Screenwriting Growth

Not much in this world gives me more joy than learning and having "breakthroughs" in my understanding of what I'm passionate about.  I like to think.  I write a lot of notes.  Most of them are kept private to me in quick emails, google documents or jots on scraps of paper.  I do this until they've had enough time to gestate into a fully formed idea, and over the years it's just become my working process.

The focus for me lately has been in my further understanding of screenwriting as an artform.  And over the last few weeks a few big breakthrough pieces I've stumbled across have opened up the floodgates in my thinking.  Somehow, every time this happens, it almost always is perfectly in-sync with something I'm needing to solve in a current project I'm working on, and this is no different.

Since the start of the year, I've began plotting out and exploring a screenplay that I've been collaborating on with a fellow colleague.  While in the past, I've typically been able to knock out a first draft in a matter of weeks— this one, I've been taking my time on and really trying to see the whole forest before I venture into the woods.  I carefully wrote the first 20 pages or so, but felt like I was wandering into some bad territory in the story, so I deleted the last 6 or 7 pages and took a step back.

Something that has really helped me keep my head on straight has been the mixture of Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (which I've been kicking myself for not reading earlier), as well as this tool I devised for myself to keep things straight and in order for the events of my story that I've been calling "Screencards".  It's really nothing more than some cards with the major "formulaic" beats of the story, and a little reminder of what each piece should contribute to the structure as a whole.  Think of it as the blue print or "training wheels" to help plug in what you know about your story.  It's the most commonly-identified beats (maybe identified with different names) within a screenplay structure that writers can settle on.

I don't necessarily prescribe to the idea of formulas in the long run, but understanding how well-written screenplays function and the things they have in common with one another is certainly not a bad place to start as far as I'm concerned.

I'm sure once I've been around the block longer in this world of screenwriting, I won't need them, but for now just having a place to pin ideas that says "This part of your story needs to generally do X" helps free me from worry about "what happens next".

So I've been pinning the ideas I knew I wanted to have, and probably once a day, I'll visit the board, shuffle some things around and maybe a new spark will hit me that causes me to form an even clearer picture of what I'm after here.

Once I felt like I had exhausted my current ideas and pinned everything up, I took a break from the process and circled back to that Syd Field book I mentioned.  Aside from his brilliant explorations and observations, a couple major things have really stuck for me.  He says that before you should even think about putting pen to paper (or ehm, E-ink to screen, I guess?) that you should have 5 things figured out, in this order of importance:
1) Your main character
2) Your ending
3) Your beginning
4) Plot Point 1
5) Plot Point II



Well strike one for me, I suppose.  I solved 1, 3, 4, 2 (kind of), THEN 5 in that order.  But it's caused me to question a lot and poke holes in some ideas, and reaffirmed other ones.

Another thing that was fascinating was his description of "sequences".  I've always used the term as a catch-all for a nondescript duration of edits.  For me a sequence could be three shots in succession, or it could be 3 scenes, depending on the context.  But he defines the term as a clustering of scenes serving one objective, i.e. "Our main character attempts to do X".  On the surface, it was rewarding because I had never really heard a screenwriter address the idea of the sequence (which maybe just makes me a newbie in the craft), but I think what really stuck out to me is the attempt at reducing the daunting task of writing an entire 120 pages screenplay.  By clustering scenes together and saying "These 4 scenes are about INSERT OBJECTIVE", each scene is just the WAY that that objective is achieved or revised, and you've suddenly reduced the number of things to think about from 4 to 1.

It sounds silly, and way too intuitive, but reducing the complexity of the job helps open you up to focusing on the more creative material, which I think is what Syd is attempting to achieve here.

The other big lesson I'm learning here is that beyond simplification of the process, patience is the other takeaway I'm hearing from this book.  I've always heard about screenwriters who spend a year or more working on a single screenplay, and my assumption was just that they were too exacting in their first draft.   And while I'm a proponent of opening your mind and letting words flow from your fingertips as subconsciously as possible, I think I've perhaps neglected the other end of the spectrum; the consideration of the grand idea and structure of your story.  It takes time, it really does, to write a genuine original piece without fudging and faking certain aspects that you don't yet understand.

And it's been a compounded experience for me, as I'm a writer often drawn to period films concerning lifestyles and careers that are different from my own experience.  This takes even more research to accurately portray their world.  I think as I'm writing this, the reason I'm drawn to these types of stories is not in the exploration of "what it was like back then", but more from my yearning to bridge how human and similar their experiences were back then to ours today.  Really, I'm going against the grain of the thesis I was so fired up about when I first started this blog; the anti-romanticist.  Life is real, messy, gritty.  It's not easy.  We all deal with problems, and even though something that seems so different and distanced by the span of time from how our lives are in modern society, it really isn't so different.  We're saying the same things as we were 100 years ago about politics, religion, economics, the world.  The context is different, but the content is the same to a large degree.  I just think that's cool.  That's probably the closest thing we can get to an emotional time travel right there: connecting emotionally to past events by drawing comparison to similar instances in our modern day life.  You're being reminded by both the unfathomable expanses of time, as well as the finitely minuscule separation we have from our ancestors.  We're both totally foreign from our ancestors, and at the same time we're mirror copies of their fears, dreams and comprehensions.  It's truly incredible.

A Unique Look at Uniqueness in Filmmaking

Nelson Carvajal, a fellow Chicago native, filmophile and insightful writer over at IndieWire shared a video essay with me today about Aronofsky that really got me thinking.  There are a lot of good filmmakers out there today but few great ones.  I'd put Darren Aronofsky on the short list of great ones next to Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, and the Coen brothers who all skate that fine line between unique, envelop-pushing auteurship and commercial success— but how are they all doing it differently?  My gut tells me they're not.

In this wake of the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman, a torrent of great material surfaced in interviews with the man, and many critics have turned toward retrospective analyses on the state of the film industry today and how people like Hoffman have changed that landscape and redefined what a "movie star" actually means.

Something that came across my newsfeed was an interview from Hoffman (which I can't seem to find anywhere on the world wide web) saying that great art is about speaking in the macro, but telling your story in the micro.  Essentially speaking containing a large message within an intimate story about a single character or collection of characters in a given circumstance.  Arguably all of these greats do that.  They intimately examine and peel back the layers of these simply fascinating characters and give you a pervasively close look at who we are as a society.

Now getting back to Carvajal's essay: the topic has come up before with my fellow film geeks about how unique Aronofsky's films are from one another.  But I think it boils down to that old adage about how every storyteller (or filmmaker in this case) tells the same story over and over again.  Arguably, I think that, while Aronofsky's films may be different on the surface in the intellectualized, resulted sense, they're emotionally telling the same story.  I've got to give credit to Mr. Carvajal for sparking that insight, as before this essay, I was just in the same boat as everyone else on the argument.

I would love to see a similar analysis done on Danny Boyle, as I've heard similar discussions arise from his storytelling.  Without further adieu, read the article here first, and then watch the essay.

Beasts Versus Trees: Two Interpretations on the Grandest of Themes

A few weeks ago, I walked down to our local Landmark theater and got to see Beasts of the Southern Wild after hearing a co-worker talking about it.

This is probably one of the most moving and tastefully-done examples of the Folklore/Fairytale and Child Wonderment pillars of my thesis that's been done in recent years.  So that immediately got me to sit up straight.

Very quickly, I was sucked into Hushpuppy's mythical world of The Bathtub and was in awe of the the brilliant metaphors that are woven into this poetic story.  I immediately downloaded the soundtrack (also co-created by Director Benh Zeitlin) and was left stewing over the film for days after.  I loved the movie so much that I made my fiance (now wife) come with me to see it a second time and this is what got me weighing the themes a little more deeply and appreciate the several depths that this film has to offer.

On the very surface, it's a fairytale about a girl coming-of-age.  The girl, Hushpuppy, and her father live in a mythical place called 'The Bathtub' that has slowly been isolated from the rest of the world due to the rising sea level from melting icecaps.  They live in a comminty of southern folkies that all live as happily and vivaciously as can be, despite their sub-third world living conditions.  Hushpuppy goes on a quest of sorts after she realizes she "broke the universe", and she attempts to fix things on her own, but realizes she needs the help of her ailed father and her mother to give her the most basic survival skills to make things right again.

On the very basic sub-surface, it's easy to see that the film is a metaphor for life in the south post-Katrina and sort of spins it into an imaginative version of how things happened from a little girl's perspective.  It could be seen as a psychological coping mechanism of this particular little girl who turns tragedy into fantasy (ala the early Italian Neorealism/Magical Realism of Vittorio DeSica in Miracle In Milan).  From that perspective alone, the film has enough legs to stand on its own.

The next level of depth to the film exists in the idea of universal balance.  In her naive, imaginative mind, she is convinced that she broke the universe by defying her dad (first by setting fire to her shack, and then by hitting him in the heart causing him to collapse).  From this, she hears the menacing sound of glaciers breaking apart a world away from her, and knows that something bad is about to happen.  After braving a storm of biblical proportions that floods out The Bathtub, her father plans to 'fix everything' and blow a hole in the wall that surrounds dry land to drain it out.  They succeed in their plan and the water level decreases, but unfortunately this doesn't fix anything, and they are forced out of their homes and sent to shelters back on the mainland.  Hushpuppy describes the shelter and its occupants as 'fish in a fishbowl without any water' and as such, they escape back to their watery haven back in The Bathtub.  It is not until she comes to terms with life and death is out of your control that she is able to overcome this turmoil.  This realization also dovetails into the other deeper theme of the film: personal balance.

Hushpuppy, for the first two thirds of the film is raised by her father, who treats her like an androgynous survivor rather than a little girl and pushes her more towards manhood than womanhood by teaching her to fish like a man, eat crab like a man, drink like a man and arm wrestle like a man.  He even addresses her as 'man'.  This creates an inner turmoil and forces her to break away from this lifestyle and travels to find her mother in a brothel-type shack shrouded in a warmly-lit glow of maternal comfort distanced far from the gritty, hyper-real life of The Bathtub that her father so passionately embraced.

It is not until she has had a taste of both worlds and learned from both her mother and father how to survive in the world that she is able to confront her inner beasts (shown metaphorically through the confrontation of a physical beast of a mythical buffalo-type creatures called an Aurochs).  It is at that point she transforms and finds both personal and universal balance, which gives her the strength to face this beast and protect her family.  In a sense she goes from being a weak follower to a strong leader once coming to terms with personal and universal balance.

While I was in the theater watching the film for the second time, I realized how closely these themes paralleled that of The Tree of Life, which many hated for its abstract expressions on existence, but at least in my interpretation of it, I saw the idea of the personal and universal balance the key themes of that film as well.

Tree of Life addresses universal balance by showing the big picture concepts like the formation of the universe, the coming of dinosaurs, and the first instances of compassion (humanity) for another creature.  And it addresses personal balance in an individual's dissonance growing up in a household where the mother represented nature (or goodness stemming from the natural world) and the father represented grace (or actively choosing to be good, and the idea of spirituality).  Again, in Beasts the parents represent similar principals and it's ultimately up to Hushpuppy to find the balance.  In both films, they allude to the fact that both ideas are necessary.  You're an individual and need to be balanced, but you're also part of a big picture that you're unable to control.  Coming to terms with both will allow you to live life fully.

What's interesting though is despite very similar themes, they're both treated so differently and from what I can tell, Beasts is sort of an easier pill to swallow for mass audiences.  It's possible that it's received better because it's more of a romantic poem that doesn't use big words in its cinematic vocabulary so the masses can "read" it, rather than an abstract haiku that takes days of gestation after the film to really get it and fully appreciate it.  I enjoyed both films immensely but Beasts is an entertaining type of journey, whereas I felt Tree of Life was a more spiritually fulfilling, yet cognitively taxing type of process. 

What I love about Beasts of the Southern Wild though is that it really shows the principals of my thesis at play and shows how it can be done effectively.  It deals with the efficacy of the pillars, it's poetic, and it's timeless.  It takes people's knowledge of Katrina and that sort of New Orleans culture and applies that just enough to get audiences to actively connect and participate in this modern fairytale.

For me, this film is why I wanted to be a filmmaker.  It's unique, moving, inspiring and connects with a mass audience in a creative way.

Bicycle Thieves: The Lesson of Invisible Cuts and Composition

As I've finished up the ToneCut of Bicycle Thieves, I've realized that this film really has a lot of invisible cuts.  Even while I was finding the cuts to insert the tone, I had to really keep close attention to see when the cuts occured in some spots.

I think this is attributed not only by intriguing blocking and compelling performances, but also the use of paralleled compositions.  The use of matched framing from cut to cut, particularly in horizontal space, is more frequent than I've noticed in the three previous films I've ToneCut.

The use of paralleled compositions tricks the eye into passing over the cut simply because the eye is not forced to re-direct to a new position.  It's already where it needs to be to see the focal point of the next image.

Watch the clip I posted and see for yourself the delicate care taken by DeSica and Carlo Montuori in making the connecting shots happen.  Really the whole film is like this, but I just wanted to at least provide a small slice of what's going on here.



'Bicycle Thieves' ToneCut (Six Minute Compositional Analysis) from Daniel Skubal on Vimeo.

That's an incredibly powerful tool that is often forgotten and can really get you past the proscenium arch and get you into the film.  I wrote previously about a conversation I had with a co-worker about how there's a distance in both performance and cinematography in Citizen Kane that is just more difficult to sympathize to the story at all.  I would theorize that perhaps part of the problem is that the cinematography and, in particular the cuts, call attention to themselves and don't guide the eye as gracefully as Bicycle Thieves does.  Instead, Citizen Kane hosts stark cuts with focal points all over the screen.  It's not as comfortable to watch, and therefore is less inviting to sympathize.

One could argue that Citizen Kane thrives rather than suffers from this approach, because Charles Foster Kane isn't supposed to be a likeable character, so sympathy isn't required and the dissonance of a lack of grace in the framing and cuts helps present his character in that manor.

In 'Directed by Steven Spielberg: Poetics of a Contemporary Blockbuster', Warren Buckland analyzes Spielberg's successes and failures in using matched framing from cut to cut.  Early on in his career, his attempts weren't nearly as successful as when he hit his stride in doing so.  And although I haven't given a deep analysis of any of his films yet in this ToneCut style (I will, don't worry), his parallel compositions are like punctuations or signposts throughout the film rather than part of the continual style of the story as in Bicycle Thieves.  Perhaps the best example of this is the use of the Paramount logo fading into the mountain peak at the beginning of Raiders of The Lost Ark.  When used correctly, it's a brilliant submersive effect that invites the audience into the story.

At first I thought the cuts in Bicycle Thieves were just coincidental in how graceful the cuts were, but as I made my way through the whole film, I realize that DeSica masters this.  The affect of this technique in Bicycle Thieves really is one of the best examples of invisible cuts in the history of cinema.  Are there any other films that you can think of that employ the same idea?  I'd love to take a look at them and I'll add them to the list of films to look at in ToneCut form.

Again, I'm willing to share the full ToneCuts I've done, just so long as you provide me with a writeup of what you've noticed throughout the film as well.

Eyeing the Cuts: An Analysis of Classic Cinema

In my previous post, I mentioned a documentary I've been working on about master cinematographers and the amazing amount of knowledge I've gained by listening to them speak and reference their inspirations.

Possibly one of the greatest gifts I have received from this documentary is a recommendation by Stephen Goldblatt, ASC (The Help, Julie and Julia, Closer, Lethal Weapon).

He advised to watch film-- good film.  The classics.  Turn the sound off and watch the cuts.

I'd heard the bit of advice before, but for some reason it resonated with me as I've plowed through the rest of this documentary.  I took his bit of advice to heart and created something I've begun to call 'Tone Cuts', in which I take a classic film, toss it into Final Cut Pro, mute the soundtrack and on every cut and fade, I put a one frame tone cue.

While it's a glorified version of Stephen's advice, it really keeps your attention focused solely on the image, the movement of the camera, the use of lighting, color and contrast, the pacing of the film and of course the construction of the film.

To add an extra layer of enrichment to the process, I began with a film I hadn't ever seen before; The Conformist.  Watching a film for the first time without sound is the true test of a film's cinematic depth.  If you can, even at the very basic level, understand what's going on without the sound, I believe the filmmaker is truly making use of the medium of cinema.

By chance, I happened to pick one of the most brilliantly photographed films I've seen.  Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor, Last Tango in Paris) is seen by many as one of the greatest masters of cinematography ever.  This film was a landmark in the use of production design, color and movement of the camera.

It's difficult to sum up all that I learned from watching this from cut to cut.  One of the greatest lessons I learned from the Tone Cut of this film in terms of editing was the brilliant pacing of it.

The pacing of an entire film, and even in a scene of a film is crucial to keeping the attention of the audience.  I have a theory floating around in my head about the direct correlation of pacing and how well a film is received.  It's all about tension and release.  Fast cuts and long takes.  Dissonance and Consonance.  Camera movement.  Color.  Light.  Balance is needed to both build tension and receive rewards.  It's satisfying to see fast cuts followed by a long shot.  The importance of providing the audience with both high tension and satisfying release is what can make or break a film.

Already, I've made my way through The Conformist, Vertigo and Citizen Kane.  Each one is providing me with a unique perspective on film theory and almost a back stage pass to witness the true craft at play without the story being on the forefront.

I feel as though this should be a mandatory project for a budding filmmaker to do.  With just some freeware app that converts DVD's to MOV's, and about 5 or 6 hours of spare time, you can make your own tone cuts.  The malleability of looking at a film on an NLE's timeline and getting the opportunity to look at every frame and every cut of the classics at your own pace is one of the most open-ended educations you could give yourself.  You should have no excuses to do this for yourself.

For those interested, I'm not opposed to sharing the Tone Cut of these films I've already completed; if and only if you are willing to share with me your notes and what you've learned from these films as well.