Get the latest international news and world events from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and more. See world news photos and videos at ABCNews.com. A free financial dictionary with thousands of terms and buzz words in all areas of business, investing, and finance. CNN Headline News is quite popular with people who may not have time for lengthy news reports.
BREAKING & ENTERING: Keep It Simple Storytelling. A producer who’s sold to all the majors, Barri Evins created Big Ideas to give aspiring screenwriters what it takes to break into the business by sharing methods she uses with professional writers. Sign up for Barri’s newsletter and follow her on Twitter @Big. Big. Ideas. Click to tweet this article to your friends and followers!“A screenplay is a simple story complexly told.”Damn, I wish I knew who said that.
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A Google search turned up a lot of great quotes from famous writers, but not this one. The closest was: I do not over- intellectualize the production process. Watch Freelancers Online IMDB. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story. Tom Clancy. Who knows? Maybe I said it. It has certainly been on my mind lately as I read scripts – start to finish – and I can’t tell you what they were about. I’m supposedly a pitching expert – enough to be paid to teach it – and yet I couldn’t pitch some of these stories to you if my life depended on it.
Coming up with a logline for them is nearly impossible. What’s happening here? The problem lies in the storytelling. The Great American Novel. Some of the scripts I’m reading feel distinctly like novels. There’s a great span of time; description that reads like prose and gets into characters’ heads, telling us things that could never be conveyed on a screen.
The story feels dense. There’s a lot of set up before actual plot kicks in.
The plot veers from the through line and off into tangents. The point of view doesn’t stick with the main character, or even the ensemble, but shifts focus to a range of characters. These don’t feel like cinematic storytelling. Perhaps these ambitious writers are attempting to adapt their own novels into screenplays. This task is often compared to being caught in a bear trap; trying to chew off your own leg to escape. A difficult and painful process. As a novelist, you make the rules.
You might choose an omniscient narrator; stream of consciousness; first, second or third person narrative, or even alternating characters’ points of view. You, the author, get to decide.
Then you have to stick with your choice. Screenwriting is jam- packed with rules and conventions. Only Haiku is more restrictive. You might be able to bend the rules, especially as you grow more proficient and accomplished – but you had better understand and acknowledge them. A novel affords depth and breadth. In truth, there’s not the room in a screenplay for the scope of a novel. Countless people complain, “The book was better than the movie.” Anyone who’s ever read the book first, and then seen the movie, knows everything they loved is not going to be on the screen.
Screenwriters who are the masters of adapting books to films don’t seek a literal retelling; substituting scene slugs for chapter headings. They use their storytelling skills to find the cinematic version of the story, even if it diverges from the original. They use the advantages of film to enhance the telling. Inevitably things will be left out – not only because of length, but to bring focus to the narrative and illuminate the essence of the story. It’s been said that for years, no screenwriter could figure out how to successfully adapt the novel, FORREST GUMP into a film. A slew of A- Listers were offered, but none could devise a storytelling approach that worked. Ultimately, Eric Roth came up with the idea of focusing on the love interest, bringing a compelling, cinematic through line to the episodic story.
The writer, Eric Roth, departed substantially from the book. We flipped the two elements of the book, making the love story primary and the fantastic adventures secondary. Also, the book was cynical and colder than the movie. In the movie, Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother and God. Robert Zemeckis, director. A script is more akin to a short story or, at most, a novella, than a novel.
The marvelously complex film, MEMENTO, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is based on the short story, “Memento Mori,” by Jonathan Nolan. It’s a mere eight pages long. You can read it here. Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain. When I can’t figure out the story – assuming the writer grasps the fundamentals of craft – often it’s because I’m being treated to a magic show instead of storytelling.
The writer is determined to capture the readers’ interest. They lack faith in the power of storytelling to do that, and play “the hand is quicker than the eye.” We’re bombarded by endless razzle- dazzle: Massive action sequences, scores of characters, complications upon complications, devices that feel like devices, a flood of flashbacks, fantasies, hidden agendas, red herrings, improbable reveals, and the truly sad, “here’s what really happened,” explanation at the end.“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”Hoping to keep us entertained, they distract us from the very story they set out to tell in the first place. When I get to the “Fade Out,” and find that I don’t know what script was about. It’s sad, because oftentimes these screenplays are built upon a premise with potential. But the writer does not have confidence that this concept will be enough. Instead of exploring the idea thoroughly to exploit its full potential, they feel the need to toss on as much decoration as possible, obscuring the beauty of the concept. I call this “too much tinsel on your tree.” Click here to see if you are you suffering from that syndrome.
But it really happened! Sometimes, the storytelling problem in scripts stems from the writer trying to tell a true story. Now believe me, there’s nothing I like more than a great true story. When I was President of Debra Hill’s company, we had fascinating projects about Clarence Darrow, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, each focusing on a specific, and often little known but emblematic moment of their lives.
We started referring to ourselves as “The Dead Smart Guys Company.”But the secret to the true story or the great bio- pic is not to tell all. You can’t encompass an entire life within a two- hour film. And even if you could, you absolutely shouldn’t. Yes, research is important. But what’s essential is to let go of the facts, while being faithful to the truth, and find the cinematic story that illuminates the individual and shows us a greater truth that can apply to our own lives. A professor of mine once said, “I would never go see Loretta Lynn in concert, but I loved COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER.” Movies based on real people are not about merely showing us what someone has done (there isn’t a song until an hour into that film). They are about using storytelling to illuminate a fundamental truth about the person, show us who they are beyond their pubic image, and what makes them tick.
They let us walk away with a meaningful message, whether or not we like country music. Watch The Conqueror Online Free HD. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, with determination and talent you can rise to great heights.”Think about some of your favorite bio- pics: THE KING’S SPEECH, WALK THE LINE, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, DONNIE BRASCO, AMERICAN SNIPER. What makes these films successful is finding a core truth about the person and focusing on a pivotal time period in their lives to illuminate that. Their storytelling offers a distinct perspective on the hero’s life.
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