Screenwriting: Michael Eaton

Notes of BFVW Birmingham Workshop

Outline

Basic idea that sells the film and for examining whether it can work. Everyone should work with it. It's the equivalent of a good review. If there are not enough incidents, characters not strong enough or situations derivative it can be found out. At this stage you're saying what the film is about before telling a story. It's a statement of aims. You might not know the story but you know what to do. Main characters and journeys; secondary characters come with the writing. It's a crucible; putting heat under it to see if it turns base metal into gold. It should be the equivalent of someone grabbing you by the lapels.
 

Treatment

Sometimes confused with outline in UK. It is 40-50 pages, a blow-by-blow, scene-by-scene of what takes place for the producer/director. Proves the pitched ideas can be translated into a story. Written in prose but not like a novel. The rules are 1) written in present tense 2) third person 3) no direct speech. Should be equivalent to being told the story of a movie by someone who's just seen it.

Often in Hollywood, a writer would write a treatment and then it is passed to someone else; just a stage in the industrial process. You don't describe themes in treatment; it would be stated in story.

It is a prose document where the scenes appear as they would in the film. This is the time to bring in secondary characters. This is the stage of research: thinking; mobilising the resources you need. You get to know the biographies of characters and how they would react if dropped into a situation not in the film. Minute detail could take 6 months. Mobilisation; synthesising it into structure. On step deals you are given unrealistic dates for treatment and for first draft; producers assume first draft takes longer when it's the other way round.

Use index cards with a scene on each one, lay them out on the floor or on the wall and see where the gaps are. Collect all the data. With cards you fill in series of incidents.
 

Screenplay

Moving from treatment to screenplay is simple; defining characters, working it out is terrible, writing the screenplay is fun. The backstory is easy to establish.

Narrative Structure

Time is broken up into social units. The simplest is people are born and they die. Every society marks that transition birth to death, single to married.

A change of quality; a change of state. It's a time of rupture when things change. It's complex and difficult and needs ritual oil. Known as Rites of Passage. All require certain sense of order. How narrative is structured is similar to how ritual is structured. Writers are the shamans of our society; working in a direct line with people who led us to meet the gods. Similar to the essential components of rituals of passage.

Consider marriage. The socially sanctioned ritual was essential. The woman becomes legal occupation of husband rather than the father.

The Liminal Zone is neither one thing or the other; things that don't normally happen can happen. You are looking forward and looking back.

For a story things have to happen. A world the story comes from and one it goes to.

The first four scenes define main character. S/he is ripped out of world by incident. Nothing can be the same. "The inciting incident" akin to rite of separation.

In the Liminal Zone there are adventures of escalating danger; advancing the plot and mini versions of the Liminal Zone. The zone of jeopardy; the central character is under some kind of threat. In the Liminal Zone characters can either help or hinder her/him and that can change. Positive and negative force. A change of state: single to married, alive to dead. It is a journey in time from one state to another and you have to choreograph it.

Eaton, as a script reader, often read scripts where nothing moved and so they were immediately dumped.

Folkloric model

Although every story is different the mechanisms are the same. The main movement through a tale is a story of a quest, someone is looking for something. Most American films are dependent on a quest of some kind. It involves a change of state and the incidents to get to the state are out of the ordinary with helping and hindering forces. All narrative is predicated on a change of state for the Central Protagonist (CP), who the audience is rooting for. Throws up a hierarchy of characters. CP could be split among a group of people with the same aim. With a super clever protagonist (like Holmes) and a dim one (like Watson). They are all functionally protagonists. In a quest structure there must always be a protagonist and there must always be something to block the quest; the forces of antagonism. The antagonist can also be split. The antagonist could be the forces of nature or can ultimately emanate within the CP. In classical tragedy the quest is unfulfilled due to fault within character. The antagonist doesn't have to remain static can help and hinder.

The CP's motivation is a lack of something; lack of knowledge. The audience is in the same position of the CP; is analogous to it because it is from a position of a lack of knowledge to knowledge. You know the "lack" and the "gap" and its your job/task to decide what relationships you want the reader to have with you and how and when you're going to change it. Audience can know something CP doesn't know. Audience can know same, less or more than CP.

Choreography of Knowledge

Audience's knowledge is:

the same as  Protagonist (first person R Chandler)

more than Protagonist (third person G Elliot)

less than  Protagonist (mystery A Christie)

Surprise/Suspense

The writer can move between the 3 perspectives to say when to let audience in on secret; s/he must be thinking "what do they know?"

Every detective story is two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the solution to the crime. If the audience knows the CP doesn't achieve quest then put the audience into a "more than" mode so they can root for CP.

Suspense is when the audience knows more than the CP.

Hitchcock illustrates the difference between surprise and suspense with the example of a group of people sitting at a table in a restaurant and suddenly a bomb goes off. However, if we see the bomb being placed under the table, the group of people then arriving and sitting down, they could be doing the most mundane things and saying the most boring things but the suspense and interest is there.

You have to consider "What is my character after?"

"What 'lack' predicates her/his thinking?"

Character is important - they have to stay in character.
 

Screenplay format

The International Screenplay format is for fellow professionals and not the public: documents other people can work from. It is work that is meant to be written on. The British TV format is based on what was required for live drama/documentary broadcasts decades ago and hasn't moved with the times and so therefore shouldn't be bothered with unless the work is commissioned whereby it will be transferred by the production company. Eaton's movie "Fellow Traveller" in international screenplay form lasted for 96 pages the British TV format took 256 pages.

Writers don't deal with the shot but with the scene. A scene is a continuity of time and place. If you're changing the time or the place begin a new scene. With the rhythm of the scene you can conjure up what it should look like. If the scene must be shot as you want then say so but if it isn't necessary don't say so.

With the character show them doing, show them talking. Show as economically as possible what camera shows audience. When you introduce the character use capital letters. Only say what we see, don't give character. They'll be more description at the beginning.

For the location always use the same format if you're using it more than once. It also helps with the budget. The time of day helps to organise the shoot if there is a lot of night work for instance.

Cut to can be done with irises, wipes, dissolves, fade out, etc.
 

Dialogue

This arises from character and defines character. It's crucial. It's where the writer has more choices. Although producers/directors feel that they can mess with other aspects of the screenplay it is still considered that the way people talk is from the writer; the writer should know how people talk. Giving a character dialogue is a gift to that character, you don't give gifts that are unimportant; it oils the wheels of social intercourse. It's incredibly precious. It's how actors can find root into playing the role. Should emerge naturally from character and position of character. Every human has a different relationship to language; everyone speaks in a different way, it is the access to their soul. If they speak the same way, you're on the wrong track. The gap between thought and speech is different. People rarely say what they mean. Body language and hierarchy of relationships. It is functional classicism not real life. What is character thinking and feeling how are they going to express that through language. Only if there's a direct threat or a point of crisis do people say what they mean. The subtext is gone. Writing with no subtext when there isn't a crisis or threat is called "writing on the nose". Should consider the idiolect - how individual person uses language.

Take character for walks; ask them questions.

Eaton said the writer must have the soul of a poet and the hide of a elephant. It is character forming. But you are a writer. The day-job exists, if you have one, just so you can get to that desk. You don't write for money, that comes afterwards.

Michael Eaton is a screenwriter and playwright. His screen credits include Fellow Traveller, Signs and Wonders, Shoot to Kill, and Why Lockerbie?