There are no templates for writing documentary treatments, no pre-given formulas. It can involve a script (not unlike a fictional narrative script), a story outline, a treatment, a creative brief or an audio-visual breakdown.

In many instances, the approach will be dictated by broadcasters or funding agents who require a written document outlining the structure, subjects and visual approach to the film. Given the written form does not have the luxury of sound and image to enhance the story, the documentary treatment needs to work extra hard to engage and compel the reader.

When writing the treatment for our first feature length documentary, Words From the City – a documentary about a number of Hip Hop MCs in Australia co-directed with Rhys Graham, I felt quite unnerved writing about characters and events prior to actually filming with them.

Given the written form does not have the luxury of sound and image to enhance the story, the documentary treatment needs to work extra hard to engage and compel the reader.

The development process made this somewhat easier as it enabled us to film some preliminary observational footage and interviews with the subjects. This, along with research into the subjects and the topic, enabled us to create a written document that gave the stakeholders of the film some sense of how the documentary would take shape. As an observational documentary filmmaker, this felt anathema to the idea of documenting real life events as they unfold before the camera.

Looking back on the process, I think we invested a disproportionate amount of time and resources trying to create a great document on the page than to create a guiding document for the actual shooting and editing of the film.  This was disadvantageous on two levels: one, it put enormous pressure on us as filmmakers to construct a riveting story for the page; and secondly, it set up a high expectation in the stakeholders for the documentary to live up to the written treatment.

Writing to guide the process

With my most recent documentary, Anatomy – Muscle, about an itinerant performance troupe, Acrobat, I wrote a treatment that would not only engage the stakeholders but would also provide a realistic guide for the shooting and editing process.

From the early development phase, I knew that the film would need to explore the idea of strength and fragility in the human body. For this troupe, these ideas inform not only their show but also their way of life.

Once the individual characters arcs were established, I needed to find the story and structure.

Despite looking the picture of health, the three members of the group have all been confronted by the fallibility of their bodies. Prior to their last national tour, Simon snapped his achilles in a routine training session resulting in a complete nervous breakdown. His partner Jo was, at the time, struggling with exhaustion and depression following the birth of her youngest child and Mozes, the third member of the troupe, had been living with HIV and the very real threat that his body could one day fail him.

Once the individual characters arcs were established, I needed to find the story and structure. Given the transient nature of the troupe, I thought that a physical journey charting the tour would compliment the more existential journey the film was exploring.

The edit was no easy feat as we still needed to shape the character arcs as well as the overall story.

Whilst this significantly fed into the treatment to provide a sound basis from which to commence the shoot, I still undertook an observational approach to filming to allow for unpredictable moments to unfold before the camera.

Despite putting all of this planning in place, the edit was no easy feat as we still needed to shape the character arcs as well as the overall story.

Looking back on the footage from Muscle, I realized that I needed to construct a story and character outline for the film with the footage I had shot, not with what I had written about in the treatment. I also realized that I needed the characters to represent a different facet to their complex relationships with their bodies.

Whilst some observational filmmakers would never even write so much as a synopsis prior to filming, the writing process has become an invaluable part of my documentary filmmaking process.

Fleshing this out with editor Andy Canny, we worked out that Jo represented the emotional relationship an acrobat has with their body as she become increasingly torn between the needs on her body of both her children and her work. Simon represented the mental burden of injury, and Mozes the physical challenges of preventing the HIV from destroying his immune system.

Once we had worked out these basic character journeys we could approach the edit with a renewed and consolidated idea of the story that still honoured the premise of the original treatment but that, most importantly, honoured the actual footage that was captured.

Revisiting some my favourite documentaries – particularly the observational films from the Direct Cinema moment – I am reminded of how they utilised the devices of narrative fiction film to create an engaging and compelling story.

It is story that motivates the viewer to continue watching.

The work of the Maysles Brothers (pictured below) is particularly successful on this level with their films setting out to have all of the character development, conflict resolution, tension and plot of a fiction film.

Whether creating a character based documentary like Grey Gardens about an odd mother-daughter relationship or an event driven documentary like Gimme Shelter about the ill-fated Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, it is story that motivates the viewer to continue watching.

Like fiction films, these documentaries create a sense of intrigue prompting the viewer to ask, “what happens next?”, “how will story this turn out?” and “will the subject/s get what they want?”

Some observational filmmakers would never even write so much as a synopsis prior to filming. For me though, the writing process has become an invaluable part of my documentary filmmaking process.

Rather than stifling the creative process, I feel that it has enabled me to be more focused on capturing footage to enhance the story rather than searching for the story whilst shooting.

The important thing is to be responsive and open to those spontaneous, unforeseen moments that give a meaningful insight into the lives of the subjects and the worlds they inhabit. Those moments that, when captured by the delicate observations of the documentary filmmaker, transport us on that serendipitous journey Maysles refers to “so for that period of time, as you watch the film, you are, in effect, in the shoes of another individual”.

What a privilege it is to not only have that experience as a viewer but as a documentary filmmaker.

Natasha Gadd is a Melbourne based writer and director whose recent works include the AFI nominated documentary, Words From the City, and Anatomy – Muscle, awarded Best Documentary at the 2008 Australian Directors Guild Awards.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

“In a way you’re on a serendipitous journey, a journey which is much more akin to the life experience. When you see somebody on the screen in a documentary, you’re really engaged with a person going through real life experiences. So for that period of time, as you watch the film, you are, in effect, in the shoes of another individual. What a privilege to have that experience.”

Albert Maysles

On a busy New York street, a silhouetted figure slips through a manhole into the dank, dark world beneath the city. As a train rumbles past, the figure walks through a network of subway tunnels that have become home to a large community of New York’s homeless.

Watching this memorable sequence from Marc Singer’s feature length documentary Dark Days is the beginning of the kind of serendipitous journey Albert Maysles is referring to, propelling the viewer to the farthest reaches of the earth to reveal the extraordinariness of everyday life.

Welcome to the wonderful world of documentary cinema.

As a programmer for documentary film festival, Real: life on film, I spent five sweltering summers with the blinds drawn perched in front of a glowing screen as images of thousands of different characters and places flickered before my eyes.

From vodka fuelled punks working in a Russian boot factory to Japanese female wrestlers or Romanian orphans living in the underground subways of Bucharest, these films revealed both the beautiful and the wretched characteristics of the human condition.

The Documentary Landscape

Looking back through the documentary archives there have been a number of significant stylistic movements that have been shaped as much by technological developments as by the desire of documentary makers to find more effective methods for telling stories about the real.

Whilst the languid observational documentaries of the Maysles Brothers (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter, Salesman) or Kim Longinotto (Dream Girls, Divorce Iranian Style, Sisters in Law) differ vastly from the highly stylised documentaries of Errol Morris (Thin Blue Line, Fog of War) and the evocative and performative documentaries of Werner Herzog  (La Soufrière, Lessons of Darkness), they are all shaped by story.

The strength of these films lies in not just what the films are about but how the story is told.

The concept of writing for documentary seemed something of an oxymoron. How could documentary be distinguished from the realm of fiction films if the events are scripted prior to the events occurring in real life? How does this effect the representation of the real world?

For many observational documentary makers, story is largely shaped in the edit once reels and reels of footage have been viewed and catalogued. For documentary filmmakers creating more stylized or constructed non-fiction films, story can be scripted prior to filming and the shoot executed with as much control as a fiction film.

After many years viewing, selecting and writing about non-fiction film, I decided I would try my hand at making documentaries. With a bent for purist observational documentary, I assumed that once I had selected a documentary subject and worked out the angle for the story, the most intensive part of the process would be the shoot and the edit.

What I did not realize at that stage was how essential the writing process is to documentary, not only in the shaping of story, but in attracting investors, distributors and broadcasters to the project. What struck me when looking through the funding applications was the requirement of a full written treatment, script or outline of the project.

The concept of writing for documentary seemed something of an oxymoron. How could documentary be distinguished from the realm of fiction films if the events are scripted prior to the events occurring in real life? How does this effect the representation of the real world?

Next week: Writing a Treatment that Sells

Natasha Gadd is a Melbourne based writer and director whose recent works include the AFI nominated documentary, Words From the City, and Anatomy – Muscle, awarded Best Documentary at the 2008 Australian Directors Guild Awards.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

Award winning writer/director Christina Andreef has seen it all – not getting into film school, working with Jane Campion’s and finally seeing her own films at Cannes and Sundance.

Cleo Mees spoke with Christina about writing for the screen and seeing her screenplays through the production process.

Tell us about not getting into film school.
Very painful.  The first big rejection in my life! I applied in the ’80s, and there was no Major in Directing those days.  You had to do a year in another craft and then graduate to Directing.  So I chose camera.  On the day of the final test they made me lace up a 35mm movie camera.  I made a stab but didn’t have a clue… I thought that’s what you went there to learn.  The clincher was being told that as a girl, and a short one at that, I would have trouble carrying the equipment.

I made up my mind to do what the successful students were doing:  Make three short films, on 35mm, over three years, and get them into international festivals. And that’s what I did.

How did you get into contact with Jane Campion?
In the meantime, I began a PhD in film at Macquarie Uni.  I was writing my thesis on Australian women filmmakers and I interviewed Jane for it.  Soon after that she got funded for her first feature, “Sweetie”.  She needed an assistant but it was extremely low budget and they couldn’t pay for one.  I had a Commonwealth Scholarship, so I just stopped going to uni and started working for her…  Didn’t take much persuading.

The Gap (Sundance, Telluride)

How did your experience on other peoples’ films shape you?

It just made me feel like anything was possible.  It was like an awakening for me, I absolutely thrived in the creative environment, and Jane was a totally generous, inspiring boss.  Everything felt like a treat – from stopping the traffic in Sydney’s suburbs to bribing the neighbour’s kids to shut up during takes or driving out to the desert for the ‘Jill-a-Roo’ scenes. It was all brilliant.

“The Piano” was really the high church of my experiences on other people’s films.  Everything … everything just filled me up. I organised and ran the rehearsal room and that was a terribly fertile learning ground.  I filled up notebooks on how to “be” with actors, what to say if things weren’t working, how to help them.

I’d been a bit afraid of actors, but had to get over it, as Jane used to make me get up and play opposite Sam Neill or Harvey Keitel if their scene partner wasn’t there!   I also learnt about the critical importance of preparation in pre-production – no stone unturned.  Things will always go wrong on the day but I really absorbed the notion that the better the prep, the richer the elements that do end up on screen.

Shooting the Breeze (Sundance, Berlin)

How does being a writer/director affect your writing?
Polish everything beautifully till it sings.   When you’re writing for yourself to direct, you should be able to pull out a lot of the descriptive embroidery.  Now I just make separate art department or character lists to remind myself.  The critical thing is that the script gets a clean, fluid read.  And the more you trust your director self, the more sparely and cleanly you can write.

How did you crew up your first shorts?
I started off with a friend producing – we were at kind of a similar level.  It helps because then you’re both hungry for the same thing.  My DP, Gary Phillips, had shot heaps of ads and focus pulled on features, but had never DP’d a 35mm drama himself. So there was something in it for him – especially when our first short together went to Cannes.

The 1st AD (Mark Turnbull) and Designer (Janet Patterson) had both just worked on ‘The Piano’.  We’d made friends and then I kind of insisted they come on my short for free!  Funny how naivety helps. It was terribly cheeky when I think of it now, as they were two of the most experienced and talented in their jobs, in the country.

It’s good to start forming a ‘team’ early on — Screen Australia likes that. It’s all about ‘teams’ these days.

Soft Fruit (winner 6 international awards, 13 nominations)

How did you go about getting funding for your first shorts?
With “Excursion…” we were turned down for production funding, so we put our glad-rags on and went out to Kodak and made a proper professional pitch to Tim Waygood.  He came to the party with the 35mm stock that I wanted for the film.  It was terrifying.  I thought “God, we’ve got the stock now, we have to make a film!”  Because we had stock, Lemac came on board with 35mm camera and equipment, and producer, Helen Bowden and I shot the whole film for nothing.

Problem was we couldn’t get the work-print out of the lab without paying for it, so we invited the AFC out to Atlab to see the rushes, and they loved it and gave us solid post-production funding to finish the film.  It went to over 60 festivals around the world.  On the strength of that the AFC fully funded my second short, “The Gap”.  Through my shorts going to Sundance, I met the people at Fox Searchlight in LA.  They invested in my feature “Soft Fruit” along with the FFC and FTO.  It was the first time that Fox Searchlight had backed a debut feature in Australia.

What did you learn after watching Soft Fruit as a finished film?
Jane Moran (Editor) and I changed the order of scenes from the script to the final cut quite a lot.  It should not have been possible to do that.  There should be an inevitability about every scene in your screenplay.  Each scene should be where it is because it’s totally necessary to advance the story, and won’t work anywhere else.  There wasn’t a sense of inevitability about some of the “Soft Fruit” scenes, which in the end made the film slightly episodic.

My script was quite ‘talky’ and I wished it was less so.  That I’d left more open moments for Antony Partos’ gorgeous music, or just for the audience to reflect and feel what we were showing them.

Excursion to the Bridge of Friendship (Cannes, Sundance, San Fransisco)

What tips would you give to screenwriters, from the perspective of someone who has been on the practical end of filmmaking?
Stay in there.  Simple as that.  I’ve heard it said that 90% of filmmaking is persistence and 10% is talent.  That’s obviously not to denigrate talent.  It’s just that there are many more talented people out there who would love to make a film but never will, for various reasons;   they can’t get beyond self-doubt, they can’t do without the safety of wages, they can’t abide the long long time a script takes in development.

I do every workshop and masterclass that comes to Sydney – have done for years.  I really recommend that.  Join the Directors’ and Writers’ Guilds, get involved with the filmmaking community.  Volunteer yourself as an Intern on feature sets or TV writing tables.  Write every single day.  Know the FTO and Screen Australia Guidelines, and keep applying for development funds.  Trust that good things will come.

Christina Andreef has written and directed three prize-winning short films, “Excursion To The Bridge of Friendship” (In official selection at Sundance & Cannes), “The Gap” (Sundance & Telluride) and “Shooting The Breeze” (Sundance & Berlin). She followed with her first feature film “Soft Fruit” in 2000.  “Soft Fruit” won the International Critics’ Prize in Spain and was invited to Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.  It was also nominated for 7 AFI Awards.  Currently, she teaches Screenwriting and Direction at the Sydney Film School and Sydney College of the Arts.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

Award winning writer/director Christina Andreef has seen it all – not getting into film school, working with Jane Campion and finally: seeing her own films at Cannes and Sundance.

Cleo Mees spoke with Christina about writing for the screen and seeing her screenplays through the production process.

When did you start screenwriting?
I did a little at Uni in Ireland, but I really got cooking on the set of  (Jane Campion’s) “The Piano”.  I was writing a short called “Excursion To The Bridge of Friendship”.  Jane would ask to see it in between takes of the shoot.  (I’m sure we pissed the 1st AD off )  Then she’d send me away to improve it on the far side if the set.

I shot the film on 35mm with no money, and Jane let us (me and my editor, Heidi Kennessy) edit it on a dusty old Steenbeck in her storeroom at Spectrum films.  I finished it the same time Jane finished “The Piano”, and both films were invited to Cannes – “Excursion…” in ‘Un Certain Regard’.  It was an incredibly exciting baptism.

Where do you start when you have an idea for a script?
On “Excursion..” I started with … a prop.  Someone sent me a cassette tape through the mail, and it grew from there.  On “The Gap” I started with a story in the local rag about a guy trying to jump off The Gap.  On “Shooting The Breeze” I started with an idea – domestic violence in a dense hi-rise apartment building.  On “Soft Fruit” my first feature, it was my mother’s death and the crazily emotional, destructive and beautiful way that our family came together over it. On “Shiver” I started with Nikki Gemmell’s book, and wrote my first adaptation.

I have in fact, never started with structure.  I try to go to the core of where the heat is for me, and write from there out.  It’s a process I’ve often lamented because you have to find structure eventually – nothing is surer.  And it’s a long, slow, painful way around.

Excursion to the Bridge of Friendship (Cannes, Sundance, San Fransisco)

What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
Just that. Finding structure.  I was given Flannery O’Connor’s book on writing, “Mystery and Manners”, early on, and I love the mystery bit – mining your heart and soul and unknown bits for content and character.  But the manners bit is hard.  The re-writing and re-writing and re-writing and the interminable search for action and structure that feels fresh.

What do you do when you get stuck?
I go for a walk and put it out of my head.  Spend an hour in nature. Do yoga. Then brainstorm:  take a bit of paper and just write it all out – all the nonsense, all the banality, all the half-formed untested ideas floating in your head. Spend an hour just writing everything you know about the problem down. No stopping, no punctuating, no correcting, no reading back, no censoring… Eventually you get past what you know and into what you don’t know, and therein could be the answer….or not.

The Gap (Sundance, Berlin)

Have you developed any routines or methods that help you develop your characters/ideas?
I think I’ve always been really bad at (external) routines, so no.  But I do make sure that my story develops though character – the character’s action.  Story is what character does. I would not be random or arbitrary. I ask, “what would the character do now, in this situation?”  Of course since you’re inventing the character, the answer could be anything…an even more useful question is ‘What would I do now, if I were that character”. With that question you start to imbue your character with a uniqueness, a particularity.

Where does structure come into your writing process?
A lot of ‘how to..’ books offer schemas of some sort, but I’ve only ever found them useful after the fact –  like a template to lay over the work if you’ve got problems, to see where the problems might be, and how you might shift things around to fix them.  I seem to write character, feelings, plot, visuals first.  However I would never poo poo a 3 act structure.  It’s a story archetype that goes way beyond formula.  All it means is beginning, middle and end.  Set up, journey, resolution.  What’s so scary about that?

Shooting the Breeze (Sundance, Telluride)

What is the importance of feedback from script editors, friends, etc., for you?  Who do you consult?
I think it’s important not to give your work too much oxygen too early.  Once you start taking on other people’s ideas too early, you risk getting a democratic script. That’s death.  There’s no such thing as democracy in script writing.  I don’t show it to friends.

When it’s nearly finished, I might show it to trusted writers, with track-records, who I think are good and whose taste I admire.  Most readers are only going to give your script ONE good read.  If it’s below par or you’re just looking for a pat on the back, then they’re never going to read it again with those fresh eyes.  You’ve got to save those fresh-eye reads – they’re important.

I’ve done the FTO Aurora Workshop with “Shiver” at 2nd Draft.  That meant a whole lot of  strong creative people with ideas. It was brilliant.  But you have to tune yourself to really feel which ideas are resonating with you, and leave behind the ones which aren’t.

Christina Andreef has written and directed three prize-winning short films, “Excursion To The Bridge of Friendship” (In official selection at Sundance & Cannes), “The Gap” (Sundance & Telluride) and “Shooting The Breeze” (Sundance & Berlin). She followed with her first feature film “Soft Fruit” in 2000.  “Soft Fruit” won the International Critics’ Prize in Spain and was invited to Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.  It was also nominated for 7 AFI Awards.  Currently, she teaches Screenwriting and Direction at the Sydney Film School and Sydney College of the Arts.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

Now he scrutinises the changes – and particularly the omissions -author John Ajvide Linqvist made when adapting his own novel Let the Right One In for the screen.

I saw Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2008) before I read the novel. I was immediately impressed by how Alfredson balanced purely cinematic elements and yet maintained a distinct lyrical, at times poetic, edge to the visual narrative.

The screenplay was written by the novel’s author John Ajvide Lindqvist and it’s a dramatically tight and emotionally sustained piece of cinematic writing – a very impressive debut for a feature screenplay adaptation.

I’m not sure what early drafts of the screenplay were like, but for the shooting script Lindqvist had cut more than one character from the novel and jettisoned a major climax

What usually happens when a novel is adapted into a movie is that a number of sub-plots are jettisoned and peripheral characters are amalgamated. This is due to cinematic time constraints, and is also an effort not to clutter the narrative with too many characters.

It’s curious that what works easily in prose doesn’t necessarily work well for cinema. I’m not sure what early drafts of the screenplay were like, but for the shooting script Lindqvist had cut more than one character from the novel and jettisoned a major climax that occurs during the last third of the novel, turning the film into a more conventional boy meets girl romance.

Author John Adjvide Lindqvist

The basic premise of both novel and movie is this: 12-year-old Oskar meets a Eli, a girl of roughly the same age. Oskar is an only child and is bullied at school. Eli is a vampire who lives with her middle-aged caretaker Hakan. Oskar and Eli become friends, while Eli continues to live the life of a vampire, killing in order to consume blood, in order to survive.

As it turns out Eli is not really a girl. And herein lies the novel’s brilliant twist. It is a twist which, curiously, Lindqvist decides to not address anywhere near as directly in the movie as he does in his novel.

What usually happens when a novel is adapted into a movie is that a number of sub-plots are jettisoned and peripheral characters are amalgamated.

In both the novel and the movie Eli explains to Oskar that she is not really a girl. The audience has already assumed that Eli is a vampire, so they are making the connection that by saying she is not a girl, Eli is hinting she is a vampire.

However there is more to this. Later in the novel Eli kisses Oskar and in doing so initiates a kind of memory transference: Oskar experiences a memory of Eli’s as if it is happening to him.

In the memory Eli is a young boy who is tied down and has his genitals cut off by a middle-aged man. Eli also tells Oskar that his real name is Elias, which is a boy’s name. Oskar eventually realizes the truth, but his fondness for Eli is not dampened.

Eli

When I saw the movie I was initially shocked, then very intrigued by it. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen.

There are only two visual references to Eli not being a girl in the movie. The first is when Eli kisses Oskar (the memory transference) and tells Oskar “try being me for a moment”. As Eli breaks the kiss and pulls away the audience sees for a brief moment that Eli is not a girl but a grown adult man but with the same features.

The other moment, which is also in the novel, is when Oskar peeks at Eli dressing after having had a shower and glimpses a horizontal scar where Eli’s genitals should be. When I saw the movie I was initially shocked, then very intrigued by it. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. In fact, I hadn’t registered the scar, but simply that Eli had no genitals. It didn’t occur to me that Eli might be a boy.

In this respect it seems a conscious decision was made by Alfredson and Lindqvist to leave that side of Eli’s character more cryptic and mysterious. It certainly adds a dark, phantasmogorical element to the movie.

Hakan

In the movie Eli has an assistant, a middle-aged man named Hakan. He has to do Eli’s dirty work, collecting the blood from young boys for Eli to drink. In the novel Hakan is a pedophile, and there is a scene where he buys the services of a young pubescent boy who it turns out has no teeth.

Hakan’s aberrant character is toned down immeasurably for the movie. In fact there is no direct reference to him being a pedophile. It can be safely assumed that director Alfredson and/or producers decided that having Hakan as a pedophile would severely damage the audience’s sympathy for Eli, despite Eli being a supernatural killer. Curious, still, is Alfredson’s decision to cast a girl in the role of Eli instead of an androgynous boy.

I find it hard to believe that Hollywood would embrace those darker more perverse elements of the novel for the movie

Another change from novel to movie is this: In the novel 12-year-old Oskar has a friend, Tommy, a 16-year-old who lives in the same apartment complex and uses the basement to sniff glue and hang with his teenage mates. He offers to sell Oskar toys (no doubt stolen). Tommy might have dodgy morals, but he’s not a villain character.

Eli and Tommy represent two halves of what Oskar desires. In Tommy he sees the confident “adult” who can look after himself and not have to worry about being bullied, which is what is happening to Oskar in and out of school. In Eli he sees the pretty girl whom has stolen his heart.  Yet Tommy is not included in the movie.

Tommy’s mother Yvonne is also dropped from the story, along with his father Staffan. In the movie the name Yvonne is given to Oskar’s mother, who is never named in the novel.

Oscar and Eli

The movie plays out more conventionally as a boy meets girl romance, where the girl happens to be a vampire, and the boy needs a dose of self-confidence. The novel, however, it is much darker tale, where the vampire’s sexuality has been stunted through castration, and presumably he has lived for two hundred years in this way.

Hollywood is remaking the movie; to be re-titled Let Me In. Rumour has it that screenwriter/director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) plans to stick more closely to the novel. I find it hard to believe that Hollywood would embrace those darker more perverse elements of the novel for the movie, when even the famously open-minded Swedish baulked at adapting the novel as it was.

Bryn Tilly is a shameless cinephile, freelance writer and professional DJ who spends his daytime hosting two movie blogs – https://www.horrorphile.net and www.cultprojections.com. Night time he spins deep funk for jazzed souls at Sydney’s glam hotspots such as The Ivy and The Opera Bar. He provides a ‘Movie of the Month’ review for lifestyle website www.freshmag.com.au.

We’re giving away 5 copies of the novel LET THE RIGHT ONE IN by John Ajvide Lindqvist, courtesy of Text Publishing. To win, send an email to books@thestorydepartment.com and tell us what you think was the most memorable ever film adaptation.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

For us, Jan explores what it is that sets daily drama writing apart from other screenwriting genres.

Mapping out the Territory of the Dialogue Writer.

Most writing departments employ a larger number of dialogue writers on a part-time basis, leaving enough time for some consideration in the development of the meat of each episode.

A script that was written in a day or two will stand out like a sore thumb and rarely qualifies as anything more than a first draft.  Part-time writers will have other work commitments and schedule their time accordingly.

For the Dialogue Writer, there is a fine line between creating dramatic reality and tinkering with actual story content.

They will spend somewhere between 20 and 25 hours completing a script at 3rd draft level, leaving breaks in between sessions or days of writing to revisit the text with fresh eyes.

These writers are the lucky ones, as everyone else in the writing department, technically, only has one day to do what they need to on an episode.

For the Dialogue Writer, there is a fine line between creating dramatic reality and tinkering with actual story content. The job is to develop the ‘who says what/does what to whom prose’ from a breakdown into real interactions between characters with each a unique personality, voice and motivation.

It is the very potential for misunderstanding and miscommunication that keeps the audience unnerved, anxious to see how characters are interpreted by others.

It is not about changing content into something seemingly more credible or exciting.

For actual changes they’ll need clearance from ‘the top’ and other subsequent scripts – many already in the process of being written-  might need adjusting.

It sounds simple enough, but imagine how confusing it would get if ten writers all want to change content while simultaneously working on ten different episodes.

There is no list of golden rules to write by in this genre.  As in all endeavours, practice makes perfect.  Reading your scene drafts out loud to yourself or an objective ear often exposes glaring errors in rhythm or style.

TV dialogue is NOT natural.  It is quite far removed from real-world dialogue, stage dialogue and even film dialogue. There is less repetition, fewer ‘ehms’ and ‘ahs’, it is less disjointed and much more economical than everyday-speak.

The Television audience is impatient, mainly because they have the option to choose an alternative if they are not completely engrossed.  They see Television content as a right rather than a choice.  If you’ve made the effort to go to the Theatre, chances are you’ll sit through the uninspiring bits and wait for the captivating bits.

TV dialogue is NOT natural.  It is quite far removed from real-world dialogue, stage dialogue and even film dialogue.

At home, you’ll go and make coffee or flip to something else, even have a chat while the show is on if it doesn’t have you by the balls.

Therefore, in daily drama especially, the writer has to cater for a shorter, more predictable attention span.  Long speeches are a rarity; long scenes are a rarity; scene length is more consistent.

The genre is driven by dialogue. The demand for content combined with budgetary restraints inevitably leads to minimal variation in visual setting.

It is the characters and their verbal interaction that keeps the audience engaged over an extended period of viewing.

Creating dialogue that allows actors to inject more value into what’s NOT being said, the subtext, the ‘lines’ between the lines, is a skill that is equally necessary in all forms of screenwriting.

The genre is driven by dialogue. The demand for content combined with budgetary restraints inevitably leads to minimal variation in visual setting.

The breakdown will often point to what a character aims to get across.  The Dialogue Writer aims to use words that allude to that aim, with characters often not directly saying what they mean, even when being truthful.

It is the very potential for misunderstanding and miscommunication that keeps the audience unnerved, anxious to see how characters are interpreted by others.

There are many more areas in which writing for the daily genre will require a unique approach. This was a very wordy and drawn out debut-blog, more poop than pop, but I hope it stirs up some thought about the mechanics of the text-audience relationship in this deceptively challenging form of screenwriting.

Jan Ellis is a multi-media all-rounder with a glittering career in South African Film, Television and Theatre, who moved to Sydney in 2007 to train as a Video Editor and continues to write regular episodes for the popular South African daily drama, ‘Binnelanders’.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

For us, Jan explores what it is that sets daily drama writing apart from other screenwriting genres.

The writing/production environment

The practical implications of the production of daily drama seriously influence creativity in the process.  Firstly, consider the structure of a typical writing department and the process through which each script is produced and realised on screen.

It generally breaks down like this: Producers, Head Writer, Script Coordinator, Script Editor, Storyline Writers, Dialogue Writers and possibly Box Producer and Director/s meet anywhere between once and four times a year. During an intense brainstorming session they propose and deliberate characters, depending on actors’ contracts and availability.

Storylines are proposed for the long term (six months to a year), mid-term (three to six months) and short term (two weeks to a month) and the appropriate primary story arcs are developed.

Similarly, on any given day, people in various departments will be dealing with episodes’ scripts each at a completely different stage of their individual evolution:  one-line scene breakdowns; paragraph scene breakdowns, 3rd draft versions, edited versions, revised versions, approved versions, camera scripted versions.

A dialogue writer will be composing a draft for an episode that will be shot two months later and broadcast three months after that, while the script editor will be streamlining dialogue and checking continuity issues in an episode (with the preceding and following episodes very much in mind) that is six weeks from shoot.

On the same day a director will be planning camera shots and cutting points for an episode to be shot in three weeks or a month.  An editor will be finalising an episode that is due for broadcast in a couple of weeks.  And so it goes every day.

How many writers, did you say..?
The Head Writer – bless his/her soul – will deal with a number of episodes every single day,  churning out a daily instalment’s worth of new content for the Storyline Writers who convert it into scene summaries (breakdowns). Episodes coming in from the Script Editor will need to be read for approval,  then sending to the Producers for further approval.

The Head Writer also reads and approves previous breakdowns from Storyline Writers and deals with overall discrepancies in continuity, logic and character-consistency. Because of the domino-effect from already-written episodes, often solutions are needed to avoid collisions with others further down the production line, or in episodes yet to come.

The Dialogue Writer receives that blue print called the “breakdown” script.  Their aim is to flesh out the prose style skeleton into a scene with beats, rhythm, dialogue which is character specific and consistent, dramatic tension or comedy where appropriate and, most importantly, authenticity.

Breakdowns vary on different productions from fairly detailed summaries of the interaction in each scene to a mere few sentences describing the overall aim of the scene and what the characters motivations are.

In our case, each breakdown is about 4,500 words in length, representing a standard of 13 to 14 scenes per episode.  We have a team of about ten dialogue writers, each delivering an episode every two weeks on average.

The deadline for delivery is set five days after receipt of the breakdown.  While not writing, each writer reads all other breakdowns, as well as all final scripts as they are approved to ensure they are up to date across all levels of content.

The Script-Coordinator – usually a mere shell of a human being due to exhaustion and stress – manages the scheduling, filing and archiving protocols of this web of rotating script-versions and keeps everyone in the Department (as well as Production and Art Dept.) informed of every single detail that may be changed, cut, replaced, reworked, etc.

Suffice it to say, for every pair of eyes and ears that are needed to make sure that screen content flows well in any other genre, daily drama needs five pairs… and still errors inevitably slip through the net.

Jan Ellis is a multimedia all-rounder with a glittering career in South African film, television and theatre, who moved to Sydney in 2007 to train as a video-editor and who continues to write regular episodes for the popular South African daily drama, “Binnelanders”.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

For us, Jan explores what it is that sets daily drama writing apart from other screenwriting genres.

Differences of space/time
The second aspect of daily drama writing that sets it apart from other screenwriting genres is the configuration of space and time. Weekly drama often transcends the boundaries of real time.  An hour-long episode can represent a series of events that play out over weeks, even months or years and skip forward or backward in time with great effect.

Although flashbacks are used to an extent in daily drama, flashing forward is rare (unless the characters themselves have some clairvoyant skills).  So is leaving out substantial periods of time, except when weekends are deliberately used to suggest breaks in continuity from a Friday episode to a Monday episode.

Daily drama scripts are largely bound by a day-by-episode format in order to parallel the viewer’s calendar.  One of the consequences is that issues are often dwelled on much longer in terms of screen time.

Whereas a conflict and resolution (that say, plays out over a week) between two characters can quite easily be represented in a few key scenes in a single episode of a weekly drama, writers of daily drama are forced to use more scenes (meaning more interaction and more dialogue) to tell the same story, as they cannot afford to put too much distance between characters in space and time.  If a certain issue is at hand between two or more characters, it needs daily attention in the show, whether those characters interact daily or not.

Because of the sheer volume of screen time that needs to be filled by daily drama and the limited time available to fill it, here are a few general time-space issues that probably create greater challenges to the writers of this genre than others:

1. A => B => A
Unlike most American dailies, those from Australia, the UK and South Africa avoid the classic ‘Cut from scene A to scene B and cut back to Scene A’ structure. By this I mean: cutting  from Ridge and Eric arguing to Brook and Stephanie reconciling and then back to Ridge and Eric still arguing, a la The Bold and the Beautiful. New scenes generally mean new interactions, rather than continuing where the characters left off in previous scenes.

The challenge is to overcome the obvious choice of starting scenes with one or more characters present in a setting, and another character arriving to prompt interaction.  The aim is to start scenes mid-interaction, presupposing dialogue that the audience is not privy to.

2. Left to ponder.

Another pitfall is to continuously end scenes with a character leaving another behind to ponder whatever they discussed.  It can be used to great effect, but should be done sparingly.  The idea is to get in after the start and get out before the end of an interaction (again implying off-screen dialogue), which keeps scenes less bookended and ensures better narrative flow.

A tactic to keep things dynamic is for a character to exit from a situation as another enters either to interact with the character left behind or approaching another character that happens to be in the same communal space as the first.  The two-hander is the most frequently used character combination used in daily drama scenes.  Under time constraints, it speeds up the writing process and often provides a more classic bipolar interaction for the viewer to absorb.

3. The never-ending story.

Daily drama is, by definition, perpetual, resembling a stream of consciousness with highs, lows and temporary resolutions.  The aim is to keep going, not for a season, not for a year, not for a few, but for a lifetime.

In most weekly genres, a particular issue or event is dealt with in each episode.  In CSI, this week’s murderer is caught (or gets away with it, rarely) and next week, a new case arrives.

Daily drama, on the other hand, consistently juggles three main storylines at various stages of their individual arcs at any given point in time, with cliffhangers being required every 24 hours.  A story will almost never begin and end in the same episode.  One storyline (which could play out in a month) might be in the infancy of its cycle, another (which has developed over three months) may be reaching a crisis point, whereas a much longer story-arc might be in that phase of the cycle where its effect on current events is marginal.

A healthy mix of two- and multi-character scenes (with more complex interactions), added to the odd scene where all or most of the characters in the story are present, e.g. the Christmas Party or Dance Competition, brings balance in terms of the audience’s view on the individuals and the communal world which they all inhabit.

Jan Ellis is a multi-media all-rounder with a glittering career in South African Film, Television and Theatre, who moved to Sydney in 2007 to train as a Video Editor and continues to write regular episodes for the popular South African daily drama, ‘Binnelanders’.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

For us, Jan explores what it is that sets daily drama writing apart from other screenwriting genres.

This is my first blog post.  Pop.

My briefing was to highlight some of the unique methods in writing text for daily drama as opposed to other genres of screenwriting.  The differences between daily drama writing and film writing are more obvious, purely because films are mostly discreet units of narrative with a set-up, conflict and resolution (open-ended or not).

When it comes to writing for daily drama as opposed to weekly drama, the differences are more subtle.  But they still have a profound effect on the way the respective scripts are conceived and produced.

1.The Role of Daily Television in our Psychology

In all genres of screenwriting, some basic methodology is valid across the board.   Certain aspects, however, become accentuated when dealing with daily drama texts and its strictly formulaic structure.

As a starting point, it’s probably a good idea to consider the unique psychological relationship a daily drama audience has with the story and the characters.

The very routine and timeslot of the daily 30 minute ‘fix’ of voyeurism conveniently fits into the Monday to Friday pattern of either a housewife/husband’s mid-morning coffee break or the supper hour in which the household temporarily settles down and ‘mingles’ with their on-screen ‘family’.

The relationship with on-screen characters seems immediate; the soap reflects the viewer’s own routine more closely than film; the characters become partners in the daily grind.

It is not surprising that many hardcore fans cannot seem to dissociate the characters from the actors portraying them.  When it comes to daily drama, viewers tend to refer to the character’s names without knowing the name of the actor playing the role — even after meeting the performer in person.

This is probably why producers of other screen genres are often reluctant to cast actors who have been playing a daily character for a substantial period of time.

For producers of daily drama in all departments – writers, directors, actors, editors and schedulers – the relentless pressure of delivering 22-24 minutes worth of dramatic content every day is an immense challenge – one very easily underestimated by those who produce drama formats regarded as ‘superior’.

In some ways, yes, the daily audience might be more forgiving when storylines or characters lack drastic development or change, as this often more accurately coincides with the seeming consistency of their own routines.

On the other hand, they may be even harder to please as they simultaneously demand to experience a world that superficially reflects their own, but which is infused with extraordinary events, scandal, high tension and extreme emotions.

After all, if a character has not been seriously ill, kidnapped, threatened at gun point or been shot, stabbed, been cheated on or cheated on someone, been on the precipice of financial disaster, nearly killed in a car accident or injured in some other way, been robbed, betrayed, psychologically scarred or brainwashed by a religious cult in the last six months, what are they doing on your TV screen?

-Jan Ellis

Jan Ellis is a multi-media all-rounder with a glittering career in South African Film, Television and Theatre, who moved to Sydney in 2007 to train as a Video Editor and continues to write regular episodes for the popular South African daily drama, ‘Binnelanders’.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.

Writer/Producer Meg Shields reflects on the development of her script which recently won the Bill Warnock Feature Writers Awards in WA.  Will this mean a future in which she can buy her kids birthday cakes without the guilt of not baking them?

With Australian films struggling at the box office and many great writers out of work, I have moments when I seriously contemplate whether my quest to tell stories in the visual medium is a pipe dream. The maternal guilt of juggling kids with making films, and spending time with my words rather than baking cakes and volunteering for the school canteen, can make the challenge feel overwhelming at times.

While all this was consuming me, a small ray of hope burst through and told me I’m doing what I have to do – tell stories.  So maybe someday I’ll buy the cakes instead.  The ray of light came in the form of a major WA writing award.

This particular script’s journey started in 2007 with a pitch to a fellow writing friend who always generously listens.  This time, she was silent and wide-eyed. She urged me to get it on the page.

COOKING THE STORY

I wandered around with the story in my head for some time, dissecting the characters who had “appeared”, making notes about them as they evolved and pitching to a select few. The characters began to “speak”, and I felt it was nearly time to put pen to paper … but not just yet.

I had worked with Karel of The Story Department previously on some short film scripts and when we met up at SPAA I pitched some projects to him, my family drama feature being one of them. He immediately responded to it and encouraged me to write up a synopsis which he later reviewed.

Meanwhile, I was unexpectedly thrust into shooting a documentary in the Pilbara that took me to a small outback ghost town where I spent some of the most memorable years of my youth.  My feature story happened to be set here, and the return to the desert was a catalyst for getting it onto the page.  My characters came alive out there!

After returning home physically and mentally exhausted, I knew the story was “cooked” and my characters were banging on the oven door to be let out. I sat down and purged the first draft of my script in 5 days.

FIRST DRAFT FURY

When the story is ready to transgress to the page, I have to get it out quickly or I may lose it (superstition and paranoia are key to my work!). Karel reviewed the first 30 pages, and I subsequently tweaked the draft. It was vital to have his professional support to give me direction and opinion.

There are so many questions you ask yourself, and a script consultant is the sounding board that helps you answer these appropriately. It also provides you with confidence to keep going forward.

I tweaked the completed draft on my own. To say I felt locked in a cupboard is an understatement:  alone, paranoid and seriously doubting whether it was all worth while. But my money box was empty, with no hope of ever being filled again.

I sent the script to an experienced working writer, a mentor who read for me. He graciously encouraged me that it was worthwhile and to keep going. I found that getting my script read by professionals was no easy task as everyone is so busy with their own projects, and I hate asking for favours.  Writing the first draft seemed easy in comparison.  How to move on from the page?

With the new Screen Australia guidelines requiring that less experienced writers team up with more experienced producers for script development, it is becoming the norm for writers to approach producers in the early development of their project.

Normally I wouldn’t approach a producer with an early draft, but now we have no choice. Desperate for funding, I set out to test the waters with a query letter and short synopsis, approaching those producers who I deemed would suit the type of project I had. Some politely advised their slates were full, others I never received any response from. Small bites on the line seemed hopeful then quickly dispersed.

Instead of writing I was now marketing and I realised that I had to improve my shitty pitching style immediately.

Meanwhile, I entered the script into the Bill Warnock Feature Writers Award in WA.  It was shortlisted and I was announced as the winner at the WA screen awards. As a result I was gratefully armed with a precious money box, full of development dollars thanks to Screenwest.

WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?

To make the dollars go as far as I could, I decided I wanted my own “Indivision” workshop.

I approached Karel who tailored a program specifically for my project and we immersed ourselves in a 3-day script intensive.

Those three days enabled me to immerse myself completely in my story, uninterrupted by the outside world. Rather than the usual to and fro of readers’ assessments and notes, the process was now much more organic, with brainstorming allowing ideas to be generated with vigor and fluidity. Working in this hothouse environment meant that the story quickly evolved. Problems were readily identified and solutions promptly found.

My story came alive in that room and for the first time I felt that it was possible for it to actually be produced. Karel’s expertise gave me hope, and that’s an essential thing for a writer who lives in another realm most of the time.

With a deadline approaching, I’m now embarking on my next draft and will then market the script to gain the interests of an appropriate producer. With the current climate so volatile and feature film in OZ traditionally not doing that well at the box office, my family drama feature film and I have a big hill to climb.

I’m banking that the industry will find its way to sustain great Australian films … otherwise we will lose who we are, and finding the words will be the least of our worries.

-Meg Shields

Meg Shields is an AWGIE nominee and recipient of the BIll Warnock Award with several feature and documentary projects in development.

Cleo Mees

Cleo Mees is a Sydney-based writer, filmmaker and dancer. With a background across several disciplines, her interest is in finding out how these different disciplines can intersect and inform each other.