skills. If you are trying to find people to work with on a project, the list below may help in devising a group that works well and pitches in together.

Successful filmmaking groups have included:

• The artistic warden. Someone who is committed to keeping the film as close to the original plans and ideas of the film as possible. This person acts as a kind of earth wire, channelling all new ideas back to the main aims and checking that deviations from the film are consistent with the agreed plan.
• The creative driver. A person who thrives on generating new ideas and while sticking to the plans for the film is adept at devising new and better ways of fulfilling them. A creative livewire, this person is often one jump ahead of the other members, but does need reining in from time to time.
• The sceptic. This member sees the film from an audience's point of view, questioning whether elements of the film will work and applying a cooler, business-oriented view to the proceedings.
• The technical perfectionist. Although each member may possess more than adequate technical skills, this person acts as a technical quality controller and may have more understanding than most about equipment or software used in production.

The characters listed above are not exhaustive, but do suggest certain key types who seem to work well towards a successful outcome. If nothing else, observations of this sort tell us that dividing a crew by skill roles alone is only half the story, that other factors contribute to the ‘good group’.

How to make sure your group works well: make ground rules for everyone

Aside from whether a filmmaker takes the traditional model or works in other ways, there are certain ground rules that may ensure that the group remains on good terms throughout production and that seem to bring out the most in each member. In ‘good groups’ these have included:

• Everyone has an input. Everyone involved in the production is part of the artistic process. No one's role is purely technical; everyone has something to contribute in terms of experience and technique.
• Everyone is here to learn. If it goes wrong in places, don't attribute blame. Don't exclude anyone from the opportunity to make mistakes and learn.
• Only the best will do. A belief that the production is going to be absolutely the best that can be achieved right now, given budget size.
• The integrity of the initial idea. Throughout production it is the ideas and plans drawn up at the start which were agreed on by all involved that are deferred to. When changes or problems arise, all members refer back to the original plans.

What if other people change my movie?

What sort of person decides that they need to rope in other people to get a film made? Does it make you a realist or does it mean you are on the slippery slopes of compromise? Will it make the difference between making a film at all or carrying on dreaming about it, or will it mean that by the end you wished you had kept it just as you imagined it?

Maybe one of the better ways to approach these worries is to take a sideways look at the question of what happens when you bring people into that very private space where you develop your ideas and dreams. There is a school of thought which says that you somehow intuitively only learn what you need to know, derived from the ideas of Plato. We could take this a little further by saying that you perhaps seek out people who you need to know, that you intuit what they have and what they can bring to the project, and that you hone in on them, sensing that they can help you. In other words, you get the crew you deserve, in a positive way. Maybe, when you agree for certain people to work with you, you later can't imagine why you possibly let them into your dreams, such is their ability to trample all over them. But there could be a part of you which also senses that your dreams need a bit of pushing around and that you were drawn to this person because they are doing something you yourself can't do. It might be wise to expect that you will seriously disagree with people, long after you have agreed to have them on board. But perhaps what they are doing is acting out their role. If you can take the long view about your interactions with your collaborators then it may take some of the steam out of situations when they arise. For a start, try never to fire anyone — ever. By the end of the production you might realize why you hired them and congratulate yourself.

Figure 4.4 Actors need time to rehearse their parts fully, as in this shot of Rachel Rose Reid for The Dark Hunter (2002) by Jonnie Oddball.

Why collaborating works

Sharing power on set

Working without payment, as is the case of most low-budget productions, does suggest certain rights in terms of how much one is allowed to contribute to the artistic route the film takes. There is perhaps an inverse connection between the amount of money you are paying a crew member and the amount of artistic input they can have. After all, if someone is going to work a 15-hour day in all weathers for no pay, it seems only fair that they should be listened to if they turn up with some interesting ideas on how the next shot should look.

Sharing power in a production means including the opinions and ideas of those you work with and increasing their sense of involvement in, and therefore commitment to, a production. The net result for you is greater quality of work from your crew and a commitment to see the project through to the end.

Other people are good for your movie

If you work with even a small number of people on a production it is likely that your ideas will be tested and questioned. This sort of experience is crucial in pushing your idea to its most highly developed point and ensuring that the eventual film itself is the best you can possibly make. Some filmmakers prefer to be resolutely in charge of a film, but others recognize that almost no member of the crew found on a film set is purely a technician; most come with some creative ideas about each stage of production.

The process of pushing a project as far as possible is best done in a competitive atmosphere. Three or four people, each enthusiastic about a project and determined to prove themselves in an ultimately supportive group, can raise standards and lead to some highly original works, often to the surprise of each member.

Filmmaking can be a meeting of creative minds, but you don't have to lose control over the direction of your film when you start to involve other people; they can be as committed to the original idea as you. While it is possible to make films alone, the nature of low-budget filmmaking is such that you need all the help you can get and can only benefit from extending artistic input to include other people with other skills and experiences. Your crew need to agree on the basic aims of a project and the integrity of the initial ideas, but beyond that they may help push the movie higher than you could alone.

The Crunch

• Working solo can be tough
• Short and low-budget films use smaller groups, large budgets need large crews
• Treat everyone with respect
• Try to pay people you work with — if you can't, then be straight about this
• Crew working for free need to be consulted and included — share power on set
• Find people who work well together, not just with technical skills.

What this project is for: to recognize differences in individual imaginations

Time: allow around one hour

What this project is about

In this project we are going to see how much other people can offer you and your ideas. To prove it we are not even going to tell them what it is you are going to make yet. Also, the process of playing this sort of game is going to bring your group closer together. Certainly, the ups and downs of a production mean that you need to have strong ties if you are going to weather the storms ahead. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, director of Amores Perros and 21 Grams, starts each production on day one by getting everyone in a circle and releasing a bird. This sort of ritual seems to confirm the equal value he places on every member of the team through his very emotional and intense stories.

In this project, though, it is a lot less deep but you may find out some interesting ideas that get thrown up about your movies.

Stage 1

You might be working with between three and six people as the most common number, but more than that is fine for this project. Make sure everyone is relaxed and has a few sheets of paper and a large, black marker pen.

Ask everyone to write down ideas for a scene. These must consist of a number of characters, and a location. So, for instance, you could say there are two people and they are in a forest. Or you could say there are three people and they are at sea. In turns, go through each of these with each person drawing a personal interpretation of what an image from the scene could look like.

Don't let anyone discuss it or ask you questions; there is no more information than the few words used to describe the scene. Restrict the time to around two minutes. Make sure everyone indicates what time of day or night it is and what the climate is.

Stage 2

Take a look at everyone's pictures. It works well to ask everyone to sit in a circle and then turn them around so everyone gets a scan at them all at once. Even if you were born as sextuplets and raised together, it is unlikely that anyone's images match. One person might interpret the forest scene by setting the duo at night, another in the day, one in a safe clearing, another lost far from the path. In the sea scene, one person may have drawn a frail boat, another that the characters are on a luxury liner. There may be storms, it might be night, there could be sharks, there could be fireworks and flags.

What the process tells us is that each person has taken the initial very simple idea and interpreted it according to their own experience. For instance, if someone draws a forest path leading to a light, with dark images all around it, it is hard not to draw conclusions about where they are in life right now. Similarly, if someone draws a sea full of problems and danger. However, there are people far more qualified than filmmakers to take a pot-shot at a quick psychoanalysis of your crew, so don't be tempted. After all, they have to unwittingly bare their souls for a moment.

Ask everyone to talk about what each picture represents to them. The more everyone talks, the more they see the merits in other people's points of view. And you get to see the way people's minds work. In essence, what you are glimpsing is the architecture of their imagination, showing the tones, atmospheres, colours and shapes they think about.

What this project is for: to enable a crew to work collaboratively and exchange ideas

Time: allow about one hour

What this project is about

This project is aimed at illustrating how a team can work collaboratively on a project. It will show how to work on other people's ideas so that you integrate your own ideas with theirs. In the low-budget world it is more common to work in an unpaid environment where everyone is getting something from the project, but not necessarily cash. To most, this is a chance to gain valuable experience and learn new skills. But this way of working means that you can't just resort to dictatorial orders to get work done; instead, you need to include everyone in the decision-making process and treat with respect ideas and suggestions from your crew. This becomes essential when working with those closest to you in the production — the cinematographer and writer. These people will have an equal stake in the film to you and suggestions they make need to be taken seriously. But everyone will know that this is your project and won't try to dilute it or assume power over it.

Before you start working with your team, this project will help set up methods of communication to enable ideas to be shared more easily.

Stage 1

Get your crew together and make time to have a relaxed and good-natured hour or two. Schedule it a week or so before your production actually begins shooting. Give everyone three sheets of paper and a black marker pen. Then brainstorm ideas on a narrative movie that you are going to sketch out. This process itself is interesting, as you will be able to see who is putting themselves forward and who takes a back seat

Stage 2

Talk about the three-act structure outlined in Chapter 4:4 and make sure you all agree on what it is and how it works. Then ask everyone to contribute to devising a simple Act I describing character(s), situation and setting. Using a sheet of paper, each member then draws their own interpretation of that first act. Then take a moment to look at these — it will be interesting to see how far they differ. Each person started off with the same premise for Act I, but may have imagined it in widely varying ways. Everyone will have brought their own particular stance on the premise and put in their own experiences. This usually provokes debates about how varied they all are. It will enable each member to see what sort of visual references other people have and it will also prove that it is not enough to just have a script with a few lines of description — everyone has to talk about a scene and agree on your shared interpretation of it.

Stage 3

Now ask everyone — you will take part too — to draw a sequel to this act as an Act II. They will each take the characters in Act I and propel them forward into a perilous situation. Make sure that everyone draws their own ideas and isn't influenced by the next person's. Then ask everyone to pass their Act I along to the next person. Again, this can provoke discussions about differences — how your Act II fits in with their Act I.

Stage 4

Take a few minutes to complete the next stage, which involves each member completing the movie outline with an Act III to complement the borrowed Act II and their own Act I. They will be challenged to weave together the narrative from their acts with the crucial central acts from another crew member, prompting imaginative leaps that will prove how it is possible to take entirely random collisions of stories and fuse them together.

Evaluation

There are a number of interesting questions raised by this exercise. But the basic outcome is that your team members will have followed something through together and had fun doing so, improving your relationships. The ideas it investigates are displayed in a half-serious manner, but have a clear message. If you can make the ideas of entirely different people come together and work as a narrative, then anything is possible. When you want to make something fuse you can, suggesting that if there are serious disagreements in production it can always be resolved. Take note of the divergent ways people have of seeing passive descriptions — they project their own ideas onto it. Make use of these varied imaginations on set.

I want something more challenging

The idea of the three-act story may not appeal to you or your crew. If so, use the ideas in Project 8, which allows you to construct story paths that conform to different models. Ask your crew to make a branch model of a movie, devising it from a shared starting point. You will have to work together to make sure that the messages on each branch add up and forge a coherent idea. The model needs to be a group one, where each person is challenged to take the themes on each part of the branch further, and other people try to tie two or more together with more ideas.

What this project is for: to generate ideas collaboratively

Time: allow one hour

What this project is about

The aim of this short project is to see how a group can develop a story more effectively than an individual. In a sense, generating ideas as a group is like hot-wiring up your imaginations — a web of experiences to rival the Internet. In this short exercise, we are going to develop ideas using photographs from any source, including magazines, newspapers and so on.

Stage 1

Before you meet with the other members of the team, ask them to bring along to this meeting a selection of random images that interest them. When you get together, ask everyone to lay out their photos in front of them and arrange them in a narrative. A photo of a person becomes the main character, while other images may become events, memories, locations, obstacles and challenges. Each person must make whatever connections they feel are appropriate to forge a cohesive story out of their images.

Stage 2

Ask team members to write down their story and keep it away from other members for the time being. Next, ask everyone to take just one image from their selection and pool it with the rest of the team's images. Give yourself a short time-span to make a complete narrative out of what you have pooled. It must be clear that you have no choice but to arrive at this story. A crucial obstacle is that everyone must agree. Consensus must be arrived at through discussion and argument, so that each person is either happy with the story or has been convinced as to its merits. It is a rule that everyone has a veto on the whole story until they are convinced by the ideas being generated.

This is a challenge only if you ask everyone to make plain their likes and dislikes and avoid having team members who prefer to shrink to the back. Discontent can become rife even in seemingly quiet groups — it is perhaps preferable to have regular arguments rather than simmering unhappiness.

Stage 3

In the last part of the exercise, ask everyone to take five minutes to talk, listen and argue to convince the rest of the group about their first idea, generated at the start. This is no competition — it is in fact the process of pitching the idea and having to field comments that is important. Avoid votes as to whose was best.

Evaluation

During this project your group will have practised several times the process of developing consensus. Each person will have contributed views and these will have been argued over. Each person has had a chance to be ‘director’ for a while, a few minutes to find out what it takes to listen, argue, reflect and make a decision about what idea is best for the group. And each person will also have found out what it is like to have to see their pet idea shot down so that the whole group can make the deadline.

In the part of the exercise where each person's favourite image was pooled, another aspect of collaboration is looked at. This is the idea of developing someone else's ideas, taking a single part of them and merging them with your own. It shows that your own ideas are strong enough to be heard through layers of other people's work.

The most important thing that will have been practised over and again is that the needs of the group are paramount, over the needs of the individual, and the needs of the movie over the needs of each person.

I want something more challenging

The aim of this project is developing consensus and learning how to listen, while at the same time not sacrificing what you feel. Ways in which this becomes harder would arise when the group is larger, when consensus is going to be harder to arrive at. You will be aware of the stage when this exercise becomes more challenging when factors like this, and shortage of time, budget and facilities, make themselves felt.

3. Making a schedule

In a feature film, the idea of planning how much time each part of the process will take is crucial to the smooth running of a production, and has a huge impact on marketing and subsequent profit margins. In short-film production and in micro-budget filmmaking, schedules are less rigid. The reason for this is the number of variables with which the micro-budget filmmaker has to contend, from the availability of non-fee actors, to the demands of day jobs. The smaller the budget, the more flexible, and changeable, the schedule.

Many filmmakers have made films over a number of years, filming at weekends while they earn the money to buy film stock or tape, reliant always on a complex set of timetables of each crew member as they juggle their commitments around the demands of the film. For many, the short film is more likely than longer productions to result in a piece of finished work. Actors are less likely to get called away to more attractive paid work and crew are more likely to be able to commit themselves if a shoot lasts just a few days. Morale can easily sink when you have a half-finished production and no way of knowing when you can get your crew back together to finish it.

Enough good footage

How much you need to shoot is one of the most important factors in working out how much time you will need overall. How much time will it take to get a shot right? Will you need to reshoot parts of your scene when you play it back over lunch? And will you have the confidence to go with what you have planned rather than try to cover all bases by shooting from all sorts of other angles, again and again? It all comes down to experience. How much a beginner needs to shoot will be different from a more advanced filmmaker. To work it out we could think in terms of a ratio — known as the ‘shooting ratio’ — of good footage (stuff you actually want to edit with) to bad footage (when actors fluff their lines, the mic is out, the camera wobbles and so on). For many people starting their first film, something like 10 or even 20 per cent good is average. After the first film, and indeed sometimes during production of the first, this rate rises in accordance with the quality of the actors and crew and the decisiveness of the filmmaker, but usually stays around the region of 50–60 per cent good footage after two or three short films. Short films allow you to learn more quickly than more cumbersome productions by letting you see your mistakes more quickly, so you may find that your ratio of good to unusable improves sharply.

How much you need to reshoot or redraft is a big factor in determining how much time your film will take, but is not necessarily a factor in its quality. Stanley Kubrick would frequently shoot up to a hundred takes for minor scenes, and it has been suggested that he used this as a method to push his actors further and get more out of them. To be cautious, consider that in one day's filming only a few minutes of final footage will be achieved, less if it is action, much more if it is simply-staged dialogue.

Length of each stage

In terms of overall schedule, the length of time to allow for planning, shooting and editing is never going to go according to plan. But it would be a good start to assume that it will take twice as long to plan as for shooting. Post-production may last up to four times the length of the shoot. So a ratio of planning, shooting and editing could be around 2:1:4. The editing stage is prolonged when working in digital editing with your own unit at home, as it allows you to play with alternative versions and tweak the final film, perfecting it to a high degree. However, to many editors schooled in the old analog methods, better editing occurs when you are pushed for time and need to make fast choices.

In between the stages mentioned above, there will be other tasks that need attention. These include casting, rehearsals, design, props buying, and viewing daily takes and rough assemblies during shooting.

Figure 4.5 Scheduling can be difficult in low budget films where unexpected obstacles occur, but good planning can keep you on time and on budget. Mark McDermott shooting a scene from Jigsaw of Life (2005).

Pre-production schedule

This stage is the most flexible in that you can wait until your film is prepared before you commit to a shooting date. However, the tasks to be covered need to be prioritized. Drawing up a budget is the primary task, as it dictates how much time you can spend filming, how many actors (if any) you can hire and what props you need to buy.

Make a continuity breakdown

To assess your budget you need to make a continuity breakdown. This is an outline of what is needed for each scene in the script, a list of what each demands and its associated costs. For example, a shot involving several cast members will require greater catering costs. It should also include for each scene:

• The amount of the script that is being covered by a scene. Note that each page of script is one minute of movie time. Partial pages are counted as eighths, so two and three-quarter pages would be two and six-eighths, running at about two minutes and 45 seconds.
• Details of location, including transportation costs, accommodation and catering.
• The time of the shoot, noting whether it is day or night.
• Any extra equipment or props that are required, such as cars, additional lighting, costumes.
• Which members of the cast and crew are needed for that scene.
• Any additional cast or extras needed.
• Set plans showing an aerial view of a location with details of where cameras, props and lights could be situated.

You don't necessarily have to stick to the above, but it is crucial to the smooth running of the production that others have faith in your organizational abilities or you may lose members of your crew. Plans that change, particularly as a result of the input of your crew, are better than no plans at all.

Shooting schedule

One of the logistical problems of filming is trying to arrange that all scenes set in one location are shot together. Ideally, you should try to arrange a schedule like a tour, placing locations together according to geographical proximity and shooting separate locations on separate days; try to avoid changing locations halfway through the day. Many low-budget filmmakers find themselves having to film at inconsistent times according to when the cast and crew are available, often weekends or evenings, and this can play havoc with attempts to maintain a smooth flow to the film.

It is also likely that your co-workers are simultaneously working on other projects and you may have to devise ways of reminding cast and crew about the key points of the film before each shoot. It is easy to lose track of the kind of film you are working on when you have several on the go and it is common for you, as director, to want to change and adapt the script between shooting dates. Make plans well in advance so that everyone — cast and crew — has the opportunity to place the schedule in their diaries before they get involved in other projects. If you have the choice, try to get everyone together for a condensed period of shooting over several days, rather than spread work over weeks. But as mentioned in the chapter on people, if payment is not a part of your shoot, be prepared for crew dropping out to take paid work. Be flexible with this as far as possible and they might drop back in again.

How long is a shoot?

Shooting times vary widely between different sectors of the film industry. Twenty years ago, a 90-minute feature film would take around 40 days, whereas now it is common for a film of that duration to take 60 days or more. Bear in mind, though, that this is studio production, where filming is in line with union requirements regarding working hours and breaks. In the independent sector union arrangements are not so common, and in short movies are almost unheard of. However, if you can't afford union rates and work arrangements, try to go along with the spirit of them if not the letter, as your crew will function more happily and efficiently on good rest, average food and a day or more off once a week.

In studio filming it is common to shoot slightly more than location filming — perhaps one or two minutes more of final footage — per day, although some directors will work more quickly if, for instance, working on television drama, which averages six pages per day. Clearly, some scenes will take longer, such as action sequences, scenes involving special set-ups or those with more cast members or extras than usual.

Bear in mind during the shoot that there will be enormous pressure on you to extend a schedule or to reshoot. Remember that footage of the day's shooting rarely looks good — it's messy and is interspersed with bad takes. Resist the temptation to reshoot without taking advice from others in the crew or people with a more detached view of the project, and try not to judge the daily takes of a scene too harshly without seeing them in the context of the shots preceding and succeeding them.

Using the script as a guide, and informed by the restrictions of your budget, it is possible to make a fairly accurate estimation of the length of time it will take to shoot your film.

The Crunch

• Be realistic: allow more time than you think — think of a period and add 50 per cent
• Plan in advance for your crew
• Make a continuity breakdown — be in control of the schedule
• Keep crew and cast informed of any changes — check their availability
• The size of your budget will affect how long it will take
• Avoid reshooting hastily
• Don't overspend by filming more than you have to.

Part 2: Scriptwriting

4. Story and structure

Story is indeed king. It has the authority to make or break a film. It can elevate it to higher levels and confer on it a rank that no other part of the filmmaking process can offer. A film with poor technical qualities can survive when hooked up to a wonderful script, but a film with high production values and all the budget it can eat is going nowhere if the script is poor.

In this section we are going to take a look at what makes good stories. And we will see that it is not what they are about that matters, it is the way they are laid out — what we could call their structure.

Plot vs story

Before we talk about narrative in detail, we need to look at the terms we use. A story refers to the whole sequence of events from the opening moment of the movie to its close, while the plot refers only to those events that take up the main focus of the action. For example, in Taxi Driver, the film concerns a semi-literate Vietnam veteran, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro). For the first section of the film we encounter daily life for Travis as he contemplates the dark side of New York street life. This is the story, but the plot only kicks in when Travis meets Jodie Foster, whom he wishes to rescue from prostitution, and Cybill Shepherd, whose rejection of him leads him to plan the assassination of a leading political candidate. In these and other cases, the plot takes on a slightly different pace to the rest of the film, increasing the tempo and providing a focus for confrontation and resolution.

Story structure

Classic script structure

Classic structure, as seen in many narrative movies, is the dominant force in storytelling and in the cinema. This particular model of film structure is based on a need to deliver a story that resembles what we grew up thinking of as a proper story: something with a beginning, a middle and an end, and which safely delivers us an outcome — for better or worse. We want to be moved, taken on a journey, and made to experience a distillation of the ups and downs of life in one condensed trip. Some of the most powerful films reject this in favour of something that is more provocative, and with success. But these directors — Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, for example — have all been schooled in classic screenwriting forms and are then more confident to evolve them.

Classic structure operates along a three-act formula:

• Somebody is somewhere and everything's normal
• Something happens to this somebody, and normality is disrupted, prompting them to take action about what happened
• After conflicts and obstacles, normality is restored, but this is a new normality.

It consists of three events: the first and last are circumstances or situations, while the middle consists of action. So, a person is in one set of circumstances at the start of the movie and through a stream of action is taken into a new set of circumstances at the last section of the movie. This is often referred to as ‘state-crisis-new state’.

Classic structure in mainstream movies

The ultimate aim of this structure is to return the situation to the way it was before the event that changed everything. We can apply this structure to many films. In Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996):

• We see the world on a normal day and focus on a particular character (Will Smith)
• Aliens invade and create mayhem
• Then we see how the main character copes with this and tries to return the situation to the way it was before the invasion.

In Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988):

• Visiting cop McClane (Bruce Willis) goes to see his estranged wife
• The building where she works is hijacked by a group of terrorists, who take her hostage
• McClane tries to defeat the terrorists and release the hostages.

In this film, the narrative structure is very strong, with few diversions from the straight-line development of the action-based plot. We are taken from a quiet start, through endless near misses and cliffhangers, towards an upbeat conclusion in which all is resolved. There are clear stages in the action and we are accustomed to this kind of structure in this genre of movie.

In these films, good storytelling is about what methods you use to combine these stages of the story together and whether you can do so without the audience being too aware of it. This way of telling stories appeals to us because it takes us for a ride; we go from normality, through to struggle and difficulty, through to resolution and back to normality again, but we are meant to be changed somehow by the process. Like a good fairground ride, we are returned to the place we paid our money and took our seats, but we are altered in some way. So, Will Smith in Independence Day learns family commitment, while Bruce Willis in Die Hard enjoys a reunion with his estranged wife.

Use ‘the three acts’

To a certain extent, we have to look at psychology to see why we desire stories to run a certain way. We could define the classic structure we have just looked at as one influenced by fairy tales and folk myths. Lessons are given in these stories and we learn something in the process as we watch. Even the most popcorn-friendly multiplex movies conform to our need for inner change and moral development. At whatever level of film you look at, the audience at the end of the feature are changed in some way — maybe they have laughed more, see the world more positively, or perhaps they reflect on some part of the human condition. Either way, a film takes you somewhere. Again, this doesn't mean every movie has to follow this route, but once you know this is the dominant way, you can break the rules and make your own way of doing it.

Let's take a look at this structure in more detail:

Act I

In the simple stories of myths, legends and fairy tales it was important to relate the sometimes fantastical events of the story to the real lives of the audience. That meant beginning in normality, in the natural state of the world that the listener lived in, or using elements of their world. This first act would typically involve the introduction of the main characters, the setting, the period in history and so on, but may have given some hint of the events to come. This state of normality can be a pleasant or unpleasant state, but it must be represented as normality. If this state can be presented as everyday and ordinary for these inhabitants, then the impact of the challenge in act II is all the greater.

Act II

In Act II, the main protagonist encounters an event which challenges the normal state of their world. This must involve some hardship, such as an invasion, the breakdown of a marriage, the loss of the loot or a false accusation. As far as possible, this event must be as hopeless and devastating as possible and, to take scriptwriting guru Robert McKee's advice, ‘Thou shalt not make life easy for the protagonist.’ Nothing in drama is going to advance without conflict; it is the fuel on which the story travels. This act is the most difficult, most challenging, full of cliffhangers, near misses and false hopes. Obstacles are heaped on the suffering protagonist. If it all seems rather over the top and unrealistic, this is because Act II is a distillation of real life, like compressing all the bad events we hear about into just one person's experience. Our protagonist is a cipher for us all.

Act III

Once the protagonist has encountered this life-changing event, it is then up to him or her to overcome it and triumph. This, the final act, becomes the quest and motivation of the movie's main character. In depicting this, it is important to show the audience what is happening rather than tell it. Exposition is cheap — important events can be described between two characters over a glass of beer — but to actually show is to truly make the most of what cinema can offer in visual terms. The protagonist will have gained something by this conflict, where the struggle and the triumph over it brings with it some reward in the form of heightened humanity or insight into the human condition; in short, she or he will be a better person. In the closing act of Hitchcock's The Birds, for example, we notice how the constant bickering between the characters gives way to family closeness as they survive wave after wave of bird attacks.

How the acts work together

The three acts are related in different ways. Act I does not cause Act II, but Act II causes Act III, through a series of choices and surprises. If Act II is the one with the most setbacks and surprises, the final act is often the one with the most action, and may alter the style of editing established throughout the movie. This act also possesses the most ups and downs in terms of crises. Early in Act III the protagonist may often encounter a crisis that threatens the entire plan. In North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959), the main character, Thornhill, finds out that Eve, whom he cares about, is in mortal danger. Thornhill has to rescue her, possibly jeopardizing his freedom.

At the end of Act III, there is often a climactic resolution to the conflicts of the film, referring right back to the initial aims of the film raised in the opening scenes. Script devices may be used to signal a link between the start and end of the movie, so that the audience feel that they have been returned back ‘home’ to the start of the narrative, back to normality.

Lengths of each act

It is hard to be precise about how much time should be given to each act, but a rough guide can be used if we take a look at the standard 90-minute film. Within the first 25 minutes or thereabouts, the main character needs to encounter the event that leads to Act II. Roughly midway through the film, the situation for the protagonist must be about as bad as it gets and does not need to improve until we get within the last 15 minutes. This is a very rough guide and applies to a very overused formula, but it does give some idea of the relative lengths of each act.

Pinch points

A useful device of classic film structuring is what are called ‘pinch points’. A pinch point is a scriptwriter's term for a part of the story that pushes the action a little further. These are not huge leaps or changes in the action, but a nudge and push towards the next scene. You would expect to see several pinch points in the first two acts of the film and hardly any towards the end, when the action speeds up.

Write your own script

Writing the story and screenplay yourself is going to relieve you of a large item on the budget sheet and is, after all, probably why you started making films in the first place — the opportunity to express yourself. The ideas below apply equally to the standard 90-minute feature as to the short film.

1 Complete a brief paragraph outlining the story from start to finish. This avoids details and simply lists the events of the plot and your vision of the kind of film it will be. If you can't put it into one paragraph it may indicate a lack of clarity in the story. Reduce it to its main parts, as outlined above when we talked about Die Hard.

2 Write a treatment. This is a short story of the film, and would last for about 30 pages in a 90-minute feature. For short films five to ten pages is fine.

3 Draft screenplay. Using the treatment as the basis, write the screenplay with director's notes, dialogue and any other information that helps to describe the scene.

4 The final screenplay may not necessarily be the second draft; it is likely you will go into several more drafts before you are satisfied. In any case, the last draft will always be shorter than the previous. Each sheet on your screenplay will correspond to one minute of film time. In shorts, however, there is less pressure to cost out the whole film, so the one minute = one page rule is rarely observed.

There is not the space to discuss the finer points of screenwriting, but this is one of the most useful skills you can acquire as a filmmaker and puts you more in control of the medium than any other role. If you find that scriptwriting is not what you want to be doing or that you get more inspired by other people's stories, then you may want to consider how to get hold of that material, but more on that later.

 

Developing good structure

There is no right or wrong way of structuring your film, only ones that are appropriate to what you are making. Narrative film as seen in mainstream cinema has a well-established way of structuring stories and this is seen as the default method for many filmmakers. Using this method does not mean you are working in a non-challenging, conventional way; you may use classic structure but delay it, subvert it or otherwise change it in ways that surprise the audience. To make it even more interesting for you, you can use the presumed knowledge the audience have of classic structure and use this against them by deviating from it now and then.

Using a timeline

To map out a good structure to a movie we need to use a tool called a timeline. As can be seen in Figure 4.6, this is a long box, horizontal on the page, subdivided into seconds and minutes. Along the line boxes are placed corresponding to the length of the individual scenes within it. So, a scene lasting 30 seconds takes up about one-tenth of the total line if the film is five minutes long. We can give each separate scene varying shapes or colours, enabling you to group them in terms of the three acts. You can now see the relative sizes of the scenes and notice which, if any, are dominating the film. Towards the end of the film you might expect to see the scenes become shorter than at the start. You can also use the timeline to map out the peaks and troughs of dramatic tension throughout, so you can see how to pace the story and deliver key scenes at regular intervals.

See the film at a glance

First-time filmmakers often talk about the problems they have in maintaining sufficient grip over the film throughout production, avoiding wrong turns and diversions. Many also talk about the effort in keeping sight of the main point of the film, rather than letting the action take over. The timeline allows the director to see the film as a whole and, most importantly, see each component as relative to the rest. It is this ability to stand back and view the film from afar that gives many the clarity they are seeking in defining how to structure and pace the film.

Figure 4.6 In this diagram, the timeline shows various aspects of the film. The first layer at the bottom represents the individual scenes, enabling you to see the structure of the film, reflected in the pattern created by the relative lengths of each scene. The next layer shows how the dramatic tension of the film will build in places throughout the film, reaching its climax in the final scenes, while the top layer shows how often the main theme is going to occur. For example, the theme could be good vs evil and this may become more and more a part of the story as the film progresses.

The timeline in action

As a good structure starts to develop on paper, you may start to see a pattern emerging. We could take a look at The Wizard of Oz (1939) to see patterns at work. On a timeline, you would see a particular shape at the start representing Dorothy at home in Kansas, in scenes filmed in monochrome. Throughout the first hour you would see a pattern emerge of Dorothy encountering more characters to join her journey. At regular intervals we have a song and at further intervals we have interventions from the wicked witch. The structure changes in the last act, where we see the group enter the wizard's palace and here the action hots up, so we see a greater turnover in scenes. At the end of the film, Dorothy is returned to Kansas in monochrome scenes again, so we would use the same shape used to denote the opening scenes. Looking at the timeline we can see a very pronounced pattern, representative of a strongly structured film and typical of movies aimed at younger audiences, where the need is to conform to traditional storytelling forms. Even in later, more radical films such as Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1991), we see a pattern emerge as we go to and from the warehouse to encounter various points of the story told in flashback.

Uses for the timeline

You can use this method to reveal the presence of just about any aspect of your film:

• Recurrence of characters
• Highs and lows of tension
• Possible dominance of types of scene, such as exteriors, interiors and so on
• Uses of flashbacks
• Recurrence of sounds or music
• Stylistic changes
• Points of action and points of reflection.

Further variations on the timeline could include drawing it as a circle, with degrees within it representing minutes and seconds of the film, in a clockwise fashion. There is also a variation using children's coloured building bricks in which a three-dimensional line can be built and rearranged to get the right structure. These various methods tend to appeal to the visual instincts of filmmakers.

Structure devices

When looking at structure in other films, it is easier to look at those that are more transparent; in other words, which have their structure and pace written all over them and which conform to some of the cinematic conventions. Films such as Jurassic Park (1993) and The Day After Tomorrow (2003) are instructive models because they do not attempt to alter the established formula and positively revel in living up to it, with the result that you can see the nuts and bolts and rivets of how these films are built after just a brief look.

Embedding the purpose of the movie early

The aim of this is to stake a clear aim of the film, apparent to the audience, right from the start. In the opening scenes you could suggest what it is that will drive the film forward. Separate this idea from the one described earlier, identifying the ‘key scene’; the key scene is more likely to occur later and will go some way to resolving the questions and challenges raised in this early scene. This early scene may include some line of dialogue or some symbolic event that sets up the themes and aims of the film, while also giving us some important exposition. The difference between good and bad scriptwriting is whether the audience knows that they are being handed these points or whether this scene is fluidly and seamlessly embedded in the opening sequences. To use a restaurant analogy, this early crucial scene is like putting in your meal orders while the later centrepiece section is like getting the food.

Each scene should have conflict within it

This refers to the detail of the film and means taking a close-up look at how every scene works. Each scene needs to have a goal of which the audience is aware. This has to be something fairly obvious and solid rather than something abstract and ambiguous. The Indiana Jones series of films are masters of the art of setting minor tasks for Indy to complete in each scene — get the aeroplane, run out of the labyrinth — and then placing numerous obstacles in his path, such as pits of snakes, the armed guard and so on. This is a simple example and the more sophisticated the film, the more you may play with our expectations, raising hopes and dashing them.

In the Hollywood model, a typical scene climaxes as disaster strikes and the goal of the main character has been frustrated. This leads to an interruption of the way the overall action is heading. This is good for two reasons: it surprises the audience and it leads with neat continuity on to the next scene, with its own conflict and goals. Think of a particular scene in Star Wars, when the three main characters — Han, Luke and Leia — cannot escape from an attack by the stormtroopers and bail out into the garbage chute. Unable to complete the goal of that scene, they have been forced to change direction. In the garbage pit they have a new goal — to get out. But they are again frustrated when the walls start to draw in.

Micro-structure within scenes

If we take a closer look at the structure of films we can zoom in on the individual components that make up each act. In Act II in particular we see how there are numerous small scenes that each advance the story. A useful model for these was put forward by creative writing teacher Dwight Swain, late of the University of Oklahoma. His idea was a cause-and-effect structure that applies as well to novels as to screenplays. Swain suggested a model in scenes in which there is a disaster or obstacle that the protagonist has to overcome and this then leads to action as the protagonist tries to deal with it, finally leading directly to the next scene as it resolves. This idea is summed up as: situation — action — sequel. It works by mirroring the larger overall three-act structure of the film.

At first, the main character must have some sort of reaction to the obstacle that has frustrated their goal. This reaction is determined by the kind of personality you have evolved for the character. To go back to the Star Wars garbage scene, Han delivers a sardonic comment aimed at the others, while Princess Leia tries to get a solution. We knew they would react this way; if we didn't, then the characters have not been built up into credible people. On this last point, the more your characters are like real people with real experiences informing their decisions, then the more opportunities there are for further conflict, as the individual personalities clash with each other.

The dilemma

Swain goes further and points to the need for a dilemma, something which causes the character to choose between two courses. In an action film this is usually the choice to fight or take flight. Prolonging this decision can add tension; there should be a clear difference between the two options and this must be apparent to the audience, so this is a good moment to show exactly how bad it would be if X happens and how great it would be if Y happens. The action taken to exit the character from the conflict of that scene immediately leads him onto the next. For example, in The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), the wrongly accused Harrison Ford escapes and is chased along a water outlet, hundreds of feet above a river. The cop closes in, Ford looks down at the long drop, then back to the cop, and so on. In a matter of seconds we sense his dilemma, between capture or freedom, and are made to wait while he decides which to take.

The protagonist

In your screenplay you should be aiming for a group of characters who are real in a number of ways but are, significantly, not human beings. McKee believes that ‘a human being does not have the richness to become a protagonist’. This is because a film character needs to be a compression of lots of ideas and lots of people, a metaphor. The danger here is in making the character into a stereotype similar to other characters seen in lots of other films. The way to prevent this is to avoid the obvious, introducing elements that are counter to the stereotype (the piano-playing, art-loving serial killer, Hannibal Lecter) and make his or her aims unlikely (the poor boy who wants to escape the ghetto). Furthermore, add lots of contradictions. These surprise the audience and help you to add new elements into the story as it progresses in the form of skeletons in the cupboard, leading to people or situations that potentially obstruct the characters. They also help to make the characters more fallible, more human.

Figure 4.7 Annie Watson's short film Knitting a Love Song is able to project a strong sense of character through a carefully honed script.

Finally, if you have secondary characters in the script, make sure that these are slightly less interesting than the primary characters. Secondary characters are there to draw out the qualities of the focal character by asking the right questions and setting up situations to which the main character responds.

Subplot

In thinking about pace and structure, it is useful to be able to have something that acts like a brake now and then, taking the audience's attention away from the main plot and into a diverting smaller story which simultaneously seems to help the main story. A subplot is a refrain, a time to breathe a little and reflect on the scenes in the main story. The James Bond franchise has managed quite well without this element but, to make up for its absence, needs to go frenetically from place to place, incident to incident. In Star Wars again, we see the subplot continue into the sequel — namely, who will win the heart of the princess.

Clearly, this is not the main plot and is not intended to be the well-hidden, true meaning to the film. It is absolutely secondary to the main story and in this case does a perfect job in taking us out of the fast action and into quiet exchanges, when the dogfights and light sabres become too much. These parts of the movie also serve to deepen our understanding of the characters and show another side of them.

Subtext

Many scriptwriters advise putting a subtext under every text. What this means is avoiding writing lines that mean what they say and nothing else. Your screenwriting should involve a kind of ‘double-speak’, where every line spoken represents other lines that expand the meaning in the scene. You could even try typing with double-spaced gaps between the lines for you to write your subtext.

Figure 4.8 Structure. In Star Wars, there are several levels going on simultaneously. The story is the most dominant part of the script, with the subplot appearing only occasionally. The subtext is the least noticeable part of the film and may shift as the story advances into the main plot.

Revealing the subtext is done carefully and only partially, allowing the audience to think about the implications of the script. Ambiguity is acceptable; if you are working with good actors, they will be able to reveal subtext through body language and the way they deliver the lines. The way Jack Nicholson's character talks to his son in the first few scenes of Kubrick's The Shining (1980) suggests a whole history of menace and familial tension in some very innocuous lines. This is good doublespeak, saying one thing and meaning another.

Go to: Chapter 3:2, ‘How films work’, for more on subtext.

Pace in the script

Tempo and beats

Pace is also useful to look at here in relation to structure and scriptwriting. We can define it as being the tempo of the film, the rate at which the aims of the plot progress. The pace at which your film runs is determined by a number of factors, including the length of the movie, the subject matter and the style you have in mind. If we are going to talk about tempo it would be useful to have some way of measuring this, just as we can with music when we talk about beats per minute. With pace, we can describe scenes in terms of beats, which may be less confusing because actors will talk about scenes in terms of the ‘French scene’, in which each new entrance starts a scene and each exit ends it. In filmmaking, it is easier to talk in terms of ‘units of time’ and these could be anything from 20 seconds to a minute. If this sounds vague, think of each beat as like a footstep, advancing the plot, even slightly, towards conclusion. This analogy also helps us to think of these footsteps as rhythmic, determining the pace throughout the film.

How fast?

The pace or speed at which the film goes is entirely up to you. There are no rules that say that one particular rate of progression is better than any other, that sombre subject matter should naturally run at a slow pace nor that comedies should be frenetic. As with all aspects of the filmmaking process, and most arts in general, you need only justify it in terms of what you are aiming for. It is again all about good advance planning.

Action and pace

Pace determines the flow of information to the audience, how much they receive and how often. A dense storyline requires a quick pace to carry all the events within the film's duration. In Die Hard with a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995), for example, a series of encounters take place in the last quarter of the movie, any one of which would have served well as the main conclusion to another action movie, yet here they form part of a dense line of situations which pile action on top of action. This frantic pace is at odds with the slower, more measured pace of the first Die Hard movie, in which the subplot (of McClane's relationship with his former wife) and the subtext (in which a downtrodden man rediscovers his self-confidence through triumphing over conflict) both help to delay the action and serve it up in smaller portions, which leaves the audience keen for more.

Changing pace

In Kubrick's films, pace is often majestically slow, even in action scenes, but this is with a purpose. In these films, events can be seen to have more meaning and more implications if there are fewer of them. In The Shining (1980), this is illustrated where several scenes lead to false climaxes and where long, slow tracking shots take us relentlessly towards the bloody conclusion, hinted at in sparse, brief nightmare images. In this case, the viewer quickly becomes accustomed to the slow pace and it in no way deflates the action.

Terrence Malick, in all his films, also avoids the obvious and goes for slower pace even in action, plotbased films. In Badlands (1974), the murderous couple on the run seem more isolated from us, more in their own world, as the slow, objective pace shows them in a stark, cold light.

At the other end of the scale, Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) uses a brisk, unsentimental pace to show the tragicomic events occurring in the life of the 11-year-old protagonist. This upbeat tempo belies the film's very poignant themes and rescues it from soap-opera cliché.

In all these examples, you can see how pace matches not the story itself, but the filmmaker's interpretation of the story; it can give a subtle new twist to an otherwise straightforward telling.

The Crunch

• Write your own script
• Get to know classic structure
• Know other forms of structure
• Use the three acts
• Use a timeline to work out overall structure
• Get to know your core scene
• Use subtext throughout — it makes it more satisfying
• Use a subplot — give the audience a break now and then
• Think in terms of beats within each act — push the tempo up or down according to the action.

What this project is for: sorting out priorities in your story

Time: allow about one hour

What this project is about

This very brief exercise is aimed at working out the priorities in your films, about which parts of it are more dominant than others, and can be done when you have a film outlined and planned up to visualization stage. To test it out, you can also apply it to a feature film you know well. The aim is to locate that part of the movie which is the centrepiece, on which the whole film pivots. When you find which scene it is, you can build the film around it and use it as a moment when some of the main features of ideas in the film come to the fore.

Stage 1

First, get hold of a packet of sticky stationery notes. On each note draw sketches of the main scenes in the film. If you can get to at least seven the exercise works more effectively, but it applies to shorts as well as to features.

Stage 2

Look at all the notes and try to find the one that you feel is the most important in the film, the one that you could not do without. This is usually not the big, climactic scene, nor does it have to be the one that explains the story. It is more likely to be the one that seems to sum up the film in that one, single scene by acting as a focal point for the dominant emotions, themes or aims of the film. This centrepiece scene is recognizable by the way it may connect, thematically, to all the other scenes in the film. Borrowing from the theatre, films tend to use a similar idea in which the revelation of the main purpose, theme or message of the film is buried in the middle rather than relegated to the conclusion, where it might be misinterpreted as a mere end-of-story sermon.

Stage 3

Place this image in the middle of a sheet of paper and draw a circle around it. You now have the core of the film, around which all the other parts will revolve.

Stage 4

Now try to divide these scenes into two lots: those on the inner band and those on the outer, drawing a circle between the two. Then take the others and place at varying points around the core scene, at various distances from it, depending on their relative importance.

Now you have a core scene, surrounded by scenes of primary importance, surrounded in turn by scenes that are of secondary importance, including those more functional parts that take the audience from one part of the story to the next.

Example of a core scene

A good example of the key scene that is not necessarily the most loud or impressive is one found in the Michael Mann film Heat (1997). The film looks at a gang of crooks and a police officer who is hunting them. The gang is led by Robert De Niro, while the police hunt is led by Al Pacino. Mann knew that the crucial scene of the film would occur when these two charismatic actors confront each other for the first time, although the scene itself is anything but turbulent, taking place in a dreary diner, and is more an oasis of calm in a sometimes violent film. But in terms of the main themes in the film, this scene is indeed the pivotal one, as it brings together the main opposing forces of this duel, while revealing their shared qualities and the more realistic ambiguity of the usual good versus evil equation. The whole film seems to run up to this point like two lines being drawn ever closer. Following this point, the film takes on a different tone, signalling the importance of this moment.

Knowing which scene fulfils this role in your film is important in knowing how to structure the film up to and after that point. Take your time deciding which scene occupies this place, since you are actually settling on the main thematic focus of the film in doing so.

What this project is for: to learn about structure

Time: allow a few days to plan the movie. Shooting may be no more than one day.

Editing will take around four to six hours depending on experience

What this project is about

As we saw right at the start of this section, screenwriting structure is like the skeleton of a movie. If we follow that analogy further, we could say that this next project is going to help us locate and identify the individual bones in a film. To do this, we are going to make a film where we have to take very specific decisions about what is a main scene, what is subplot and what happens within each scene.

In making a silent movie we will be forced to consider the structure of the movie more clearly through the use of caption cards to show the various stages of the plot.

Stage 1: Story

To begin with, we need to find a narrative. The film needs to have a very limited, simple plot with a straightforward linear progression that is obvious to the audience. A narrative action scene is ideal, such as escaping, chasing and so on. This is the easiest way to approach the project, but by all means make it harder for yourself by making the story more complex. In any case, make the movie short, perhaps five minutes in length.

Borrow a scene

A short way to arrive at a useful, action-led scene that involves simple progression of plot is to lift something from a film that you know well. Take something you have seen a number of times and that relies more on visual impact than dialogue.

A silent movie in three acts

The aim is to make a short movie that uses the ideas talked about in this chapter and consists of just three short scenes, corresponding to each of the three acts. So, as an example, a simple chase could have as Act I the main character before being chased, perhaps suspicious that something is about to happen; Act II shows the main action of the chase; Act III takes us to what happens when the chase reaches its climax in the capture of one character by the other.

Use a subplot

Don't forget, we need to include a subplot that will act as a diversion from the main film. If possible, try to avoid the use of flashback, as this may dilute the drama and tension in the film. For example, you could try introducing other characters into the chase who each serve to divert the pursuer from their task, or the pursuee from their escape. Break down the scenes in Acts II and III into small sections, after the action has kicked off, giving each scene:

• a clear aim (to swim across the swollen river)
• an obstacle (he can't swim)
• a dilemma (escape but possibly drown)
• and a reaction (finds a way of crossing without drowning).

In practice, it's going to be hard to cram more than just one or two of these obstacle-dilemma scenes into the short movie. As long as they serve the film's structure, as Act II or III, then you will have gone through the right sort of experience.

Title cards

For the titles it would be useful to have a text generator on your editing software. The vast majority let you do basic titles but there are one or two that don't, and in this case you could add titles by directly filming boards with captions written on, as was the method in the silent era.

Stage 2: Planning

Visualizations

Go through the process as we have seen in the previous chapters in developing the film on paper. Produce a set of visualizations that allow you to devise an overall look to the film and follow these through into storyboards.

Storyboards

At the storyboard stage you can start to consider the way you unravel the action. When you feel you have all the right scenes drawn on paper, cut these up into separate frames. Bunch them together into the beats or units of time we saw earlier in this section. Now you have chunks of the story laid out you can notice the structure of the film. Each chunk becomes a main structural piece, and within these will be smaller pieces involving the actions of the characters.

Stage 3: Shooting

When shooting this sort of film it may be useful to see the solutions that early cinema used to address the absence of sound. Actors tended to act a lot more with the whole body and more dramatically or extravagantly than today.

Tip: use strong lighting

Use lighting much more dramatically to focus attention on the important details in each scene. Rather than set up realistic lighting, try instead something more like what you may see in a theatre, with higher contrast between the dark and light areas, strong shadows and exaggerated colouring. You could even go the whole way and use the kind of devices used widely in silent films, such as the keyhole wipe (blackening the screen except for one small circle, and wiping out from this point or towards it), to draw attention to a particular part of a scene.

Go to: Chapter 5:2 for more ideas about how to get the right sort of lighting and how to avoid the camera reacting badly to creative lighting.

The result of all this is to allow the visual elements to do the talking so that you can more effectively put across the information the audience need. Use the camera far more as an ‘explaining’ tool, showing the audience clearly what is happening (without going so far that you hand it to them on a plate).

Stage 4: Editing

It is at this stage that we need to become absolutely sure about the structure of the film, which is not set in stone until you start assembling the movie. Paper preparation helps you some of the way, but there is no guarantee that you will get the shots you wanted. When you have logged the footage and assessed which are the good and bad takes, start grouping the footage as you did with your storyboard in the planning stage. It would be useful now to plan the editing of this film on paper, so you could prepare an edit decision list (EDL; see Chapter 7:3) or do a brief, shorthand storyboard. The latter is always preferable if you want to stay aware of visual style throughout the film. Certainly, you need to start to become familiar with the timeline as a tool for assembling the movie on paper and revealing the inner skeleton of the movie.

Where to insert caption breaks

This next stage involves the breaking up of the film into pieces. We are using caption cards which serve to hint what has happened or what is about to happen. These will require us to decide exactly where the joints in the film's skeleton are, as it were. In other words, where the key elements in the structure of the movie begin and end. These points will articulate between one scene or beat of the film and the next, but their use is going to have to be strictly rationed so that the overall flow of the movie is sustained.

Let's take this example:

Scene 1.Bob is seen sitting on his sofa, with beer and TV (caption explaining where we are).

Scene 2.The door rings. Bob thinks it is his ex-wife, who he argued with that day, and we realize he has had a bad day, amidst a complicated life. He looks at the photo of a woman on the mantelpiece and we see that normality for Bob is not good (caption explaining his thoughts). After a second ring, Bob casually looks through the curtains and, with a look of horror, steps back, turns off the light and searches for a blunt instrument (caption as he tries to find something to use).

Scene 3.Cut to the figure outside Bob's door. He/it rings again and fingers a pistol held in his jacket.

Scene 4.Bob slams the back door and tries to exit quietly. He knocks over the bin and attracts the figure's attention (caption articulates Bob's desperate thoughts).

Scene 5.Running along the street, Bob flags down a neighbour's car (caption shows Bob's relief). The neighbour thinks he is drunk and drives on (caption explains the driver's thoughts).

If we take the scenes above, we could agree that the first scene is slow and casual. A caption card establishes this scene as one of normality for Bob. Dragging out this scene a little by detailing the homely detritus of his small room allows the audience to sympathize with Bob, essential if we are to be cheerleaders for his journey and escape. The relatively sparse spread of captions indicates a slow pace at this stage. This scene also introduces a subplot as he looks at the faces in the photograph. Subtext, on the other hand, could be more challenging without sound and in such a short film, but is possible with carefully worded captions.

• When Bob finally breaks out of the house we are on to a whole new part of the film, a new structural block where suspense and tension are punctured slightly and replaced by the action of running. Within this block, we see a few encounters, one of which is with the disbelieving neighbour.
• A further caption appears as Bob encounters the neighbour and gets a chance to end the chase, but is foiled by some hint of a previous problem between the two men. Is he a disturbing element in the neighbourhood? Is the neighbour colluding somehow with the mysterious figure? These questions allow us a diversion for a moment and make us see another potential side of Bob, even questioning whether the house we saw at the start is Bob's at all or whether it belongs to his former wife. This momentary stillness in the action allows the film to pause before the next plunge.
• He carries on with his escape. A caption here could indicate that the nightmare is far from over.

At the end of the exercise we can see how the film has been paced by the caption cards, which have allowed the action to progress but have now and then slowed it down. Towards the end of the movie we see more captions than at the start, but these will have fewer statements and may be more punchy and precise.

Evaluation

This project has allowed us to see how a film can be broken down into chunks and that these pieces are precisely moulded and shaped to fit the purposes of the film. Some are short, some long, some fast, some slow, but all play a part in pointing the film in the right direction, but not taking us there so quickly and predictably that we can guess the next moves.

• Plot a timeline chart showing the peaks and troughs of drama throughout the film. Is the film too slow at the start? Is the action over too quickly when it gets going?
• How did you use the caption cards? They should not interrupt an event but should signal its imminent arrival. Did you find they were placed more frequently at some points than others, and how did the wording of these affect the way other people may read the film?
• Using a different timeline, map the appearance of each character in the film. Do insignificant characters take up too much time and is the main character on screen enough?
• Look at your editing. Does the purpose of each segment of the film match the kind of editing you adopted for that bit? For example, does a slow, introductory scene use fast, accelerated editing, or does a scene with lots of action have long slow cuts?
• Take a microscopic look at the film. Have a look at one particular scene and see whether it breaks down into the kind of parts we outlined earlier: goal, obstacle, reaction, next scene and so on. Produce a timeline of that scene and try to see how you have edited the different shots together and whether the purpose of that scene was served by the shots you included. Watch out for sudden diversions mid-scene, or interruptions that break the chain of cause-and-effect that you have set up. If this cause-and-effect seems unclear in the way you have recorded the shots or the way you have edited them, try to find out which shots are at fault or which are missing.
• Finally, as with every film, look for the way the various elements of your film synthesize into one artefact. Does the lighting reflect the mood of the film? Does the sound or music add or detract from the aims of each scene? Does your framing of each scene convey information or does it leave too many unanswered simple questions about the plot? In summary, is everything in the movie pulling in the same direction?

I want something more challenging

If this project didn't stretch you enough, try making a different version. In this one you could try a storyline that does not focus so much on action but more on character or situation. This will ask you to look more closely at the more subtle signs that tell us when different parts of the film begin and end. For instance, if you are trying to depict the stages in feeling of someone whose date didn't show up, you could show worry, anticipation, anger and then resignation. Each of these stages is a chunk of the film. You would show that a new chunk of the film has started by changing camera style slightly, or editing style. Consider how to signal each stage, in the way that the caption cards do, perhaps using a fade to black at these points.

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5. Alternative script structure

The classic structure detailed above takes the audience on a journey and then returns them to a point at which the story started, albeit in an altered state. Like the protagonist, they will have learned something of value along the way. It could be termed a circular structure due to its enclosed shape. One aspect of this shape is that its predictability lulls the audience into a state of consciousness where they suspend disbelief readily as they lose sight of the mechanics of the structure — in short, they forget they are watching a film — and instead get involved with the characters. In doing so it lends them some control, in a sense, because they know what to expect and know the rules. But it isn't too restrictive either — it bends sufficiently to allow deviations now and then.

A different model of movie: the branch

A radically different model exists, however, which offers possibilities that the circular structure cannot. We could call this ‘the branch’, since it starts with a single thread and then divides, in a kind of Fibonacci sequence, as each new limb splinters, resulting in a branch-like appearance.

How it works

Act I

As we can see in Figure 4.9, the single limb starts our movie. We are given a thread to focus on but also see other seemingly unconnected branches. Limbs curve back from later in the movie and nudge up against these early stages. Their displacement causes us to remember them.

This model also uses the three-act structure, but in a different way. In the first act we are introduced to what we assume is the main branch in the film — the location and characters and their motivations. The plot, however, is not the central stem as it would be in mainstream films. Instead, we have to make do with the characters' motivations — but we may be given some unnerving displaced elements thrown in at this stage to keep us involved. These could be new characters who pose mysterious threats, or unsettling moments where there is the possibility of having to rethink what we have seen so far.

Figure 4.9 This diagram shows a branch-like structure for a film. In the traditional Hollywood model based on a circular structure there is little room for interpretation or for the audience to form their own ideas. In this model, not all elements of the film are explained, leaving clues that the viewer can piece together.

Act II

As we go on in the movie we approach the nearest we have to the crisis seen in the circular structure. In that model, the crisis exists within the fictional world the movie created for us: aliens invade, a marriage ends, a death occurs and so on. In this model, however, the crisis takes place outside this fictional world and is taken into the realm of the audience. In the mind of the viewer the film starts to break down, certainties dissolve and the film starts to lose its shape. We no longer know what sort of film we are watching as our ideas of genre, roles and story expectations are confounded. Sometimes this is achieved through a very sudden rupture of the plot: characters change names or we might shift to another point of view, throwing new light on the movie's events.

The effect on the viewer is internally traumatic and yet this is precisely the moment when they are wholly drawn into the movie. They are stuck with the conflicting signs and yet are determined to unknot them. They have a two-fold job: to figure out current events and to reorder the past events in the movie. In so doing, this ‘hook’ of rupture or disintegration draws them in. At the point when the movie starts to fall about around them they step in and do what we are all programmed to do: make sense of it. The trick for the director is to make an achievable task rather than an abstract wild goose chase.

You can only set this process up for the viewer if the individual elements — the separate branches — are clearly defined. Often, this is done through utilizing genre conventions so that elements are, almost literally, from different films. The case study of Mulholland Drive at the end of this section describes this. If the audience can clearly identify and label the branches, then they can start working on bunching them together. It takes a particular mind, however, to make each branch similar enough for links to be forged, but also different enough for clear identification. Again, this is where simple genre devices help, as they ‘colour’ each branch while allowing its form to retain continuity with other branches. In practice, this means using devices such as camera framing, style of shooting (the sections of TV soaps in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers) and use of genre-specific props or people (the French New Wave girl in Pulp Fiction) to differentiate sections while leaving characters the same.

By the end of this central crisis, the viewer has bonded with the film — or walks out of the theatre — and is then further challenged to step into the movie and influence its outcome. Again, this is not in terms of the internal story of the fictional movie world, but in terms of what is to become the main stem branch of the movie and which other branches pair up and form stronger elements.

This is a busy time for the movie and its partner, the viewer, as the branches break off thick and fast to form splinter branches. Ideas and possibilities appear and disappear. The job for the viewer is the forging of ties and connections between branches. Clues laid by the filmmaker explicitly help the viewer through motif and symbol. But the director purposely lays out more branches than is needed in order to increase the likelihood that there will be more ideas and themes than was intended by the filmmaker. In this way the film achieves an afterlife in which connections are made long after the movie has ended.

Figure 4.10 Arin Crumley and Susan Bruice's self-financed movie, Four-Eyed Monsters, was proclaimed as the best unreleased film of 2005.

Act III

By this stage, the fragmentary nature of Act II has given way to a more pruned structure, where the viewer cancels out certain stems of the branch and stakes a claim to others that are more important. But at no time is there a pointlessly loose stem; everything is there for a reason. But let's just take a look at what we mean by ‘reason’. In the circular model we could say that everything is there for a purpose, suggesting that everything will lead to somewhere. This model offers the reverse. It suggests that everything arose from somewhere and this is what gives it a place in the film. Each stem arose from the same central stem but its direction is uncertain. In the first, you know where you are going; in the second, you know where you came from.

The trope

This rupturing of the movie also has its parallels in literature. In literary theory, a trope is a twist that suddenly gives all the signs in the movie up to that point a new relationship to one another. For example, Bruce Willis discovers he is a ghost in The Sixth Sense, we discover the protagonist's real gender in The Crying Game, or we find out that Norman's mother is actually a figment of his imagination in Psycho. In each case, everything is different after this point. It is a satisfying point for the audience, but more so if they did not guess it beforehand.

The trope in the branch model is brought forward to the centre of the film but is not, as we have seen, a plot element that can be explained fully and fits into the rest of the film. It is outside of the story and exists in the very structure of the film itself. To use a metaphor, a trope in the classic circular film model is like having a glass of water where the drink itself changes but the vessel stays the same. In this model, the vessel (the structure of the film) changes, requiring the water (the stuff that actually happens in the film) to flow in new ways.

Closure

Ultimately, the point of completion or closure in this kind of film comes when the audience successfully ties branches together and assigns meaning to the outcome. The director may have preferred outcomes but may be more positive about unexpected outcomes determined by the audience. This is the film's afterlife, as it mutates and grows in the mind of the viewer later.

 

What this project is for: to figure out how alternative movie structures work

Time: allow around two hours or more

What this project is about

In Chapter 4:5 we looked at alternative means of telling a story. In this case, the film was concerned with more than just the events going on in the plot; it was as much about the way the film is structured and about the ideas in it. The philosophical side to the movie was the main driving force behind it. To achieve this we saw how the shape of this kind of film could be described as like a branch, consisting of a central stem and several limbs leading off from it.

This project is about physically tracking the course of this kind of film and seeing how various stems can join up to create new themes and ideas. If you are working on a movie idea that needs this kind of structure, use it for this exercise. If you are not, try to map an existing film, such as those directed by David Lynch or written by Charlie Kaufman. For classics, try Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou.

Stage 1

You will need several metres of thick string and about 20 card tags like those that you fix to your luggage when flying, usually a few inches square with elastic bands on one corner.

Take one long piece of string, about a metre or so. Label this as the main starting theme. Then tie further pieces of string to this stem and label these as story pieces which venture away from the main stem, or seem unconnected to it. Place each piece roughly in proportion to where it appears in the timeline of the film, with elements that appear early being tied near the start of the main stem and so on.

After a while you may have an intricate web of the film showing the separate ideas contained within it. It will then be possible to tie together certain of these pieces of string to make new connections. At these points, place more labels to show what has been forged by the new combination. For instance, in Mulholland Drive, we could have one piece of string that is tied a few inches from the start and is labelled ‘elderly couple who help Betty on the plane’. This piece of string then stretches off to the side without seemingly going anywhere. Sure enough, it is some time before we see how to tie this piece up: at the end of the movie, the couple reappear and storm the apartment of the much reduced Betty, causing her death, so we could tie this piece up to the main stem of Betty's life at this point. We could also tie the ‘elderly couple’ string to the one labelled ‘weird man who lives behind the diner’. Perhaps only a David Lynch film would offer this combination, so his work is particularly apt for this project.

Evaluation

With this sort of film it is not appropriate to suggest definite ways that elements of the movie tie up together. The whole idea is that it is a process which is open to interpretation, depending on who the viewer is. But this relativism only extends to how the different parts tie up together. What can be predicted is the fact that a certain number of these will tie up, that the new combinations they make can themselves tie up with others and so on, and in particular that there will be few, if any, loose ends.

So the only way to evaluate this exercise is by looking at whether ties have been made at all. If they have, then you have managed to create a structure to a film where ideas can be brought together in almost endless variations. You will notice how certain ideas (or pieces of string) were orphaned and did not manage to make connections. Try to work out what it was about these parts of the film that made them break away. Were they too divergent to the rest of the film or too similar perhaps? And what made the successful pieces of string so able to be tied up with other ideas? Was it the symbolism they carried? Or was it a small, almost unnoticed, link that let it mix with other ideas? It is all questions and few answers, but stimulating nonetheless. If you found it so then your audience may also.

I want something more challenging

This exercise is already fairly challenging but grandmaster versions could be made where you don't just restrict yourself to main elements in the film or ‘story strands’. You could add another mental layer to it by making links with individual symbols and motifs, music, names, colours and so on. For instance, two very different strands may actually converge earlier than first thought by the shared use of certain symbols or locations.

With some directors it is also possible to push this further with links to other films, suggesting an overall and unique artistic consciousness. Suitable directors could include Pedro Almodovar, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski or Jane Campion.

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6. Devising stories for low budgets

Narrative is about telling the audience about a series of events and engaging that audience to sympathize with one or other party in those events. Questions of why, what, when, where and how are essential if the cog-wheels of the film are to turn correctly and if the audience are to stay with you. You are in control of the information the audience need to take part in the plot; give them too much and they will feel patronized and bored, too little and you lose them.

One of the most difficult aspects of narrative is the necessity to compress time as you juggle the wideranging elements of the story against your resources and the duration of the film. In most films, this is achieved through editing to suggest the passage of time or to suggest parallel events that were actually recorded weeks apart.

For the low/no-budget filmmaker, the most compelling factor in drawing up a script is what level of funding is available for the film. As we saw in Chapter 4:1, ‘Working out a budget’, it can actually be a source of creativity to be starved of funds. Many filmmakers are forced to be more ingenious than their better-salaried peers because they know they have to grab attention through good filmmaking craft rather than expensive props and effects.

Narrative costs

Regarding the actual story you choose, working with a low budget requires you to handle certain restrictions to the kinds of movies you can make. If you visit film festivals you quickly become aware of an absence of potentially expensive genres in debut films. Character-led movies are more common than science fiction; films set in the here and now are more common than period costume dramas. Don't immediately drop plans you may have which seem to contradict this; there are always ways around problems of resources, locations, costumes, but the low-budget filmmaker needs to be far more ingenious in finding solutions than their studio counterparts. Independent filmmakers are noted for their dogged way at working within a frustratingly tight budget. Imaginative shooting and editing will go some way towards this, and optical effects are increasingly viable through digital software. You may also find that when people find out that your film is a low-budget, do-it-yourself production, made outside of the normal production framework, they may be prepared to help out, give free access to locations, props and so on.

Potentially expensive story elements

• Historical setting. Costumes and dressed locations are expensive. Films set in the future can present less of a problem if you agree with the visions laid out in, for instance, the Mad Max movies, a postapocalyptic world of decay.
• Uniforms. Anything official and realistic will need to be hired.
• Stunts. You should always use a trained stunt performer for any stunts, not only to prevent actors' broken limbs but because legal issues and insurance are easier to deal with if you employ an experienced stunt person. If you can't get a stunt performer, cut that part of the script.
• Insurance. You can't avoid it, but you can limit scenes which are high risk, avoiding potentially dangerous situations for actors or crew (most accidents on set involve crew, not cast). Check also what cover you have for equipment, on your existing personal insurance.

Figure 4.11 Stories set in the here and now present fewer problems for the no budget filmmaker. Test shot by filmmaker Chris Carr.

• Heavy make-up and prosthetics. Expensive, if you want good quality. If you need unusual make-up effects, try recruiting students from theatrical make-up courses, who may be willing to work for costs only.
• Too many locations. Transport and hospitality will add much to the budget. Stay local, where crew can return to their own homes. If you need to visit locations, don't plan to go to more than one each day.
• Permission for street filming. If you are working with more than a small (half a dozen or so) crew, you may need to get permission — and pay for it — for filming in public places, especially metro lines, streets, public buildings and so on. Smaller towns and cities can be much more co-operative than well-used main cities. For example, Scottish city Glasgow has tried to welcome filmmakers to the city, aware of the benefits of boosting tourism. Some cities have dedicated film officers at the local authority offices.
• Extras (crowd scenes). Even if your production is rained off, you still pay the extras for turning up. Try recruiting local people, or place notices with amateur drama societies, some of whom may be willing to appear for more manageable fees.

Making the most of a low budget

Use what you have

Many low-budget films have taken shape purely in response to what the director has access to. Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994) is a good example, made for less than $28 000. If this film was made entirely on digital equipment today, the budget could probably lose a zero off that figure. For this very successful debut feature, Smith was able to use the convenience store he worked in late at night and involved many friends as the cast. The action is entirely within the shop and it is the witty, sharp dialogue and perfect timing that make this such a classic of independent film. Using this approach should encourage you to make an inventory of the locations and props (and even people) that could be used to make a movie. It takes filmmaking out of the studio and makes it a more flexible ground-level art form; as one filmmaker said, ‘My garage is my Hollywood.’

Low-budget ideas in action

To put this to the test, let's try a few examples of the very basic ingredients that make some movies:

• Idea 1. An empty warehouse available free for a couple of weeks, some (slightly mean-looking) friends and some suits. The result: Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1991).
• Idea 2. Two people, a script which they helped to write, the streets around your city. The result: Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004).
• Idea 3. A bunch of interesting-looking friends, but not much else. The result: acclaimed independent movie, Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998).

This exercise may be half-serious but it does reveal that underneath quality filmmaking with great ideas the actual potential cost of these movies is minimal. Clearly, with 90-minute films, expenses are going to rise no matter what you do, but compared to a large studio you have the ability to turn in a film like those above on a very small budget, and that is a skill the large studios would pay you dearly for, so nurture it.

Write your own screenplay

As we saw in Chapters 4:4 and 4:5, many filmmakers prefer to use stories they have originated themselves, enabling them to maintain more control over what they make. Free software is available on the Internet to help you compose a screenplay in a conventional format.

Acquire a published story

It is not really advisable in the low/micro-budget sector to use published work, but if you are determined there are many people, as you can guess, who will help you part with your money.

Optioning

It is less expensive to take what is known as ‘an option’ on a story than an outright acquisition. Optioning means that you have said you are very interested and need to go away and raise the finance. Options usually last for 18 months and you will need to engage an entertainment lawyer to handle the contractual side of the process. Working with a story will usually be far cheaper than acquiring a finished screenplay, for the reason that you are not buying a finished, ready-to-shoot product.

Out-of-copyright stories

But don't forget the ultimately cheap option: older stories may be out of copyright under the 100-year rule, but before you commit yourself check with the estate handling an author's work if you are unsure whether copyright has expired; such estates can be highly litigious.

True stories

Again, this option is more expensive than simply coming up with stories yourself. If you have read an article or heard about a true story that you would like to use as the basis of a film, you need to tread carefully. There is no doubt that such stories can and do make fascinating — and awardwinning — films including Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) and The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999). But beware of the subjects of these stories taking action against you during or after production.

The Crunch

• Narrative films need careful handling so we know what is happening
• Build a story around props or places you have available for free
• Write your own screenplay
• Small-scale stories are low-budget stories
• Avoid expensive genres — make films about people, not falling asteroids
• Use the close-up to learn about telling a story.

What this project is for: to learn how to get hidden meanings in your films

Time: allow about two hours to view and note the movie

What this project is about

The aim of this project is to investigate subtext and to see how to find it. It is in just about everyone's movies, but if left unidentified will point in several different directions at once, so the meanings will be all over the place. It is also useful to see how hidden meanings can form threads in your work, highlighting ideas or themes you didn't know you were interested in.

Stage 1

Take a copy of a storyboard of a film you have made recently. This can be a drama or non-narrative; documentary work is less easy to use in this project.

If you have no films suitable, take a clip from someone else's movie of around three minutes in length and storyboard it briefly.

Stage 2

Watch the film that you based the storyboard on and note below each image in just one or two words what you think the subtext is. For instance, a sequence showing a man gathering possessions and preparing to move out from an apartment could be summarized as ‘change, regret, hope, anticipation’ and so on.

Stage 3

You will have ended up with a list of descriptions of each scene, summarizing each scene and saying what is really going on beneath the action.

Evaluation

Go through the words you came up with to describe each scene. Circle those that appear more than once. What do these words tell you about the kinds of ideas you have in your films? From all these subtextual pieces, can you see a single thread that connects them? To find this, try to group words together under general headings. For instance, a series of words such as ‘moving, leaving, going away, starting, ending, finding new places’, all could be grouped under the word ‘change’.

I want something more challenging

Take the same movie and try looking next for symbols and motifs. In this exercise, you will need to arrange your ideas in columns on paper, so that in the first column you have the scene described, the second column shows the subtext, the third symbols and the fourth motifs. To push yourself further here, try adding a new drawing after these columns to show a better way of showing what you have identified. For instance, in the words listed above, could the general summary word of ‘change’ be shown more succinctly or in a more subtle way?

What this project is for: to look for symbols and motifs in movies

Time: allow around one hour for the paper version, three hours for the video version

What this project is about

This project is designed to help identify where the meaning in a film appears. It is easy to talk about what a certain film is all about, what its themes are or underlying ideas, but less easy to say exactly where these are on screen at any given moment. This project allows you to do just that. And if you can do it with feature films it will be possible to reverse the process and place symbols in your own films for the audience to find. This project allows you to see that certain symbols such as colours, objects, shapes or places can have significance for the story and can be easy to identify. It also shows how recurring symbols of a more general nature can be called motifs.

Stage 1

Find a movie you have seen and have found fascinating. There are no restrictions here and you don't need to choose especially art-house movies. There are several classics that are particularly useful, outlined below. Find a particular scene that you feel is pivotal in the movie; it is less likely to be a scene with lots of action and probably a quieter moment of suspense or heightened emotion.

Stage 2

Read Chapter 3:2, ‘How films work’. Try to see how to spot the difference between a symbol and any other part of the picture, based on what is described in the chapter. Notice how symbols reinforce the themes that underpin the film and how motifs can be strong presences in a film, taking us straight to the heart of the film's ideas.

Stage 3

You have a choice here — you can either load the clip you are analysing onto your PC or work on it by analysing on paper. The video version is more fun and helps develop ideas of using text.

Go to: Chapter 7:6, ‘Working with text’, for help on using text.

For the video version, place the clip onto the timeline and splice the clip into separate cuts so you can see where the film is edited.

For the paper version, storyboard the movie clip over several sheets of paper. But make sure the individual frames are no smaller than a CD box.

Stage 4

For the video version, isolate individual frames that you think contain interesting symbols and freeze them. Then use the text tool to write directly onto each frame. Look for visual symbols and motifs and circle them, writing next to them what they really mean. Use colours to highlight them so you can distinguish one from another more easily.

By the end you should have frames with scribbled words and shapes highlighting the visually significant parts of certain frames.

Good examples for analysis

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott). Try the scene where Deckard (Harrison Ford) gets escorted from the rainy city streets to the police captain, or blade runner's, office. It's about five to ten minutes into the film and includes shots of the streets, the flight to the office, the discussion with the captain.

Look for: images of eyes; signs of far eastern culture; signs of technology; references to film noir movies; origami.

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980). Try the scene where Jack (Jack Nicholson) plays ball in the foyer of the deserted hotel. Danny and Wendy enter the maze outside and Jack watches a model of the maze in the foyer.

Look for: labyrinths; one-point perspective; fire; Jack's expression. Where else is there a maze in the hotel — is Jack a maze? Is the hotel itself a maze?

Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003). Look for the scene where the two boys who later become killers meet at home. One plays video games while the other plays Beethoven's Für Elise on the piano.

Look for: the landscape of the video game; the revolving 360-degree camera shot; the juxtaposition of video game with music. Does the game look like a real one to you? What about the landscape of the game, all frozen wastes and emptiness? And aren't those people too easy to shoot at?

Evaluation

In either version you will have emerged with a complete translation of the film into simple terms. All the hidden meanings will be revealed and the specific ways they have been placed in the frame highlighted.

This may enable you to then use symbols more freely in your own work.

I want something more challenging

Try taking a clip from more challenging films where you need to see the whole movie before symbolism is revealed. Concentrate on one small part of the movie as you did above. Choose a movie with less obvious meanings such as In the Mood For Love (Wong-Kar Wai, 2000) or Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003) (really tough without props — can camera and composition convey what we need?), and even documentaries such as Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002) or Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003), for the use of symbolic imagery (for instance, the archive footage of the young girl dancing in Friedmans).

Part 3: Visuals

7. Visualizing your film

Planning a film is different from director to director. Some will insist on a very clear idea of what they are making before production, others will opt for the more risky approach of letting some elements develop on set. At one end of the spectrum, some directors find that the actual process of committing a story to film is less interesting than the long gestation period, over a year or more, when they are able to invent and re-invent the film, subtly changing it and deepening it with layers of meaning. Other directors prefer to organize the film as a set of bases to touch, leaving the precise look and detail of the film until shooting.

The process of production for most art forms is centred on the personal; the artist is in direct control over a painting, as the writer is over a novel. The absence of people or technology to get between the artist and the artefact allows much greater freedom in how such works are developed. In film and video, however, the number of people involved, even a very small crew, can depersonalize the work. If you are not careful, the resulting film can be the sum of several individuals working with their own ideas rather than several people with one idea. This is not to say that working creatively with other people is unwise; on the contrary, it is the involvement of others that forces a film towards its highest peak of development. But at the tip of this pyramid of creative people and ideas there needs to be one single vision to carry the film forward. This can be the result of one person's efforts or several, but it does need to be fixed in advance of production, on paper, as a blueprint.

Translating words into images

One of the most difficult aspects of developing a film is trying to translate the words you may have that describe your proposed film into images that can be realized on camera.

This inevitably involves much compromise and change as the ideas form themselves into a workable, practical list of shots. This aspect of development is one where you partly make it up as you go, noticing the shape your ideas take as you commit them to paper. It is only later, when you have studied the visualizations, that you come to select the shots that will go into the final storyboard.

Visualizing involves sketching ideas. You do not have to feel confident about being able to draw; the aim of sketching in this context is to communicate information as clearly as possible about the angle of the camera and the arrangement of objects within the shot, so you need only draw as you would for diagrams.

Visualizing methods

• Begin by being as precise as possible about the ideas you are trying to convey.
• Find several words that describe the scene you are trying to visualize; these can be as abstract or descriptive as you like.
• From these words, sketch images that show how you see that scene in your mind. It is better to sketch without first drawing a frame; just freely doodle on paper, as you might when your logical mind is otherwise engaged on the telephone.
• When you have finished a set of sketches regarding a scene, add rectangular frames that show what you would leave in the frame if you were shooting.

The advantage of drawing first and adding boxes later is that it allows you to toy with several ideas for frames on the same sketch, as can be seen in Figure 4.12.

The key here is being relaxed and not hurrying the process; you need to filter the idea for a scene through your subconscious, allowing it to pass out with a shape unique to your particular view. Your drawings will show where your preferences lie and indicate what you could call style: the particular way that your ideas manifest themselves, unique to you. As we will see throughout each project, it is this pursuit of self-knowledge as a filmmaker that will characterize your development.

What do you draw?

When sketching, you are trying to depict a range of elements in the film. These include:

• The arrangement of the various props and actors in the scene
• The intensity of direction of light cast
• Colours that may dominate a scene
• The amount of contrast between light and dark
• Possible camera movements, such as sideways (tracking shot), rotation from a fixed point (panning shot) or zoom
• Images or text layered over the main image.

You may not be aware of each of these as you draw, but may go back to sketches later and add to them to include most of the above.

Figure 4.12 These sketches from the early stages of a short movie, Crow's Vanity (Jon Price, 2001), detail the filmmaker's attempts to develop images to match a poem. See more of Price's visual work in Chapter 4:8, ‘Storyboards and visual tools’.

Developing ideas into pictures

When visualizing, the aim is to take fast steps towards the very best ideas you can come up with. It is rare that these are the first ideas you have and there are ways of getting from that initial blunt idea to a more defined, less predictable one.

This process rests on the route of going from a first, obvious idea through to a more advanced version of it, working out your ideas on paper as you go. The following is an example of one filmmaker's thought processes on a particular scene. The scene required that a man enters a house, intending to steal whatever can be found. It's very straightforward, but the filmmaker did not want to film this sort of overused scene in a predictable way.

• Idea 1 (most predictable idea, thought up in a second or so). This suggested that the camera is placed outside, looking at the man, recording in a fairly direct way.
• Idea 2 (less predictable). A second drawing suggested that the camera instead looks from inside the bedroom, as the man attempts to force it open.
• Idea 3 (other ideas are rejected in favour of something more unusual). The third drawing takes it a step further, suggesting that, instead, the camera dwells on something else to cut to occasionally. In this case, the filmmaker thought of someone preparing a meal in the kitchen. Besides showing the prospective thief, we also cut to and from images of cooking. When the thief breaks the window an egg goes rolling off the worktop; when he later leaves the house we cut to an image of a meal in an oven burning. This disrupts something — the meal — we can all relate to and suggests the disruption to the house rather than actually have to show it.

The aim of developing an idea further is to get into the habit of a more advanced way of communicating.

Sketching with video

Although development on paper affords you the chance to think wildly and come up with diverse ways of shooting a scene, there are other ways that can help you to visualize. Try using the camera as a sketching tool. This means losing the idea that each frame you take has to have some purpose and simply seeing how locations or people look on the screen. It is difficult to imagine how a scene will look until you shoot it and by that time you have already invested heavily in time and money. It would be more useful to have produced some rough video shots of the place where you will film, under certain lighting conditions, with or without the actors, to see in advance how it looks when viewed on the rectangle of the screen. In many cases, a place or person can seem mundane until viewed through the lens; they then reveal their cinematic qualities. Video sketching in this way enables you to experiment with new camera angles which you could not necessarily sketch on paper.

Play with the camcorder

There is also a great deal to be gained from simply playing with the camera, seeing how the world looks through the lens. The more you get used to the way filming alters the world, the more you are able to recognize locations, settings, people that work well on the screen. A location such as a train station is a good example. Seen as a participant in the chaos and movement, standing on the platform, you may be deluged with visual information coming at you from all sides. But when you look through the lens on your camera you order that environment and you start to notice, for instance, how the roof structure of the station helps you form a good composition or how the perspective lines of the track look good with people standing alongside.

The Crunch

• Planning is crucial
• Don't let the film stay in your head until shooting — you must see it on paper early
• Sketch basic images without thinking about scenes
• Develop words into images
• Progress your ideas further by more sketching
• An hour of planning is worth a week of shooting
• If you start filming and have not done enough planning, your crew and actors may lose faith in the production.

8. Storyboards and visual tools

In the last section we noted how a film needs to be visualized first on paper before you pick up a camera. In this section we need to see how to collate these visuals together into a coherent whole.

Why plan at all?

Planning helps to devise ways to show the events of a film more clearly. It is aimed at presenting the audience with the highest possible development of your idea. In so doing, chances are you will represent their world back to them from a fresh point of view. It is rare that images arrived at on set with no prior thought can achieve a level of interest and meaning of images conceived on paper, rejected and superseded by better images.

Why plan visually?

In making a film you are making a piece of art, just as much as if you were doing a painting or a sculpture. But it might be tempting to think that since you are making a moving image you should get straight down to working with stuff that moves. Why bother doing still images when the art form you work in seems far removed from drawing or painting?

The quick answer is that movies are nothing but lots of still images strung together. But that is not the whole story. Movies are far more than just movement and action. The illusion that they so successfully create depends also on convincing us of the reality of what we are seeing, and this is often done through visual phenomena like depth, space and colour. It gets more complicated immediately you bring these into play. For example, if you show a long shot of a street disappearing into the horizon, you can amplify the importance of whatever action is about to take place there (see the opening to the riot scenes in Pleasantville); if you show a wide-angle shot with lots of space around a character you suggest that they are isolated and vulnerable or perhaps a maverick (see the prelude to the crop-spraying attack in North by Northwest); and if you subtly include a red scarf in the corner of the shot when a murder is being discovered you heighten the alarming effect (see the body in the river in Don't Look Now). Each of the scenes mentioned here would be vastly different if different visual tools had been used. But the master filmmakers of each one incorporated their knowledge of what looks good in art to make their films look good.

The kind of resonance they achieved is possible because they are making us see the world differently. Film professor and writer Haig P. Manoogian suggested that:

‘It is often remarked that people listen but do not hear. What is true of our hearing is also true of our sight. We see, but do not perceive. The successful filmmaker must see for us [and] must open our eyes, provide meaning for what we see and thereby break through our isolation.’

Different ways of preparing

A film needs a sense of overall design if it is to become a fully developed movie with its own inner logic, structure and style. How this design is arrived at has many variations, from a detailed plan to a sketched outline of images. We could think of this sort of plan as consisting of various elements similar to a map, depicting the route between the start and end of a journey. If we take this analogy further, some people would prefer a very detailed map on a small scale, showing not only the overall route but also where the possible problem areas are, and get to know exactly what the journey will look like. They will then be able to reassure themselves that the journey will be successful before committing time and money.

On the other hand, there would be others who would prefer a map showing only the main points on the journey, the must-visit places and general compass direction of the route. This person would be more likely to make the journey precisely for the reason that it is unknown territory and would provide surprises. They work in terms of the overall direction rather than the precise route; they know they can deviate from the route now and then, safe in the knowledge that they are generally heading in the right direction.

How much planning is right for you

These two approaches could represent two very different ways of approaching the movie planning stage. You need to find out what level of planning makes you comfortable, and it could be argued that you should strive to reduce this level of planning to its minimum, asking yourself what aspects you can live without. Certainly, there is no right way to develop a film and it is to the benefit of the film that the creative process does not stop at the planning stage. Each stage of filmmaking presents its own opportunities for creative decisions, ones that affect the entire purpose of the movie and its overall success. The pressure that goes with this informs you that you cannot afford to run on automatic when shooting and editing, merely following the orders you drew up on paper. If the film sticks too closely to its plans, the result may be artificial and contrived, with the realization of the filmmaker's ideas made too literal.

To arrive at the best method for you, try working with varying degrees of looseness from the initial plans. However, no filmmaker can afford to depart on the journey of making a movie without reference points. How much detail you include between these points is up to you.

Storyboards

A storyboard is the blueprint for a film. It is not the final look of the film but it is the best you have right now and it provides a list of all the information you need to include throughout the film, including sound, music, images and the effect that each of these have when juxtaposed with one another. The example storyboard illustrated in Figure 4.13 shows a typical page layout. Three or four frames are drawn on the left side of the sheet, in accordance with the aspect ratio you will work with. These may each be the size of a credit card, with similar dimensions. On the right, linking to each frame, information is given about that shot, concerning sound and music, dialogue, camera movement, and any other elements that cannot readily be depicted in the diagram.

You don't need to be an artist

In drawing the storyboard you do not necessarily need to be a good draughtsman; it is enough to show the image clearly and precisely to the extent that you could give the storyboards to someone else and they could go ahead and make your film.

Figure 4.13 Storyboards from Two Can Play At That Game (Jon Price, 2001).

If you are not confident with your drawing skills the tendency is to use pencil, but this serves only to reveal skill weaknesses. Try using a bold, black marker pen to give the image more impact and help you to show shadow and light.

Make images with meaning

In your storyboards and visualizations you can also develop a sense of what each image means. Every scene must show more than just the passing of the events that make up the plot; the shot must lead the audience to the view that this is not just an image but that it has meaning, revealing more about the central theme of the film. For example, if you have a shot of a figure sitting in a chair in a room, you can alter the meaning of what we are seeing simply by changing the lighting from dim to bright, or from changing the actor's expression from passive to agitated, or by including objects or colours in the shot that suggest meaning. All these subtle variations in one simple shot are the result of what the camera sees; there is a whole other set of opportunities for more meaning when we look into sound and editing, but for now it is enough to realize the impact you can make with imagery. Every element forms a set of signs which the audience are cued to look for and which they will assemble into meanings whether you want them to or not. When planning and storyboarding the film you place yourself in control of this process of reading signs, giving the film more depth and pointing the audience towards a certain interpretation of the movie.

Get in control of the images

The successful filmmaker knows the power of the image and judges what information can be used in a scene and how to temper it for effect. Unfortunately, there is no opting out of this. When an audience see your film they will read into the information they are given and attach meaning to it whether you intend it or not. Being a participant in this dialogue between you and the audience is better than being a mute presence. This does not mean that you have to dominate this dialogue, by prescribing how people should read the film, and some of the alternative planning methods mentioned here will all encourage sequences that allow the director to relax control now and then.

Alternatives to the storyboard

The storyboard has evolved as one of the best methods for seeing the film as a whole before you start shooting. Although you can rarely afford to leave anything to chance if you are working with a large budget and large crew, in low-budget digital video you can allow more flexibility and use chance and improvisation now and then to give the film some spontaneity and spark.

Reducing control

Various directors use techniques which allow them to reduce their control over the film while still retaining an overview of it. The benefit to these directors is that they feel the resulting movie is a better product, that it is less artificial and more vibrant than the more thoroughly planned. Making a film in this way becomes a risk-laden business, but also has a thrill of uncertainty that can bring out the best in some people, like some kind of extreme sport. For many, it is about getting the kind of buzz described by those who work on live television, where the knowledge that anything can happen, and you are not always prepared for it when it does, forces the director to be more ingenious in responses to problems.

Use a timeline

One way to prepare is to use the timeline chart, and a more advanced version could resemble the timeline used in editing packages. Several tracks are used to depict images and audio, including simultaneous clips such as text or layers of image. This method uses blocks to show where certain scenes will occur and presumes that you have first developed an idea of the images you want to use in sketches and visualizations. The development of images is purposelessly left only partially resolved so that the rest of the process can occur during filming.

The timeline is useful in showing how the tone or atmosphere of the film evolves, or how subthemes or meanings evolve throughout. More important is the main, underlying theme of the movie, whether this is ‘betrayal’, ‘escape’ or ‘triumph over evil’, and without this it is not just a case of not having a map for your journey, but of not having any starting point or destination — a true definition of being lost.

‘Key frame’ method

A second, less risky, method involves the use of what could be called key frames. In this approach, you lay out ‘signposts’ showing the route the film will take by devising a series of scenes that you want to include, roughly in the order they will appear, but with gaps allowing for the inclusion of further images and scenes. This originates in animation techniques, where the overall movement for a character would be sketched out by an artist with the main movements, or key frames, shown, and this would then be passed on to animators who would fill in the movements in between.

In practice, this means drawing storyboard frames depicting the main parts of the film and cutting them out to resemble a deck of cards. For example, five frames could show the development of a thriller showing a terrorist train plot from:

1 Man receives call

2 Man takes suitcase to train station

3 Man boards train

4 Man leaves suitcase on train

5 Man jumps off moving train.

You may only have five main scenes but would place these on a sheet of paper with large gaps between each, allowing you to make notes of the kind of shots and atmosphere you want to use to connect these key scenes. You could show what encounters the man has on the train, what obstacles he has in jumping off the train and whether he is seen; all of these allow improvisation on set and yet do not detract from the main plot.

Image circle method

This method takes a completely different approach, designed to suit the needs of the more themebased, non-narrative movie, including music videos. In this sort of film the linear arrangement of scenes is not too important. Instead, you need to be able to see the whole set of images at once and look for connections between them.

Prioritize your images

To try this method, draw a set of visualizations depicting the scenes or images that will appear in the film. Take a large sheet of paper — at least 24 inches square — and draw a large circle on it. Place the images around the circle, placing the most important ones, most central to the film's theme, towards the centre. The less important ones are placed at various points around the circle, indicating their relative importance to each other.

This method allows you to arrange all the scenes from the film without regard for their linear appearance. You are prioritizing the clips, instead of showing the order in which they appear, allowing you to treat this in a more intuitive way when you start editing. This form of movie doesn't sit comfortably with the traditional arrangement of shots in a storyboard, but with this method the film can be built by seeing the way all the shots react with each other.

Image circle in action

For example, a particular filmmaker was making a music video on the theme of jilted love. Rather than show just a simple narrative, the filmmaker wanted to have various scenes in which this theme was developed: loss, betrayal, love and hope, all of which play a part in the overall theme and were reflected in the soundtrack. Using this method of planning allowed each part of the film to develop equally, but allowed the filmmaker to see how each element affected the rest. It's an organic way to work which may not suit everyone, but if you find that the usual way of doing storyboards seems to restrict your thoughts, then this may help.

The Crunch

• Find the amount of planning that is right for you
• Visual planning carries on sometimes during shootingg
• Plan to improvise
• If you can, do visual planning yourself
• Visual planning and storyboards help you develop structure
• … and they help develop meaning in the images
• Try different methods of planning (storyboards, key frame, image circle or timeline)
• OK, you know a lot of it is going to change when you start filming, but without a base to start from you can at least keep track of these changes.