Lesson 2

• Narrative
• Higher Education (degree)

Why do we want to make films?

"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul." - George Bernard Shaw

"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul." - George Bernard Shaw

Think of yourself as a filmmaker. 

Start thinking like a filmmaker. Make it a habit. 

Examine the world around you with a filmmaker's mind. 

Around every corner 

there is a story.

Find them...

Drama is a moment in a person’s life in which they try to change their destiny.

Always ask, how is it going to land with the audience? 

Orchestrate an emotional experience for the audience and they’ll love you for it.

Two emotions to play with - hope and fear.

A Light in the Dark

by 

Ashlyn Spence

Writing character description.

A screenwriter’s job is to externalise the interior life of the characters. 

Have you written anything that the camera can’t record.

 

Think of what qualities you want to communicate.  

Write what the audience sees and hears.

Show these qualities in action. 

Nina, 20’s, wiry, curly hair, jeans and sweater with holes in the elbows, bangs her fist on the roof of a car.  

Nina, 40’s, lays a hand on the roof of a car and glances down at her chipped green nail varnish with her nails bitten away. 

                       Show not 

                             tell...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

SCENE DESCRIPTION - director is Tomas Alfredson

Tarr and Irina sit drinking wine, talking. Tarr gently traces a bruise on Irina’s arm. We see a growing attraction between them. Irina and Tarr laughing, flirting. They move closer to one another. 

Watch scene from 48.30

www.bilibili.tv

Set-up

Pay-off

Now, there’s a certain amount of 'essential' information, without which the play does not make sense… And how do you fit that information in?' '

As obliquely as possible.'  

You want to give the people information before they know it’s been given to them.

Later on, the information pays off. It has been consciously planted by the author…

Begin video at 5.37

Backstory

Backstory is at its most effective when it is present action, in the sense that it is something seen now and onscreen as some kind of recapitulation of earlier events.

Effective narratives lead us in both directions, to what went before as well as what will, or will not, happen next. 

The taxi-cap scene in On The Waterfront is dramatically dense for this reason.

The brothers discuss the night Terry was forced to throw the fight so the mobsters could make money on him. On one level his dialogue is exposition of why he calls himself a bum. 

In dramatic terms, however, the real here-and-now action is the effect on Charlie.

Because of this story of past betrayal he cannot now persuade Terry against testifying.  Thus what happened in the past is also a key element in present action.