Just as you should fully acquaint yourself
with the English language
if you wish to be a writer of any description
if you should find yourself writing for the screen
whether that be cinema or television
I would advise that you acquaint yourself
with cinematic language.
The way that you do this
is to study the great directors.
People like Orson Welles, people like Jean Cocteau
people like Alfred Hitchcock
and dozens of others
who can probably all teach you something
and look at the way that they do things.
Look at the way that they set up scenes.
Look at the way that they get their dramatic effects.
You will find that if you start looking at films in this way
erm, yes, you'll perhaps find yourself a little bit distant
just as you do with looking at books as a writer.
But you will also find that you're noticing a lot of things
that you didn't notice before.
And, importantly
however well you think you are viewing a film
it wouldn't hurt
to absorb a few intelligent books of film criticism.
I remember that when I was starting to work for comics
I was thinking that if I'm going to be working
in any kind of visual narrative medium
it would probably be wise to have a look
at a few books about the great filmmakers.
I remember reading François Truffaut's book
about Alfred Hitchcock
and that was a revelation.
He was explaining, shot by shot
how Hitchcock had achieved his effects
in films like Psycho.
I remember the scene in that where one of the detectives
is thinking that there might be something unusual
on the upper floor of the Bates Motel
and the first shot
is the detective looking up the stairway.
And it's a low-angled shot, looking up
which means that what you are looking up at
is placed in a position of power.
It's just because if you're looking up at somebody
they are in a position of power, psychologically, over you
um, so in that instance
it was to increase the audience's sense of tension
because the detective's obviously thinking about
going up the stairs
but in the darkness at the top of the stairs
we don't know what's there
but we feel it's in a position of power
because that is the way that the image is set up.
When the detective starts to climb the stairs
it suddenly switches to an overhead shot.
Now, the effect of the overhead shot
is that you are in the position of power
but you are helpless to intervene.
So, you are placed in a back seat to the action
where whatever happens, you are trapped looking at it
from this position.
That is the exact point at which the...
apparently crazy old lady that we later find to be
Norman Bates himself
comes running out of the landing
and stabs the detective to death
while we look on helplessly.
This is a way that the angle at which you look at something
will affect the psychological mood
of the shot.
This is something that I've learned a great deal about
when it came to writing for comics.
Er, because, yeah, it's the same principles.
Every angle has got a certain psychological meaning
even if it's a fairly neutral one.
So, yes, read great books about film criticism
to acquaint yourself with the language of cinema
before you even start your first screenplay
I would advise.
Erm...
There are some very interesting books out there
that can be very helpful.
One that I read when I was working on the film
Fashion Beast
with Malcolm McLaren
for which I produced the screenplay.
Malcolm McLaren liked it
but, erm, the funding fell apart
I believe, due to the death of one of the producers.
It was later realised as a comic book.
But while I was doing that
I remember that, er...
Malcolm McLaren gave me a copy
of the book on screenwriting
by Syd Field...
and that is wonderful advice
for any kind of writing
but particularly for screenwriting.
I remember, one of the most important lessons in it
in the early chapters
was saying that, er, OK...
You've got to begin your first screenplay.
Er, this is the day
that you've decided that you're going to do it.
You will notice
that your office space is a bit untidy.
Erm, some of those pencils could do with sharpening.
Erm, you will perhaps start to tidy your office space
because, you know, that will give you an orderly mind
as you rationalise it
before you start your screenplay.
And then you'll notice that perhaps you've run out
of some sort of vital office supply.
You're probably thinking about it
and best pop into town and perhaps visit a stationer's
make sure you're properly stocked up.
OK, by the time you get back
it's about half-past three in the afternoon.
You don't really want to start something
if you're going to be knocking off for the evening soon
so probably best to leave it until tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning, something else will happen.
You'll notice something else.
You'll decide that you'd better read your research books again.
This is just, er, ordinary avoidance.
Erm, everybody does it.
You have got a job to do that's really important
and on one level you're excited about it
but you're also a bit apprehensive
so you avoid it.
There's nothing wrong with this.
All you have to do, in my case
when I've been avoiding things for about three days
then my working-class guilt
will overwhelm me
and I'll realise what a wretched procrastinator I am
and have always been.
And, at that point, when I can no longer bear myself
I will get my arse onto the chair.
This is actually the biggest problem
in any field of art.
Getting your arse onto the chair.
If you can do that
then the rest of it will be a breeze.
But, yeah, we procrastinate.
So, understand what you're doing.
Think, "Right, I'm procrastinating.
I'm going to do it for as long as I need to
and then I'm going to start work".
You will find the same problem
at the end of the screenwriting process
according to Syd Field.
You've been living with this project
for months by that point, possibly.
And so it's a big part of your life.
What's your life going to be like
when you're not doing the project anymore?
So you'll find that as you approach the final scenes
you'll realise that one of the earlier scenes
you could probably go back and correct it...
or something else
that will avoid writing that final scene.
We procrastinate at both ends of a project.
Just know what you're doing
know that you're procrastinating
and then get over it.
Erm...
Syd Field was also, as I mentioned earlier
the exponent of the simple three-act screenplay.
Where you spend the first third of it
the beginning
in establishing all your characters
the environment that they're in
the situations that they're in
until the viewer has got a fairly good idea
of what kind of story this is going to be
and a possible structure.
Some of the viewers might be even trying to guess the ending
because that's what we do as viewers.
So, that is the first third.
The second third, the second act
will be, erm, pursuing the same ideas
that were set up in the opening
but will bring them to a surprising conclusion
that completely redefines what people have understood
from the film so far.
It completely redefines
what they were expecting as an ending.
And, then the third act, this will propel...
this sudden surprise twist
at the end of the second act
will propel the action to a startling climax
at the end of the third act.
And if you watch films, you'll be surprised
at how often this is applied.
And notice about a third of the way through the film...
"Yes, we've got everything set up."
And notice when the big twist occurs.
I mean, these things don't all have to be the same length.
You know, you can have
a huge first part
a tiny middle part, a huge end part
or whatever seems to be most dramatically suitable...
but in an awful lot of the films and dramas that you see, you...
if you've got a clock on hand
you will notice that about a third of the way through
and about two-thirds of the way through
you're going to get the major plot points.
So, yeah, in terms of structuring your screenplay
that would be a very, very useful book to read.
Erm...
Things about pacing.
Er, these are things that, as we were saying earlier
that you can...
you can learn and absorb a sense of timing
and you will think of ways to speed the film up.
"Do we really need this bit?"
"Do we really need this exposition?"
"Would it be better to perhaps show this in a brief scene
rather than having somebody explaining it?"
"What would speed up the film?"
"What would give it more pace?"
"What would keep the audience's attention more easily?"
So, there's all of those sorts of considerations, as well.
Now, this is generally the case
that the writer is not
at the start of the movie process.
The movie that I've just done
I am at the start of the writing process.
That's why I've done the movie.
Er...
But, normally, you are not going to be in those circumstances.
You're going to be writing to a brief
and...
the writer will...
Your script may very well be re-written by other writers.
Erm, I... HE CHUCKLES
I heard from my friend, the writer Iain Sinclair
to my mind, possibly the finest writer in the English language
at present.
But, er, he...
when he was at university
was approached by somebody who had the rights
to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian
and, erm, Iain...
interested in perhaps writing a screenplay
was commissioned to write a screenplay.
Erm, he...
sort of bolted something together in a few weeks
and nothing was ever heard of the project again.
Years later, when Iain happened to see
the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Conan the Barbarian...
decades later
er, he noticed
in the initial opening dialogue around the campfire
that there were still scraps of his dialogue
actually in Conan the Barbarian.
This is the way that screenwriting can sometimes work
with scripts being re-edited, fixed, fixed again
because the first fix didn't really work.
These are things that you will perhaps have to endure
and that you should bear in mind
and that, I think, unfortunately
the status of writers in films can be very, very low
and that's not special pleading
on behalf of writers.
I believe that if films
commenced with a good screenplay
that there would be a lot more really good films around.
Moving on, perhaps, to television.
Er, that is something that I have less experience of
although I did write a projected
five-season television series
er, which will probably almost certainly never be made.
But it did give me some kind of idea
as to how you should lay these things out.
And foremost amongst these things
was that in this projected
five-season television series that I was laying out
I knew what the last shot
in the last episode of the last season
was going to be.
In fact, I'd known that
since before I'd started the five short films
and the feature film
that the television series would have been a continuation of.
I knew the ending before I started.
And I can't underline how important this is.
I do see an awful lot of programs
I've bought a couple of boxed sets
where I've given up on them
because it's become apparent at one point
during the narrative
that the writers are kind of...
They'd put a pitch in
that gave a rough outline of the story
but largely they're making it up as they go along.
Er, they haven't decided upon an ending.
They'll see what the audience response is like.
And so you get shapeless narrative drift
which is a terrible experience
for both the writer and for the viewer
to have spent
Lord knows how many hours of your life
pursuing a sequence of boxed sets
and to find at the end
that the narrative wasn't really going anywhere
that there wasn't any meaningful conclusion to it
that the story just kind of stopped.
Er, no, if you want to write for any medium
then, certainly, know your ending first.
That is important for every medium
but especially in something as long-form...
as television.
It is vitally important.
One thing that will greatly aid
any screenplay that you're writing...
will aid any film
is continuous, resonant dialogue
no throwaway lines that you haven't bothered with.
Erm, keep the dialogue sparkling
all the way through
and then, in those parts of the film
where there isn't much narrative action
where the viewer can see what is happening
without dialogue
in those other parts of the film
you will keep the reader's attention.
Almost like every conversation gets structured
in the same way as a joke is structured, almost...
that you will have it building up to a punchline.
Now, that can be a dramatic punchline
or it can be an amusing punchline.
Often it can be both at once.
Erm, you can get an awful lot of plot information
into an amusing dialogue
which is when you have to do exponential dialogue
it's important not to make it sound
like exponential dialogue.
Never have one character say to another
"As you know..."
and then explain the plot of the film.
Now, that is exponential dialogue at its worst.
That's where you're just putting in
a big caption, almost
into the mouths of one of the characters.
So, you will have to explain plot points
but always do it in a memorably amusing way
or a memorably dramatic way
so that you don't waste any of the opportunities
that a line would offer you.
A lot of these lines are going to get cut
so make sure they're all good.
In fact, that's a useful technique, as well.
Yeah, overdo it in terms of the quality of these things.
That was an anecdote that I heard about Orson Welles.
That when he was making
his most famous film, Citizen Kane
he was determined to make this a perfect film
with a perfect screenplay
so he wrote an extra scene
where Charles Kane is visiting a brothel.
And it was beautifully written
er, it was beautifully imagined
scene by scene, shot by shot.
And the producers said
"This is a fantastic, fantastic film, Orson.
This is going to be so terrific.
Oh, I'm really sorry, but we're going to have to lose
the scene in the brothel."
And Orson Welles said, "Oh, I'm really disappointed.
Oh, that's terrible
but I suppose I'll just have to get on with it."
Now, he never intended the brothel scene to be in.
He knew that the studio would have to cut something
just to say, "We're a studio. We cut things".
So he'd written a whole extra scene
and written it perfectly
just so the studio would have something to cut.
This is the importance of paying attention
and trying to do as good a job with every aspect
of what you're writing as you can.
And that is nowhere more true than in the dialogue.
You should be able to...
identify your characters by their dialogue.
Er, even if they are not on screen
they should, and everything about their dialogue
will be actually expounding their character.
This is an important thing in writing any kind of dialogue.
Think about who's saying it.
So, in delivering a piece of information in the dialogue
is there any way that you can deliver it
so that it'll reveal a little bit more
about the person who's saying it?
This will help to fill out their characters
even if they're incidental characters.
With a bit of good dialogue
they will be immensely memorable.
So, dialogue is certainly a thing that we need
to pay intense attention to.
Now, when it comes to cutting in film
this is very much...
part of the editor's art
and since working in film a little bit
I have gained a great deal of respect
for a good editor.
Er, in some ways, the editor
is actually the author of the film.
I have heard...
My friend, the editor Colin Goudie
has told me about films that he's worked on
where you've got lots of magnificent footage
erm, wonderful performances
er, but the performances are improvised
and so it is left to the editor
to actually compose the story
to compose the narrative
out of a mass of filmed material.
So, the editor will be depending
upon his or her instincts
for the elegant cut
the way that, erm, jumping straight from one scene
to another, erm, you can...
it can be a very amusing reaction
because you can juxtapose,
perhaps a terribly violent scene
with something that is really placid.
I remember, the great director Nicolas Roeg
in his film Don't Look Now
which is a very, very scary film
but when he had the love scene
between the married couple at the centre of the story
he did some very, very interesting things
with the cutting.
He cut straight from the sex scene itself
to them getting dressed afterwards
and getting ready to go out
and then he'd cut back to the sex scene
then he'd cut back to them getting dressed afterwards
and the unbridled passion of the sex scene
is contrasted with the slight formality
of getting ready to go out
and it's wonderful. It's sort of...
It says something about how human beings behave
and that is all done
in this clever inter-cutting.
So, it's certainly worth thinking about that
in terms of...
Alright, maybe you can leave it to a smart enough director
but as somebody who's always
tried to at least make helpful suggestions
as to if I've got a good idea for a shot or a scene
it is my instinct to put it in there
in case it is helpful for the director.
That's perhaps not a bad practice to fall into.
And, er, yes, so...
think about the way that this narrative
is actually going to go together
with all of this elegant cutting.