by Karel Segers

BACK TO ENGLAND

After all, Hitchcock’s greatest successes were his American movies starring Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Yet, there’s something freshly unique and authentic about his British period that I found lacking in the American films. To me some of the English films had a greater sense of realism

In my view, Hitchcock delivered his last true master piece with the film that brought him back to England in 1972: Frenzy. I agree with Roger Ebert, when he writes

“FRENZY is a return to old forms by the master of suspense, whose newer forms have pleased movie critics but not his public. This is the kind of thriller Hitchcock was making in the 1940s”

At the most exciting moment in this movie, Hitchcock does something highly illegal… He breaks the rule of not showing a key dramatic story moment.

At the most exciting moment in this movie,
Hitchcock does something highly illegal…

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN [spoiler alert]

When the Coen brothers allowed the tragic climax of No Country For Old Men to unfold offscreen, a large part of the audience hated them for it. I was among them. Not only did I feel robbed of a character we had come to love over the course of the movie, I also felt robbed of what could have been a powerful dramatic scene.

In Frenzy, Alfred Hitchcock uses a similar technique – but it works a treat.

We see the killer and his next victim enter a house, climb the stairs to an apartment on the second floor. Once at the top, instead of staying with them, the camera retreats down the stairs and back onto the street. For a moment, nothing happens and we are left with the merchants and trades people outside. Only later in the film do we get to see the aftermath of the murder.

Why did it work?

ANTAGONIST POV

Some purists claim you can’t do this or that in movies: no voice over, no flashbacks, no out-of-POV-scenes. The truth is that you can do anything you like – provided you do it well… (even killing off your heroine halfway a movie).

In Frenzy, the offscreen tragedy is not the movie’s climax but the Mid Point. I tend to believe that some of the story’s key dramatic scenes belong on screen, such as the Inciting Incident, the Act One and the Act Three Climax. In any case, all the major events that involve the hero character should be on the screen.

The story’s key dramatic scenes belong on screen.

In the scene above however, it is not the protagonist but the antagonist who disappears off screen. Another good example that proves we need to be aware of who’s point of view the scene is told from, before making structural judgments. If the main character had been part of the offscreen action, the same trick would most likely not have worked as well as it does here.

By the way, Brian De Palma did something vaguely similar around the mid point of The Untouchables. I wonder who he might have learned it from…

– Karel Segers

(first published for ScripTips – with thanks to Brooke Trezise)

Karel Segers is a producer and script consultant who started in movies as a rights buyer for Europe’s largest pay TV group Canal+. Back then it was handy to speak 5 languages. Less so today in Australia.

Karel teaches, consults and lectures on screenwriting and the principles of storytelling to his 7-year old son Baxter and anyone else who listens.
He is also the boss of this blog.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

by Karel Segers

FOUR PARTS

Kubrick wanted us to find our own interpretation of the film. For me, the first chapter The Dawn of Man shows metaphorically how the awakening of human self-consciousness introduces war within the species.

The moon sequence TMA-1 is all about visual beauty with its iconic image of the rotating space ship, wonderful production design and an amazing feel for realism. This is not something you watch on your iPad. Narratively this part runs on mystery: “What is going on at the moon base?”

The heart of the film is Jupiter Mission. For me it epitomizes Stanley Kubrick’s dark vision of the future. This is where my chosen movie moment sits. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

it epitomizes Stanley Kubrick’s dark vision of the future.

The last part is the somewhat controversial ‘hallucinatory trip’ sequence. A non-narrative audio-visual experience that lasts longer than contemporary audiences would bare to watch.

DRAMATIC IRONY

Jupiter Mission introduces the astronauts’ doubts about the allegedly foolproof computer system. Because they don’t trust HAL any longer, the men enter a space pod to avoid being overheard.

The instant classic movie moment occurs when we see HAL effectively lip-reading the astronauts. The camera goes back and forth between the mouths of the men.

This moment sent shivers down my spine. The computer outsmarts the humans, he has malicious intent, confirming that – most important of all – he has emotions.

Because we are watching the two astronauts silently and they are not aware, we are placed within the POV of the computer. Kubrick creates a powerful moment of Dramatic Irony, i.e. the audience has important information that the characters don’t.

Kubrick creates a powerful moment of Dramatic Irony,
i.e. the audience has important information that the characters don’t.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

In this split second of realization, Kubrick makes an extremely powerful statement. Some claim it is a warning about the power of computers but I believe it goes further. The strongest cinematic moments are never to be read literally. Much like the rest of the movie works on a metaphorical level, for me the HAL9000 sequence is not about computers but about the systems running our lives; the government, the media, corporations etc.

In only a few seconds of purely visual cinema, Stanley Kubrick instills a great deal of unrest into his audience. This moment of dramatic irony is at the same time the start of what will be the most dramatic sequence in the entire movie: the battle between our main character and the system that is running his life.

In only a few seconds of purely visual cinema,
Stanley Kubrick instills a great deal of unrest into his audience.

As screenwriters, I believe we can learn from this movie moment. If you manage to write a crucial story point in a purely visual way, it stands a better chance of being remembered by the audience.

– Karel Segers

(first published for ScripTips)

Karel Segers is a producer and script consultant who started in movies as a rights buyer for Europe’s largest pay TV group Canal+. Back then it was handy to speak 5 languages. Less so today in Australia. Karel teaches, consults and lectures on screenwriting and the principles of storytelling to his 7-year old son Baxter and anyone else who listens. He is also the boss of this blog.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

At the heart of all great screen drama are Big Secrets and Bold Lies.

by Mike Jones

(continued from Part 1)

So far, so good but what we haven’t touched on yet is the other kind – those non-diegetic Secrets and Lies that are held by the audience. It is these that bring an even greater spectrum of complexity to notions of narrative subtext.

Subtext in Horror

Horror films give us the clearest insight into the power of secrets and lies held with the audience. The scares and frights of a horror film are predicated on the viewer being positioned in one of two states – either they know More than the characters know, or they know Only what the characters know.

In the later, when the monster leaps from the shadows, we jump as the character jumps in shock and surprise. In the former, by contrast, we already know the monster is around the corner waiting and we watch, biting our nails in dread and suspense, as the ignorant character – oblivious to the secret we as viewers are forced to keep – heads blindly into the danger.

Horror films give us the clearest insight into
the power of secrets and lies held with the audience.

Both forms are very effective and great horror films move the viewer consistently through these different positions letting them in on the secret sometimes, keeping them in ignorance at others – ensuring a complexity of thrills.

The Audience Knows – Two Forms of Subtext in Horro

From this simple basis we can extrapolate a complexity of possibilities for how and when the audience may be told a lie or given a secret to hold. As with diegetic secrets and lies, we can view a number of ways they can be perpetuated with the audience which broadly may be seen to reside in two broad forms:

• The Character knows something the Viewer does not.
• The Viewer knows something the Character does not.

The first of these is the most obvious and results in the classic reveal often situated at key turning points in the plot. Here the viewer is made aware of new information that forces them to re-evaluate what they previously knew or believed. Whilst this may seem simple it is in fact a direct orchestration and manipulation of what the viewer knows by the writer at any given point in the story’s timeline.

The writer must clearly conceive of what
the viewer doesn’t know that the characters do.

To make such reveals work the writer must clearly conceive of what the viewer doesn’t know that the characters do in order to make the reveal of the conceit plausible and authentic. Scripts that fail this test and do not properly plan or articulate the secrets and lies to the viewer in the writing process, fall foul of Deus Ex Machina where a plot twist or reveal rings as untrue or overly contrived.

Examples of Subtext where The Audience Knows

Excellent examples of this kind of conceit with the viewer can be found in virtually any Hitchcock film but more contemporary films such as The Sixth Sense also demonstrate how effective this lie can be (spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen The Sixth Sense). The film’s reveal that the protagonist himself is actually dead – and indeed has been almost the whole time – is a tremendously effective ending; not because it’s a surprise but because the viewers all slap their foreheads as they realise that ‘it all makes sense’ and indeed that they perhaps should have seen it coming all along. The lie is authentic because it was carefully planned, each scene knew the truth as it was written and hid that truth carefully from the viewer as a secret.

Excellent examples of this kind of conceit with the viewer
can be found in virtually any Hitchcock film.

Such planned secrets to the audience also form the basis of complex-narrative stories such as Memento and The Usual Suspects which are films that build their entire dramatic concept on the ‘unreliable narrator’ and the grand ruse where the viewer is forced to recognise the lies they had previously accepted as truth.

The second of the two – that the viewer knows something the character does not – is consistent across all genres of screen narrative. Whether it’s at a macro level such as Titanic where the audience is fully aware of the ‘secret’ that the iceberg is coming while the characters are oblivious; or at a scene-by-scene level such as in the opening of Jaws where we have already seen the shark waiting and know the danger long before the first victim gets wet. We know the secret and we watch in horror that we cannot stop the inevitable.

We know the secret and we watch in horror
that we cannot stop the inevitable.

photo credit: wwworks

Similarly we might look at numerous scenes from Battlestar Galactica where the viewer knows which characters are in fact Cylons whilst the other characters remain oblivious. The audience is positioned to be the custodian of the secret and the drama plays out as an orchestration of not just What the viewer knows but When they know it.

Likewise in Dexter the audience knows Dexter’s secret life and so whenever we see Dexter interact in a normal way with his police colleagues we watch with a rich vein of subtext based on the dark secret we hold.

Conclusion

Whether the secrets and the lies are held between characters or with the audience the fact is that without secrets and lies your story will often be starved of subtext and tension or else be reliant on far more verbose and less effective forms of tension such as car chases, pointed guns and spectacle.

As a tool, investing your characters and your story at the planning stage with specific Secrets and Lies, that in turn have Values and Damages, will generate tangible potential for rich subtext before you even write the first scene.

-Mike Jones

(read the first part here)

Mike Jones has a diverse background in screen media crossing writing, technical production and academic research.

He is an award winning teacher, author and currently lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film TV and Radio School. www.mikejones.tv

photo credits: Cameron Cassan, Zarko Drincic, Diamond Farah, tommy the pariah

If a story isn’t a den of lies then it’s likely – somewhat ironically – to be missing the essential element that will may make the experience of that story authentic and truthful.

by Mike Jones

Does that sound a bit odd? Let me explain…

The presence – or lack thereof – of secrets and lies in a story is all too often what i observe to be absent from the films and scripts of both my students and screenplays by new and inexperienced writers. Often what is otherwise cited as missing in these cases is ‘subtext. But whilst this is certainly true, subtext is also a notoriously slippery term.

Definition of Subtext

It’s relatively easy to define subtext as that which is between the lines – what is not said between characters – but which is none the less clearly present for the viewer. However, putting that idea into some sort of tangible construct as a writer engaged in a creative process is not nearly so easy. Subtext is easy to see once it’s well written but not all that easy to write.

It’s relatively easy to define subtext
as that which is between the lines

Thus what I’m proposing is an alternative way to consider narrative subtext that perhaps makes it easier to hold onto and use as a creative narrative tool rather than a slightly abstracted concept; Subtext as a set of prescribed Secrets and Lies.

photo credit: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

Two Categories of Subtext

Secrets and Lies can exist in a story under two broad umbrellas and we might conceive of these two categories in the same way that sound design is often considered in cinema – diegetic and non-diegetic. A diegetic sound is one that comes from within the scene and belongs there, such as the sound of a car engine as we see a car drive or the sound of a gun shot when we see a gun go off, not to mention the sound of a person’s voice as we see them speak.

Conversely, a non-diegetic sound is one where the audio does not emanate from or belong to the scene; voice over narration or a musical score being the two most obvious examples.

When we apply this idea broadly to the subtext of Secrets and Lies in narrative we see a distinction between the secrets and lies held diegetically between characters and those secrets and lies held non-diegetically by the audience observing the characters.

We see a distinction between the secrets and lies
held diegetically between characters and those
secrets and lies held non-diegetically by the audience

In the former, diegetic, sphere we have something one character knows that another does not, or something one character believes but the other does not. In the alternative, non-diegetic, sense we have something the audience knows that the character (or characters) do not (or vise versa).

From this simple observation we can construct all kinds of variations for introducing and manifesting secrets and lies in a narrative; be they at the macro-level of an over-arching story concept that’s predicated on a conceit (Breaking Bad and the secret that Walt is a drug dealer) or at a scene-by-scene level (Michael in The Godfather lying to Kay declaring that he didn’t have his brother-in-law killed). In either case the secrets and the lies fuel the dramatic tension.

photo credit: Raïssa Bandou

Four Kinds of Subtext

So let’s ponder the variations of diegetic secrets and lies. There are essentially 4 kinds:

Character A knows something Character B doesn’t.
Character A doesn’t know something Character B does.
Character A knows something Character B doesn’t and lies about it.
Character A says something Character B knows to be a lie.

Any one of these variations invested in a scene or story adds subtext almost innately by investing an element that is not spoken or, if it is spoken, is not true. That said, what is important from a writing perspective is for the writer to orchestrate clarity about who knows what? If you don’t know what your characters know and, just as importantly, aren’t clear about what it is they don’t know, then you have very little in the way if a toolkit to build compelling subtext beyond words and actions.

What is important from a writing perspective
is for the writer to orchestrate clarity.

When mapping out characters for a story we often think in terms of what WHAT and HOW; What does the character want and How are they going to get it. Stress is exerted by every screenwriting book and script guru doing the circuit that characters must Want something and encounter Obstacles on the way to getting what they want. This may well be true but in many ways this is also too simplistic to be really useful to screenwriters in the midst of the creative writing process.

As with most of the high profile script gurus that dominate screen narrative discourse I find such preaching fine and dandy in a retrospective way – describing how good films worked – but far less useful or functional from the front-end when you’re writing from scratch. Such analysis is focused on description from hindsight and so disconnected from in-the-trenches creative process.

Wants, obstacles and active protagonists are great
but they do not, of themselves, generate subtext.

For example, you may have the clearest What and How in the world for your character with a big obstacle and high stakes and yet still have a scene that is bland and dull and entirely lacking in subtext. Wants, obstacles and active protagonists are great but they do not, of themselves, generate subtext.

This brings us back to the usefulness of Secrets and Lies as a way to tangibly motivate the writing of scenes with more sophistication than just What and How. If you can map out not only what a character wants and how they are going to get it, but also sketch what it is they Know, what they Don’t know, what secrets they have and what lies they are willing to tell – from beat-to-beat and scene-to-scene within a script – you will have a very complex array of dramatic possibilities open to you when it comes to plotting.
photo credit: Chris Halderman

Key Ingredients of Subtext: Value and Damage

Of course this leads us to the key ingredients that character-based Secrets and Lies rely on to be effective. To make the secrets and lies work dramatically we need to add two things – i’ll call these Value and Damage . The Secret has to have Value and the Lie must cause Damage (or be capable of causing damage). This might otherwise be called dramatic stakes but thinking in these more specific terms of Value and Damage may help to make the ideas they embody more specifically targeted and tangibly useful for the writing process.

For a character’s Secret to have dramatic implications it must have Value, the knowledge they hold, or withhold, from other characters must be valuable and desirable and important. The more valuable the better, the more other characters want the secret or would be affected by the secret, the more dramatic pressure is applied to the character. What must also be remembered is that the value of a secret is in direct context of the story-world the narrative plays out in.

The more other characters want the secret
or would be affected by the secret,
the more dramatic pressure is applied to the character.

Thus, for example the location of the knock-list of secret agents is a very valuable secret for Ethan Hunt to hold in Mission Impossible, a secret with implications for international diplomacy. On a different scale altogether, but every bit as valuable in the context of the story, is Don Draper’s secret past and appropriated identity in Mad Men. This knowledge wont bring down governments but in the context of the Mad Men world the secret, none the less, has immense value in being kept or released.

photo credit: buckyishungry

In terms of Lies, it is Damage that becomes a crucial ingredient. If the lie can’t hurt anyone, if it has no fallout from being perpetuated, then it is dramatically un-useful. But if the Lie has the potential to cause damage, large scale damage commensurate with the story-world, then you will have armed your character and narrative with a potent subtext explosive. The more damage the lie can cause the more effective it will be. Of course by damage we don’t necessarily mean physical damage – though that may very well often be the case – but fallout damage in a wide variety of forms.

The more damage the lie can cause
the more effective it will be.

In Pixar’s Monsters Inc. for example the big lie is that children are utterly toxic and contact with them will kill and bring down the whole Monster World. The fallout damage for this lie is in fact positive rather than negative (the revelation that children are not toxic after all), but the damage is nonetheless big in scale as the revelation of the lie inverts the monster world and changes forever the characters in it.

Likewise, working at both personal and world scale, is the film Amadeus. The big lie maintained and perpetuated by Salieri is that Mozart’s music is mediocre and not worthy of the Emperor’s attention. The lie in this case for Salieri is to himself more than anyone else, when he in fact knows the truth of Mozart’s genius. The lie can and does inflict great damage – to the world by curtailing Mozart’s career and life, and to Salieri personally as he lives out his days in guilt and despair at his own mediocrity.

Practical Tools for Creating Subtext

What we can take away from these ideas and observations should be some very practical tools for writing character-drama; give your hero a big secret, your villain a big lie (or vise versa), arm each character with a secret to keep and a lie to tell – secrets and lies that have value and possibility for damage – and then throw events at the characters that force the secrets and lies out into the open… At the heart of all great screen drama are Big Secrets and Bold Lies – plotting therefore is the events you toss at the characters to bring out and confound their secrets and their lies.

-Mike Jones

(to be continued)

Mike Jones has a diverse background in screen media crossing writing, technical production and academic research.

He is an award winning teacher, author and currently lecturer in Screen Studies at the Australian Film TV and Radio School. www.mikejones.tv

The start of Act Two is a good place to move to the antagonist’s POV.

We have just seen that our protagonist is ready to take on the main mission of the film. He knows what he is up against, he may even have a plan on how to approach it.

At the beginning of Act Two, you can immediately increase the stakes by creating dramatic irony. You show the protagonist only knows half of the truth and the antagonist is really a lot more powerful and the protagonist may be missing a crucial piece of information.

The shift can happen to any other character, exceptionally even to an omniscient POV. But the most powerful and most frequently used POV outside the protagonist will be that of the antagonist.

Almost always does this increase the stakes as you show how well the villain is prepared, how much stronger this character is than we (and the protagonist) believed and what he/she is capable of.

One of my favourite Act Two opening scenes is in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Roger Thornhill has to clear his name of the UN murder and he must find out why he is being mistaken for the mysterious Mr. Roger Kaplan.

At the opening of Act Two we are in a boardroom full of unknown faces. The audience’s instinctive reaction will be to find a character to empathise with, to latch on to. None such in this scene.

This is the Secret Service, discussing a fictitious agent, created by them as a decoy for the spies. Now Roger Thornhill has been identified by the spies as this imaginary agent, the secret’s service’s plan works better than hoped for.

Not only do we now know Thornhill’s predicament, we also realise he cannot expect any support from the government as confirmed in the last line of the scene, spoken by one of the agents:

SECRET AGENT
Goodbye, Mr. Thornhill, wherever you are.

This scene shows how powerful a shift of POV can be to reveal an important piece of information the protagonist doesn’t have.

Another favorite example of dramatic irony created by a shifting point of view is taken from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and it constitutes the Mid Point Reversal.

McMurphy has just been on a fishing trip with his mates, sampling freedom outside the asylum.

The next scene shows the staff of the asylum discussing his fate, whether they should send him back to the work farm or keep him. McMurphy’s antagonist nurse Ratched drives the scene and the outcome is disastrous: he will stay in the asylum indefinitely.

See also:

Omniscient POV
Shifting POV
When to Shift?
POV in Ratatouille’s Deleted Scene
POV as Controller of Tone

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

It is a long, uninterrupted travel from a wide establishing shot of the Paris skyline down to street level, through the Auguste Gusteau restaurant and ending on a medium shot of Remi.

The shot could have been spectacular, reminding of the opening shot of TOUCH OF EVIL and its pastiche in THE PLAYER.

Brad Bird’s commentary talks about the reason why it was cut and it is simply: Point of View.

The natural question that would occur is “Why would you cut this spectacular shot?”, because it is obviously great. “I want to see that film!” Well, I feel that way, too.

The problem, once you get passed the initial sort of rush of seeing this very elaborate shot that shows you a lot of different things in one shot and very impressively, is that it is no character’s point of view.

It is just a sort of God-like shot where you’re presented this whole world and it is spectacular and there have been many fine shots like that – Touch of Evil being one – that were great but I felt that this is Remi’s movie and it needed to be Remi’s perspective.

And I want to know the emotions that lead up to Remi looking into the kitchen. I don’t just want it laid on a platter, you know, just cut to Darth going “You’re my son, Luke.”

We should be with Remi when he has that moment. We should know how he is experiencing it and what is he feeling when he is experiencing it. And you kind of aren’t, this way.

It did lay everything out, but I don’t think that it took the audience with it.

-Brad Bird

Brad Bird’s reasoning confirms what I have written about ‘omniscient POV’: it is weak, or worse, it doesn’t work.

Movies are inherently about empathising, even identifying with characters.

When you step out of the protagonist’s POV, it should be to shift to another POV, most often the antagonist’s, never to take an omniscient POV, because it is devoid of emotion.

One exception: you may use an omniscient POV to create dramatic irony, i.e. to reveal information the protagonist doesn’t know but which has an impact on his journey.

See also:

Introduction to POV
Omniscient POV
Shifting POV
When to Shift?
POV in Ratatouille’s Deleted Scene
POV as Controller of Tone

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Not all of these films are recent and audience’s expectation may have changed since these films were released. I believe that film goers have become more demanding in terms of structure. Some of the stories that worked then, would today be considered as structurally flawed.

Still, if you look at the protagonist’s journey, you will find that most – if not all – have a clear Inciting Incident, Act One Turning Point (Plot Point 1), Act Two Turning Point (PP2), Climax and Resolution.

In ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, the Inciting Incident is foreshadowed by presenting the antagonists before we meet our hero Bishop. The sheer violence of the gang puts their storyline on a collision course with Bishop. Right from the start, even before he realises (Dramatic Irony) it puts him in extreme jeopardy, which is an effective way to make an audience connect with the protagonist.

This movie written and directed by John Carpenter is not only very entertaining, it is structured around a powerful reversal. The first (outer) objective of Wilson is to keep the convicts inside the police station, thus protecting the outside world from them. At the mid point, this reverses completely: now he needs to protect the convicts from the gang assaulting the police station.

The structural breakdown was done in a single viewing, without going back to check and most likely I will be wrong here and there. Particularly the Inciting Incident doesn’t seem to be strong enough, nor is there any reluctance or clear plot point leading to the ‘crossing of the threshold’. See for yourself and try to improve my breakdown of this film’s structure.

ACT ONE

SEQ. A: BISHOP’S FIRST DAY: A DANGEROUS AREA
02.40 DI: Anderson, CAL, 3.10am: 6 gang members killed by police
04.30 Press conference: weapons missing, serious threat
05.00 DI: Three war lords become blood brothers, arsenal of weapons
06.00 (04.50): Bishop driving, gets supervising duty Prec.9,div.13

SEQ. B: BISHOP GOES TO ANDERSON
08.30 DI: (05.11): Napoleon Wilson, on death row
10.00 DI: Wilson & Co are being transported
12.30 (05.32): Bishop driving
13.00 DI: (05.37) Father & Daughter lost in Anderson
15.00 DI: Gang members driving in car with weapons
16.00 (05.49): Bishop arrives, deputy informs captain, coffee with Kathy
20.30 Captain briefs bishop: first day on the job.

ACT TWO

SEQ. C: GETTING READY FOR THE NIGHT, NEW TASK
22.30 DI: (06.18) Punk trains gun on people while driving; ice cream van.
24.30 DI: (06.41) Transport goes to Anderson, convict is sick
28.00 DI: Punk kills girl and ice cream man
32.30 Bishop puts up sign as bus arrives, convicts go in holding tanks

SEQ. D: THE CONVICTS BECOME ALLIES; STATION UNDER SIEGE
34.30 Wilson checks out Bishop, men check out Kathy.
36.00 DI: (07.00) Father kills murderer, escapes into Police station
38.30 Nobody in car park. Phone dead. Chaney leaves, power down.
40.30 Bishop goes out, is being shot at. Chaney is dead. Silencers.
41.30 Transport minders shot. Police station under siege.

SEQ. E: REVERSAL – KEEPING THE GANGSTERS OUT
45.00 Making plans: flares; waiting for help; gang army approaches
50.30 Marked for a siege. Do they want father of killed girl?
52.00 Gangsters start assault; move in; Wilson fights back, shoots.
54.30 Everybody helps holding the gangsters at bay; armed. Silence.

SEQ. F: STAYING ALIVE
57.00 Julie dead; barricading doors. Squad car here in 5mins (he hopes).
60.30 Explosives in basement; cars back, bodies gone. All in 30mins.
63.00 Not afraid to die: convict knows about ‘ciolo’ revenge; save ass (Wells)
65.00 Counting spare ammo. Wilson gets a cigaret from Kathy.

SEQ. G: GETTING OUT
66.00 Patrol car Unit 7 checking the area
67.30 (08.15): Basement solution – hotwire car.
70.00 Wells goes out: “I’m doomed.”
71.00 Someone will come. “A man with faith”. Wells’ mission fails.

ACT THREE

SEQ. H: SETTING UP A TRAP
74.30 Renewed attack: “out of luck”; basement
78.00 The explosives; patrol: nothing unusual, phone worker dead.
80.00 Molotov attack, invasion & explosion

SEQ. I: HELP ARRIVES
83.00 Police support: “Anybody’s got a smoke?”
84.00 Bishop defends Wilson

(DI: Dramatic Irony)

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Over thirty minutes into the movie, Redford’s character identifies himself suddenly as the new warden and announces in the same scene he wants to force through some serious reform.

Finally we have a 1st Act Turning Point.

But why was the warden’s identity hidden from the audience all along? Apart from a sudden surprise, it doesn’t add a thing. The use of dramatic irony (i.e.: the audience knows, but the other characters don’t) would have been much more powerful and it would have allowed for the badly needed character development.

Roger Ebert wrote:

“There’s no room for the spontaneity of real human personalities caught in real situations. That’s especially annoying with the character of Brubaker himself, played well but within a frustratingly narrow range by Robert Redford.”

Redford’s performance is rock solid given the material. BRUBAKER’s real problem is its flawed structure: half an hour into the movie, we have run out of screentime to sufficiently set up the protagonist’s character and potential internal conflicts. Redford didn’t have anything to work with, which makes Ebert’s comment rather unfair.

What the screenwriters did achieve quite well though, is the setup of antagonists and external obstacles in the way of the protagonist’s objective. Perhaps this explains why the film did work for me.

(originally published 06/05/2006, edited 31/10/2007)

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

In a specialised screenwriting magazine I read “omnipresent POV”(*). Both are plain wrong.

You’ve got to wonder: if they can’t even get the terminology right, there is reason to be concerned about their understanding of the concept.

The correct term is ‘omniscient’, and means ‘knowing everything’. It is the divine, ‘God’s eye’ perspective.

‘Omniscient POV’ in film means: a point of view outside any of the story’s characters. The audience knows and sees everything that is relevant to know about everybody in the story. Because film relies heavily on empathy with the characters, this is not a POV that would typically be taken throughout the story.

Although the technique sometimes works when told by a narrator and/or when a story is one long flashback, it is hardly ever used consistently throughout a film.

The fact that the term exists, doesn’t mean the technique is to be recommended in film.

The very nature of the omniscient POV goes against the essence of good screen drama, which is firmly grounded in strong emotional empathy with (an) individual character(s).

An omniscient POV suggests a certain distance from the characters, which is exactly what you don’t want. In my view, what most people mean by an omniscient POV is a shifting POV.

Frank Daniel used the term ‘dramatic irony‘, which makes more sense than the phrase ‘omniscient POV’. The irony lies in the fact that the audience knows something the protagonist doesn’t. And usually this information is crucial, it has a great impact on the protagonist’s journey.

The term dramatic irony is also consistent with the notion of ‘dramatic tension’, which is the foundation of all drama.

A great example of dramatic irony is used – and explained – in the movie STRANGER THAN FICTION when literature professor Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) elaborates on the phrase “Little did he know…”. Because the technique is used as an explicit plot device, the notion of ‘omniscient character’ gets definitely blurred.

Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) may be the writer of the Harold Crick’s (Will Ferrell) life, but is she therefore truly omniscient?

Not in this film…

See also:

Introduction to POV
Omniscient POV
Shifting POV
When to Shift?
POV in Ratatouille’s Deleted Scene
POV as Controller of Tone
Hitchcock and POV

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

Jim Mercurio makes the following point about Gaghan’s comments in the notorious CS podcast: “Gaghan’s comments are showing that he is evolving from a screenwriter into a filmmaker. “

With ‘filmmaker’, he undoubtedly means ‘director’ and with his quote he hits the nail on the head. However, Mercurio makes it sound as if this is a natural evolution, when he goes on to explain how his own latest script too is told with transitions. All of a sudden Gaghan is fashionable, and screenwriters are re-inventing Tolstoy. Now let’s not forget the following facts:

1. Tolstoy was a novelist
2. Gaghan is NOT a meanstream screenwriter
3. Transitions do not stand in the way of proper story structuring

What everybody seems to be missing in this discussion is that transitions play on a shot level, or at best on a scene level. Story structure goes way beyond that. Whatever Mercurio may think, a screenplay written solely from transitions will most likely end up in the same tiny niche market as KOYAANISQATSI.

DVD: THE MANN SPEAKS

The same day I stumbled on the discussion above, I heard writer/director Michael Mann’s commentary on the Restored Director’s Cut of MANHUNTER.

Mann’s comments focus mainly on the parallel psychology of the serial murderer and the cop, besides a few killer anecdotes about production nightmares. My favourite: the airplane scene with the little girl freaking out over Will Graham’s bloody crime scene photos. The only way to shoot this was to book the entire film crew on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Orlando without informing the airline of their plans, keeping all equipment as hand luggage. Mid flight suddenly these hundred or so people got out of their seats and started filming. No need to say that Mann could kiss his United air miles goodbye.

But let’s skip to the last few minutes of the commentary in which Michael Mann summarises his approach to filmmaking. “Film is made in the editing room. In the writing and in the director’s preparation you’re planning what you’re gonna do in the editing room.” He then refers to the Russian theory of montage from the 1920’s, which was followed by the Brits in the next decade (and used later to great commercial success by Alfred Hitchcock a.o.).

I don’t want to get too theoretical here, but anybody with a real interest in the effect of montage, should really do some reading on Lev Kuleshov and what is still known as the Kuleshov Effect. Using this, I could easily build a case to prove that transitions are structure. I’ll spare you that one for now. But isn’t it remarkable that seventy years apart, two Russians were telling the world about transitions in their respective art forms?

To conclude: Mercurio is right when he says that Gaghan writes like a filmmaker. Like Michael Mann, he is already thinking of what he will do in the editing room and therefore writes his story from scene transitions rather than starting from an overall dramatic arc. This approach to script writing is indeed in many ways similar to that of Hitchcock or Mann but I am sure those last two went through far less drafts than Gaghan.

BTW: Don’t rush out to get Manhunter from HMV or Amazon.com: unfortunately Mann’s commentary only features on a rare DVD which has been out of print for a while, which limits your options largely to eBay. But as a bonus from OZZYWOOD, you can download the last four minutes of Michael Mann’s director’s commentary here.

LOOSE ENDS: The First Act Monolith

Recently I watched BRUBAKER, not knowing anything about this 1980 drama directed by Stuart Rosenberg. If you haven’t seen the film but are planning to do so in the near future, don’t read on as I will spoil the pleasure (and surprise).

The film strays from the traditional structure mainly because of its offbeat First Act. For the life of me, I could not detect an Inciting Incident, nor any significant protagonist characterisation. Instead we witness from Robert Redford’s detainee character’s POV how the most appalling injustice and brutality is inflicted relentlessly upon the inmates.

Over thirty minutes into the movie, Redford’s character identifies himself as the new warden and announces in the same scene that he wants to force through some serious reform. Finally we have our 1st Act Turning Point. I am still trying to understand why the warden’s identity was kept hidden from the audience all along. Apart from a sudden surprise, it doesn’t add a thing. The use of dramatic irony (i.e.: the audience knows, but the other characters don’t) would have been much more powerful and it would have allowed for the badly needed character development.

Leading US critic Roger Ebert wrote about this film: “There’s no room for the spontaneity of real human personalities caught in real situations. That’s especially annoying with the character of Brubaker himself, played well but within a frustratingly narrow range by Robert Redford. “

Redford’s performance is rock solid given the material. BRUBAKER’s real problem is its flawed structure: half an hour into the movie, we have run out of screentime to sufficiently set up the protagonist’s character and potential internal conflicts. Redford didn’t have anything to work with, which makes Ebert’s comment rather unfair.

What the screenwriters did achieve quite well though, is the setup of antagonists and external obstacles in the way of the protagonist’s objective. Perhaps this explains why the film did work for me.

It still beats me though why BRUBAKER was nominated for Best Screenplay back in 1980. Perhaps it was a fluke. In my view, this theory gains strength when we look at co-writer W.D. Richter’s latest work: STEALTH…

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!