By Elliot Grove
Showing posts with label Elliot Grove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elliot Grove. Show all posts
9 Routes to Breaking in as a Film Director
18 Tricks of Description
1. Write action, not description
Don’t think of writing description, think of writing action – movement. Describing an inanimate object is boring to write and boring to read. And especially boring to the reader with the chequebook!
Remember, your job is to inspire the entire cast and crew. One of the key people on the crew who has to visualize your script is the Production Designer. It is the Production Designer’s job to create the actual sets you have described. Sometimes the log line of the scene will do it:
INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE – DAY
Aside: Most screenplays are static and the scenes do not flow. Writing movement into a scene makes your script more interesting to read, immediately distinguishing it from ninety-fine percent of all the other screenplays in circulation.
From this simple line, the Production Designer will know to create a room with desks, telephones, and computers. The Props master will add further details, like the clutter and knick-knacks. Here is where you, as a writer with the biblical quote, can use your creativity to inspire.
It is not your job to describe the clutter, the furniture, and knick-knacks, unless required by the plot.
If the slug line says INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE – DAY the reader will imagine desks and office furniture. You do not need to mention them.
If the slug line doesn’t convey all of the information necessary, then you need to add some simple description.
INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE - DAY.
A puddle of water is growing in the middle of the floor.
Now we have some important information we need about start to get a more detailed picture of the set, but it is still openambiguous enough to allow for the collaboration of the Production Designer and Props Master.
Once you have all the necessary description of the scene, you move on to action. You are still writing description, but you are creating pictures with movement in them – your characters and objects moving in their world. By creating movement you will also enable the reader to visualise the scene. GettingAchieving visualization in your reader to visualise will enable himthem to seewatch your movie playing in his head.
You aren’t describing things, you are describing things happening. When we use our words to paint pictures, we are painting moving pictures – and that is interesting to a reader. Which means that you have a better chance of selling your script.
Hint: Action is the element between patches of dialogue.
2. Attention to details
There are times when INT: RAINDANCE – DAY is too general and tic. The reader needs additional information. The trick is not to bore the reader by completely describing the setting. This could lead you to an overwritten scene – one of the fatal flaws of scene writing (see overwriting below). Instead, find the one (or two) details that give us clues, and let the reader’s imagination fill in the rest.
INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE – DAY
Files and half empty coffee cups litter the room.
Or
INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE – DAY
A lonely paperclip partners a vase of flowers on the boardroom table.
These are two very different offices. How is the first office different from the second? Imagine yourself as a Production Designer. What sort of table lamp would you use in the first place? How would that differ from a lamp in the second office? The carpet is different, the curtains are different, the pictures thumb- tacked to the wall in the first are very different from the lithos and expensively framed posters in the second.
Hint: Carefully select a detail which implies other details. Try to distil the entire situation. Then you can also sum up an entire room in one short sentence whilech giving clues to also explains character as well. Notice how there are two very different Elliot’s n the following two scenes.
3. Paint movement
If you describe people and objects as moving pictures, you can hide the descriptive passages within the action and, within the movement.
Instead of a boring, static still life, you give the reader the excitement of action. You can hide the description within the action.
INT: RAINDANCE OFFICE – DAY
ELLIOT slumps amongst the cluttered files and trash.
The reader is focusing on Elliot, and doesn’t even notice that you wroite the description of the office. No static words in this scene – just movement.
Hint: Good descriptive writing does three things at once: – it shows things happening, describes the location, and illuminates character.
4. High school English
Readers in the industry are accustomed to an easy read. The language used is of the same level as in a high school English essay. Avoid complicated words and convoluted descriptive passages.
5. Maximize your vocabulary
The key to economical and dynamic writing is word choice.
During your first draft, you may write a dozen words to explain a situation. Later, you may hone it down to one or two words that explain exactly what you mean. You have hit two birds with one stone: – you create quick, easy-to-read sentences coupled with greater impact than your puffed-out original.
6. Avoid wimpy verbs
Elliot walks into the room.
Walks is not specific. Walks is too general. How many words can you think of for the word walk? Does Elliot limp in, stride in, jump in, sneak in, jog in, slide in?
If Elliot saunters in, strides in, struts in, strolls in, marches in, paces in, or bounces in, not only does this give us a specific type of walk, but adds to the action and character while removing clichéd words from your script.
7. Classified ad
Screenwriting is a very pared down and sparse art form. The challenge for a writer is to create the greatest possible impact with the fewest possible words. A novelist can spend pages and chapters describing the minutest of details. A screenwriter has just ninety to one hundred and twenty pages to get a complete story across.
Hint: Economy is the creative challenge.
Economy is not only the most important part of a screenwriter’s job, it is the most difficult to learn.
How do you learn lean, compact and dynamic writing?
One of my tasks at Raindance is to write copy for the various ads we use to promote the film festival. As you know, newspapers charge by the word. A good trick when you start to write a scene is to imagine that you are writing a classified ad for a newspaper, and that you only have a limited budget – say $10. This particular newspaper charges 0.75 per word. Try to see if you can describe the scene and leave yourself enough change to buy yourself a coffee! While writing or rewriting, I will take apart every single sentence and try to find a bolder, fresher, quicker way of saying the same thing. In a first draft, I might have six or seven words that end up being replaced by one. I try to recognize every time I have used unnecessary words or am beating around the bush. You will learn how to get directly to the point.
Try to write the scene description like you are writing a classified ad.
Hint: Scene writing is like writing a haiku where you have a very limited number of words. Try to use words that imply other words.
8. Find the emotion
Don’t describe how something looks, but how it feels. The Production Designer will decide how the set looks, the Casting Director decides on how each character will look.
The writer describes the attitude of the scene, the feel, and the emotion.
One of my favourite writers, William C. Martell, writes dynamic description filled that seeps with emotional resonance. Consider the opening of Hard Return:
EXT: URBAN JUNGLE, 2019 AD – EVENING
The wreckage of civilization. Crumbled buildings, burned out cars, streets pockmarked by war. Downed power lines arc and spark on the street.
This place makes Hell look like Beverly Hills…
Except the battered twisted metal sign reads BEVERLY HILLS.
Night is falling. Fingers of shadow reaching out to grab anyone foolish enough to be in this part of town.
The only time the future is mentioned is in the slug line. Every other word in this scene describes how the future, this scene, feels: frightening, ugly, and dangerous.
Did theyour skin on the back of your head crawl when you read this? Did you get a visual image of the scene? If you were the Production Designer, how many different possibilities would you have in order to recreate this scene?
Suppose you were an actor who had to walk down the street? How would you do it?
The Zero Budget Movie
Source: Elliot Grove, Raindance Founder
Learn how to make a movie as a producer on a lo-to-no budget.
This quick piece highlights just some of the areas money can be pinched and still produce a quality film. Raindance Film Festival website is full of tips just like this one.
Learn how to make a movie as a producer on a lo-to-no budget.
This quick piece highlights just some of the areas money can be pinched and still produce a quality film. Raindance Film Festival website is full of tips just like this one.
A-Z of Independent Film
By Elliot Grove
A is for Actor
...the most exploited component of an independent film. Usually actors work free in a feature film hoping that they will be discovered and be able to launch their careers. Often, independent filmmakers will hire a name actor for a day or tow on the set in a cameo role hoping that the 'name' will help to pull in investors and enhance sales. In America, the actors on low budget independent features are called 'the moveable props' in deference to their abundant supply.
In the USA, actors are represented by SAG, and in the UK by Equity.
B is for Blonde
... the nickname for a 2k portable light that can be plugged into household current. A 750 watt light is called a redhead. These lights are considered the staple of independent filmmakers. Thus the phrase: I'm shooting with a blonde and two redheads. This equipment can be packed in a small case and easily transported with a camera in the back of a taxi.
At Raindance we have a great evening course called the Power of Lighting in which simple three point lighting is explained.
BIFA: Acronym for the British Independent Film Awards, the only awards specifically for independently produced film in Europe.
Not to be confused with Biffa - the London-based waste-disposal company.
B is for Budget - uuaully the first thing you get asked when you are trying to drum up interest in your film.
C is for Culture Jamming
...a publicity technique employed by many independent filmmakers as a way to enhance scanty marketing budgets by associating themselves (uninvited) with successful brands, or by courting controversy.
Camera is used for image capture. Independent filmmakers chose the right camera for the story and the budget. Rentals can vary from £50 per day for a near broadcast quality DV camera to £10,000 per day for a large 35mm kit with track, dolly and lenses.
Film cameras are defined by the width (gauge) of the film stock: 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and 70mm. Specialty gauges are super 8mm, super 16mm, and super 35mm. Imax cameras take 70mm film sideways to allow for a 135mm x 70mm frame.
Tape formats are VHS, Super VHS, Beta, Digibeta, Mini DV, DVCAM, DVPro and HDTV.
Raindance Film Festival screens work originated on all formats. See the submission requirementshere.
D is for Distribution
How To Make It With A Short Film In Europe
by Elliot Grove
Filmmakers in Britain have always considered short form narratives and documentaries as a viable step into filmmaking. The BBC and Channel 4 in particular have commissioned and purchased shorts for broadcast on terrestrial television, often as a way to test new talent before awarding the filmmakers a more substantial contract to produce a feature film or documentary. However, since 2003, the landscape has changed. In the current climate the terrestrial television channels have scaled back their commissioned shorts programs and rarely acquire shorts for broadcast. This has left filmmakers with relying on festivals as the main alternative to getting their work seen.
Shorts typically have punchier story lines, are often shot on very low budgets giving them a gritty look, that combined with sharp short stories make compelling viewing. Filmmakers have been shooting movies on their mobiles since 2003 when Nokia introduced the first camera phone. The haunting images on television after the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London demonstrated their news ability. This ground-breaking moment paved the way to the present BBC practice who issue quality mobile handsets such as the Nokia N93 to home-based journalists, who then email in their footage for quick assembly, edit and broadcast in the studio.
Using a short film, or a series of short films has always been considered a viable and useful way to demonstrate one talent to the industry powers-that-be on route to building a career in features, or in commercials and pop promos. Here are the routes novice filmmakers are using in Europe. Many of these techniques are applicable universally.
1. Film Festivals
A festival screening allows you to screen your film in front of total strangers, and often, in Europe at least, to people with whom English is not their mother tongue. Until you have sat in a screening room full of strangers watching your film you do not really know how the film "plays". Do they laugh at the right place for example.
Getting your film accepted into a film festival is not easy. Firstly, you research the festival world (there are nearly 3,000 film festivals around the world), download a submission form, and send it, along with an application fee and a copy of your film. Then you wait to hear if you have been selected. If you are selected, you then need to send the festival a screening copy of the film, usually on digibeta, along with a picture of yourself, or a still from the movie that they can use in their festival catalogue. Try and book your holiday around a festival screening. Get there a few days earlier and pass out postcards with a good strong image of your film on one side, and the screening dates and times on the reverse. Festival organizers should also be able to help you with a list of local distributors and sales agents who might be interested in acquiring short films (ie: buying a license to screen your film). Contact these people by email and telephone.
Screenings at certain film festivals almost certainly guarantee other festival invites. Many festivals rely on bellweather festivals such as Raindance, to act as a filter to whittle down the huge number of films to a manageable lot of a certain quality.
Remember that each festival has different taste, and to be rejected by one festival is not to be taken personally.
The best way to research film festivals is to look at these two sites: www.filmfestivals.com, an English-speaking company based in Paris, and www.withoutabox.com, an American company with a subsidiary office in London.
Top European Film festivals for shorts:
There are at least 9 European short film festivals which show shorts only. Other festivals, such as Raindance, have dynamic short film strands. Research the festivals and try to ascertain which ones have videotechs, such as Rotterdam. At those festivals, even if you are not selected, industry scouts will be able to see your film.
International Short Film Festival Leuven January
International Film Festival Rotterdam January
Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival February
Tampere Short Film Festival March
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen May
Cannes International Film Festival May
Cineam Jove International Film Festival June
Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival July
Raindance Film Festival - October
Kinofilm Manchester International Film Festival November
Encounters International Short Film Festval November
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