Mamet: “Dumbo is an example of a perfect movie. Cartoons are ... much better to watch, for people who want to direct, than movies. In the old cartoons, the artists realized the essence of the theory of montage ... Everything was based on the imagination. The shot we see in the film is the shot the artist saw in his imagination. So, if you watch cartoons, you can learn a great deal about how to choose shots, how to tell the story in pictures, and how to cut.” (p. 80)
Search The Internet Movie Database Enter the name of a movie, TV show, or person and then
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Part One eats at least a month of the class time, even if we do not use all the scripts and script ideas for the shooting in class. In Stage Directing I assign the scenes and we can get to the directing issues right away, but how to do it in film directing class without losing the heart of the filmmaking? Besides, what's the point to teach directing without teaching how to recognize (make) good script?
For the basics of the dramatic composition see 200X files
Some samples (my students): Kyle (screenplay formats)
facts: The script of Pulp Fiction, for example, sold over 50,000 copies.
INITIAL OUTLINE: Write an initial scene-by-scene outline of your story. Describe the action and characters briefly. (This is an exercise more for you than other readers) Look at the flow of action. Evaluate what additional scenes you might need by each ACT.
TREATMENT EXERCISE: You are to write a minimum 4 page narrative prose treatment for a feature-length screenplay. Follow Field's suggestions for describing the action of your screenplay by each act (see p.51). Identify the narrative actions that would serve as the "plot points" or turning points for ACT I and II.
STEP OUTLINE: Expand your initial outline and treatment. Number each scene an use sluglines (INT-HOUSE-DAY). Describe the action for each scene.
Mindstar has released a free script writing software package. The Cinergy Script Editor is available as a standalone program, or built-in to the larger Cinergy Motion Picture Production System. The script editor creates industry standard formatting for motion picture scripts. Scripts created with the Cinergy Script Editor are immediately compatible with the production management features of Cinergy Version 5. The free download at cinergy
Сценарий, по существу, есть не оформление материала, а стадия состояния материала на путях между темпераментной концепцией выбранной темы и ее оптическим воплощением.
Сценарий не драма. Драма - самостоятельная ценность и вне ее действенного театрального оформления.
Сценарий же - это только стенограмма эмоционального порыва, стремящегося воплотиться в нагромождение зрительных образов.
Сценарий - это колодка, удерживающая форму ботинка на время, пока в него не вступит живая нога.
Сценарий - это бутылка, нужная только для того, чтобы взорваться пробке и пеной хлынуть темпераменту вина в жадные глотки воспринимающих.
Сценарий - это шифр. Шифр, передаваемый одним темпераментом - другому.
Соавтор своими средствами запечатлевает в сценарии ритм своей концепции. Приходит режиссер и переводит ритм этой концепция на свой язык, на киноязык; находит кинематографический эквивалент литературному высказыванию. В этом корень дела. А вовсе не в переложении в цепь картин, анекдотической цепи событий сценария.
Иногда нам чисто литературная расстановка слов в сценарии значит больше, чем дотошное протоколирование выражения лиц протоколистом. "В воздухе повисла мертвая тишина". Что в этом выражении общего с конкретной осязаемостью зрительного явления? Где крюк в том воздухе, на который надлежит повесить тишину? А между тем это - фраза, вернее, старания экранно воплотить эту фразу. [...] Сценарий ставит эмоциональные требования. Его зрительное разрешение дает режиссер. И сценарист вправе ставить его своим языком. Ибо, чем полнее будет выражено его намерение, тем более совершенным будет словесное обозначение. [ Eisenstein ] (translation?)
screen:
stage:
sourcebook:
first play:
television:
about film:
story:
formats:
selling:
Two script samples (left) = see forms directory @ film.vtheatre.net
It starts with the writer--it's a familiar dictum, but somehow it keeps getting forgotten along the way. No film-maker, irrespective of his electronic bag of tricks, can ever afford to forget his commitment to the written word. ~ Steven Spielberg
I have to make "the cycles of making films" more transparent; after the scripting, comes part 2 -- Preproduction (do not go for it, if you do not have a script ready, only REWRITES are for preproduction).
Let me say it again: thinking about YOUR film takes years!
Script Evaluation Card:
Excellent
Good
Average
Fair
Poor
Originality
Plot and Plausibility
Structure and Pacing
Characters
Format
Writing Style
Dialogue
Marketability
Questions
What is so special about the concept of the film v. play or short-story?
A P O C A L Y P S E N O W
Original screenplay by John Milius.
Inspired by Joseph Conrad's "HEART OF DARKNESS".
This draft by Francis Ford Coppola.
December 3, 1975.
This is an early version of the screenplay. It's quite
different from the final version but very interesting
anyway. It includes f ex The French plantation
scene, which was actually filmed, but later cut
from the movie.
1 PRIMEVAL SWAMP - EARLY DAWN
It is very early in the dawn - blue light filters through
the jungle and across a foul swamp. A mist clings to the
trees. This could be the jungle of a million years ago.
Our VIEW MOVES CLOSER, through the mist, TILTING DOWN to
the tepid water. A small bubble rises to the surface;
then another. Suddenly, but quietly, a form begins to
emerge; a helmet. Water and mud pour off revealing a set
of beady eyes just above the mud. Printed on a helmet,
in a psychedelic hand, are the words: "Gook Killer."
The head emerges revealing that the tough-looking soldier
beneath has exceptionally long hair and beard; he has no
shirt on, only bandoliers of ammunition - his body is
painted in an odd camouflage pattern. He looks to the
right; he looks to the left; he looks INTO CAMERA, and
slowly sinks back into the swamp, disapperaring completely.
Our VIEW HOLDS, We begin to HEAR natural, though
unrecognizable JUNGLE SOUNDS, far off in the distance.
We PAN TO REVEAL a clump of logs half submerged in the
swamp; and part of what seems to be a Falstaff beer can
in the mud. A hand reaches out, and the beer can disappears.
As we TILT UP, we NOTICE that the log is hollow
and houses the rear of a M-60 machine gun, hand painted
in a paisley design.
Now the VIEW MOVES AWAY, ACROSS the ancient growth, PAST
the glimmer of what seems to be another soldier hiding in
ambush, wearing an exotic hat made from birds and bushes.
ACROSS to a dark trail where the legs of those in black
pajamas move silently across our ever TIGHTENING VIEW.
Their feet, boots and sandals leave no impression; make
no sound. A slight flicker of light reveals a pair of
eyes in the foliage across the path, waiting and watching.
The VIEW PUSHES ALONG WITH the Vietnamese, MOVING FASTER
AND FASTER WITH them, until suddenly, directly in front
about ten feet away, an enormous AMERICAN clad in rags
and bushes and holding a 12 gauge automatic shotgun
casually at his side, steps in front of them. He smiles
laconically, and BLASTS OUT FIVE SHOTS that rip THROUGH
US. By the second shot, the whole jungle blazes out
with AUTOMATIC FIRE.
Out VIEW TURNS as the men around us are thrown and torn,
screaming and scattering into the jungle. More AMERICANS
appear; unexplainably, out of the growth. It is now that
we fully SEE the bizarre manner in which they are dressed.
Some wear helmets, others wear strange hats made from
feathers and parts of animals. Some of them have long
savage-looking hair; other crew-cut or completely shaved;
they wear bandoliers, flak jackets, shorts and little else.
They wear Montagnard sandals or no shoes at all, and their
bodies and faces are painted in bizarre camouflage patterns.
They appear one with the jungle and mist, FIRING INTO US
as they move.
The soldier we saw earlier emerges from the swamp, dripping
mud, his MACHINE GUN BLASTING FIRE.
We begin to move quickly with one Vietnamese, breathlessly
running for his life; we MOVE INTO the jungle with him,
only to be impaled on a large spear of a smiling AMERICAN
painted and wearing feathers like an Indian. OUR VIEW
FALLS WITH him to the ground, STARING UPWARDS, as FLAME
and EXPLODING MUD scatter above us. Men scream and die
around us. The screams amid the GUNFIRE and EXPLOSIONS
are piercing and terrible, as though the jungle itself is
frightened.
An AMERICAN wearing a jungle hat with a large Peace Sign
on it, wearing war paint, bends TOWARD US, reaching down
TOWARD US with a large knife, preparing to scalp the
dead.
OUR VIEW MOVES AWAY, along with the running sandals of a
Vietnamese soldier, MOVING FASTER AND FASTER, only to be
stopped by still another of the savage-looking AMERICANS
with primitive ornamentation, wearing only a loin-cloth
and green beret. He opens his flame-thrower directly ON US
and the NVA soldier and we are incinerated in flame,
bright psychedelic orange-red flame. Outrageous, loud,
electric ROCK MUSIC OVERWHELMS the SOUNDTRACK :
MAIN TITLE : APOCALYPSE NOW
The story is set in Texas just
before the First World War
CAST OF CHARACTERS
BILL: A young man from Chicago following the harvest.
ABBY: The beautiful young woman he loves.
CHUCK: The owner of a vast wheat ranch (“bonanza”) in the Texas Panhandle.
URSULA: Abby’s younger sister, a reckless child of 14.
BENSON: The bonanza foreman, an enemy of the newcomers.
MISS CARTER: Chief domestic at the Belvedere, Chuck’s home.
McLEAN: Chuck’s accountant.
GEORGE: A young pilot who interests Ursula.
A PREACHER, A DOCTOR, AN ORGANIST, VARIOUS HARVEST HANDS, LAWMEN, VAUDEVILLIANS, etc.
“Troops of nomads swept over the country at harvest time like a visitation of locusts, reckless young fellows, handsome, profane, licentious, given to drink, powerful but inconstant workmen, quarrelsome and difficult to manage at all times. They came in the season when work was plenty and wages high. They dressed well, in their own peculiar fashion, and made much of their freedom to come and go.”
“They told of the city, and sinister and poisonous jungles all cities seemed in their stories. They were scarred with battles. They came from the far-away and unknown, and passed on to the north, mysterious as the flight of locusts, leaving the people of Sun Prairie quite as ignorant of their real names and characters as upon the first day of their coming.”
