Big Screen, Small Screen

A practical guide to writing for flim and television in Australia

Coral Drouyn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000256376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Authorship
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Thinking in pictures is a gift; transferring them to words on paper is a craft. Put them together, and that's the screenwriter's art. Big Screen, Small Screen is a complete guide to writing for film and television for beginners as well as more experienced writers. It covers all aspects of screenwriting from changing a film genre to picking a television timeslot. Big Screen, Small Screen takes you through the basics of screenwriting with step by step guides to structure, character and the first draft script, and valuable tips and exercises. It also shows you how to find and agent, deal with producers, market your script and apply for funding.

PART 1 Preparation: Before the writing begins

1 Big Screen, Small Screen

DEFINING THE MEDIUM

You have an idea, an idea which you will develop into your storyline, which will ultimately become your script. Don’t get too excited just yet. Getting the idea is the easy part of the process for a creative screenwriter. Developing it is the blood, sweat, and tears period. It’s worth noting, though, that the more work you do at this early stage, before you actually turn on your PC or sharpen your pencil, the simpler the writing process becomes. Why? Because you will start writing with very clear and predetermined parameters and these in turn will allow you to focus and centre your script so that there is no doubt in the reader’s mind what and who your script is about, and where it belongs.

‘But that will stifle my creativity,’ I hear you cry, or mutter darkly under your breath. ‘I write for myself ... so why should I have to lumber myself with all this baggage before I start?’ The reality is that only highly respected ‘star’ writers can afford the luxury of writing solely for themselves.

I’m certain that legendary Hollywood screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan hasn’t bought this book, but even if he had I’m sure he would not agree with such an indulgence. If you want to write only for yourself, then by all means do so—and keep the finished script in your desk drawer, bringing it out only at dinner parties or when people you love can massage your ego.

In truth, whilst writers and directors like to believe, or perhaps really do believe, that their artistic integrity is unassailable, decisions ultimately rest with the producer. It is not that this man, or woman, is a Philistine (more about that in a later chapter) but simply that making films and/or television is their business. Certainly they have to love the script, for they will spend upwards of two years eating, drinking and sleeping with it. But, contrary to the popular song of the sixties, love is not all there is! There are decisions to be made about budgets, markets, medium, demographics, audience expectations, potential returns and, therefore, viability of the project. There are very large amounts of money involved, and some of it will, hopefully, be coming your way. It is these things, rather than how good your script is, which will determine whether your project ever gets made. Wouldn’t you rather have some, if not all, of those decisions in your hands at the beginning, rather than someone else’s when it’s too late to turn back?

‘But I’m an artist,’ you’re positively wailing plaintively by now. ‘I don’t know anything about business, nor do I want to. I just want to write!’ Okay, point taken. But what I’m about to discuss requires more common sense than business acumen; it simply means trading introspection for extrospection—don’t bother looking for it in a dictionary, I made it up.

Let’s look at the basic differences between feature films and television:

A FILM costs millions of dollars to make; TELEVISION is cheaper, the process far quicker.

A FILM may be panoramic and huge in scope; TELEVISION is more contained, smaller in vision. A FILM is (generally) linear in approach, that is, it follows a specific path, tells a specific story through a specific character (or characters). TELEVISION is not so centrally focussed. Most often it is episodic and balances several stories, with an omniscient overview.

A FILM is viewed on a large screen in the dark; TELEVISION is seen on a small screen, often with the lights on, sometimes with a million and one other things going on.

It is this last, seemingly banal, observation, which gives us our greatest clue to the ultimate consumer . . . THE AUDIENCE.

THE FILM AUDIENCE

The film audience brings a defined commitment (the dreaded ‘C’ word) to a feature film. It has driven or perhaps walked to the cinema after making a conscious decision to go out; spent eleven or twelve dollars per head (plus soft drink, icecream and popcorn) and is giving up perhaps three hours of its time, including travel. It has an investment in your feature film before the lights even dim and the opening credits come up. It wants to like your film, otherwise it will have wasted its money. It is this commitment which enables audiences to suspend disbelief, or sit quietly through thirty minutes of film where little appears to be actually happening whilst you establish your first act. They trust you, the writer, even if they never know your name and give all the credit to the director and star, to take them on an amazing journey with your main character right up to the closing credits (which they probably won’t stay for anyway). It is this willingness of the audience to be part of a shared experience which touches us as writers, even if we are unaware of it, and makes us want to write feature films. There’s more prestige involved, and one of the reasons is because people are actually exercising freedom of choice by paying to see your work. That is why you have a duty to that audience, and we’ll talk about defining that and honing that skill two or three chapters down the track.

THE TELEVISION AUDIENCE

The television audience doesn’t bring that commitment. It has no investment in your work and it will change channels in five minutes if it isn’t well and truly hooked—and it’s harder to hook a television audience than a movie audience. I remember my dad telling me that people have no respect for something they get for nothing. Nowhere is this more true than with television. Not only is there an inherent belief that your work is inferior because it appears on the small screen, but you are dealing with short attention spans and diversionary episodes within the living room over which you have no control. Much like the monster plant Audrey Two in the classic kitsch sci-fi movie Little Shop of Horrors (Warner Bros/The Geffen Company 1986), this audience says, ‘Feed me ... NOW’. What you feed it may range from easily swallowed pap, designed to go straight to the large intestine, to a veritable banquet of dramatic ideas that is difficult to digest. Either way, your hungry monster requires spoonfeeding instantly in its chair. It isn’t even prepared to meet you halfway at the table.

Am I saying, then, that it is harder to write for television than for cinema?

Not at all, but different audiences require different approaches, different storytelling techniques. You’ll see in the chapters on writing, particularly those parts on structure, how your three-act film may become a six-act television drama . . . and how your first-act turning point (round about page 25 or so in your screenplay) may need to happen in the first five minutes on television if you want to keep your audience.

With that understanding on board, let’s look at your storyline through the following questions and see if we can identify which medium you really should be writing for.

SPECIFIC MEDIUM IDENTIFICATION

1. Is the storyline visually panoramic and dynamic? Within your framework, do the actual pictures, the locations, the emotions that you want the audience to take away, matter far more than the words? Is the story told in linear fashion—that is, do we follow the story through a main character, do we share his or her thoughts and experiences as they actually happen? Is the underlying theme, outside of the plot, a journey of some kind—that is, a quest? This quest might be physical, tangible, or it could be spiritual, emotional or intellectual—the search for the ‘Lost Ark’ or for self-knowledge. Is what the characters ARE more important than what they do or say? Is there a contained time frame for the story ... a day ... a week ... a year?
   Do you need time at the beginning of your story to slowly introduce the characters and allow the audience to empathise before it sees what will happen to them? Is there necessary (rather than gratuitous) sex/violence or offensive language, or controversial subject matter which might be subject to censorship control?
   If you answered yes to most of the above (honestly), then the law of probabilities is that your script needs to be developed as a feature film ... although we’ll look at the exceptions to the rule. If you answered no to any or all of the above, then we proceed to the next test.
2. Is your story episodic in nature? Does it cover a lifetime, or are there big leaps in time within the telling? OR: Is your story more about an event than a person . . . are the characters themselves secondary to the actual happenings? Is it biographical or historical, or based on some current event? OR:
   Is it a small story, basically contained within one or two sets with one or two characters interacting and no clear-cut path or resolution? OR:
   Does it weave three or four subplots together evenly, without singling out any particular character over another? OR: Would it, far from being damaged, actually be helped by commercial breaks to help get you over those time lapses? Is it more about words than pictures? Is it a story where the characters, of necessity, will more often than not state the obvious? (They should certainly never do so unless it IS of necessity.) OR:
   Can it be made cheaply because of its limited requirements? OR:
   Will it work just as well if the audience is only giving fifty per cent of its attention? In other words, it isn’t overly complicated in either plot or characterisation. Could the story and/or the relationships be ongoing, without a specified running length for the story or a designated resolution? (Often, when you’re writing, you will think, ‘I have this great set-up, great characters, great issues I want to explore in my movie ... but I don’t have an ending!’ Chances are you are writing a series; you just haven’t realised it yet!)

You’ll notice that I’ve used the word OR between the questions. This is because the criteria are not as clear cut as for a feature film and you will find, when your script is fielded out, that often there may be uncertainty even on the part of producers as to which medium a first-draft script is best suited for. However, in general, if you answered YES to two or more of the above questions, then the law of probabilities is that your project will more easily find a home on television.

Examining these specific areas is described as looking at the dynamics. In screenplay terms, the dynamics constitute the dramatic range, the highs and lows of story frequency exactly as with sound frequency, the excitement and visual factors, the rate at which it all plays ... in fact all of the areas we looked at when determining which medium. These are the dynamics of a script. You’ll hear editors and producers talk about the dynamics quite often, so it’s wise to know what they’re referring to.

Exceptions

There are two other major factors to be taken on board, and it is far better that they are taken on board by YOU as the writer, before you spend months of your time on the script, than by someone else further down the track.

These are star vehicles and budgets.

A star vehicle is not another Lucasfilm sci-fi trilogy! A star vehicle is a project which may well move from one medium to another simply because, for whatever reason, a STAR becomes involved. Two classic examples of the late eighties are the small love story feature films Falling in Love (Paramount 1984) which starred Meryl Streep and Robert de Niro, and Stanley and Iris (MGM/Lantana Prods 1989), which coupled de Niro with Jane Fonda.

Ostensibly both of these would appear to be basic telemovies with no requirements that necessitate them being on a big screen. One could imagine either film starring, in America, possibly Mark Harmon and Meredith Baxter Birney or, in Australia, perhaps Gary Sweet and Penny Cook. Strangely, the Baxter Birney/Harmon version of either movie would have reached a much greater audience than the feature films’ combined audience, for a well-scripted US-made telemovie has a potential world audience in excess of one hundred million . . . translate that into box office receipts for a feature film and you would be talking about a billion dollars plus, thus making it the highest grossing movie of all time. Ironic, isn’t it? But somewhere, somehow, major stars were introduced to small scripts which would have seemed destined for the small screen, and thus, the stature of the stars determined the medium, because the budget restraints no longer applied.

Could that happen to your script, here in Australia? It’s far less likely, but let’s examine a hypothetical case. You’ve written Shirl and Wayne ... a simple love story about a redheaded girl who can’t go out in the sun and who falls in love with a surfing lifeguard who is claustrophobic and even sleeps on the beach. It’s a light romantic comedy—you’re in real trouble if it isn’t! A producer has a deal with the ABC and, say, Josephine Byrnes is suggested for the girl, with Gary Sweet as the guy. The budget is viable—most of the action centres around Shirl’s flat and there are only a couple of scenes actually on the beach with Wayne. Somehow, before the deal is locked in, someone shows the script to Nicole Kidman’s agent. Nicole wants to come home for a few months to see the family but is worried that she’ll be bored with nothing to do. She decides to do the project with Gary Sweet. For the moment it is still a telemovie, but inscrutable wheels are turning within the producer’s head. Maybe—just maybe . . .

Nicole shows the script to hubby Tom Cruise, whose shooting dates in Seattle have been put back six months and he wants to do the project with Nicky—if the writer can find some way to make Wayne an American. Now your one-and-a-bit million dollar telemovie is a ten million plus dollar feature, and your writer’s fee just increased ten-fold. The budget becomes irrelevant. The money can be raised on the strength of the stars. If you think it’s unlikely, you’re right; but ponder this. A few years ago Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue would certainly have been happy, provided that the script and key personnel were acceptable, to be offered such a telemovie. Six months later, after they broke onto the scene as international recording stars, it’s doubtful if a local producer could have afforded both of them in the one project.

Sometimes the star is the script itself. Driving Miss Daisy (Warner Bros/Majestic Films 1990) would have worked just as well as a telemovie, but it had been an award-winning hit play, and so it had already created a feature market for itself.

In Australia that is true of just about any David Williamson script, originally written for the stage. I personally always enjoy his work more upon second viewing on the small screen, since it lends itself so well to television.

Conversely a hugely hyped movie like Chaplin (Caralco/Le Studio Canal 1992) was disastrous on the big screen in spite of an astonishing bravura performance from Robert Downey Junior. The film flopped, but no-one can give an adequate reason why.

My own belief is that the film script was disjointed, superficial and too episodic to carry the audience with it on its stop/start, to and fro journey. We ended up losing our connection with time and place because of the huge time jumps, and we learned little new about the man, or the period he lived in. Of course the budget was far too large for it to be a telemovie but there was more than enough material in Chaplin’s life to warrant a thirteen-part maxi-series. That, to my mind, is where the project would have sat most comfortably. The budget could have been justified (as was that of Winds of War (Paramount 1983)) and the time jumps and episodic nature would not then have been problematical. The story of Chaplin’s life could have been explored more fully, justice been done to the enormous talent of the man, and the audience would not have felt cheated of their expectations.

If you haven’t started your script yet, use the previous tests to determine where it best sits, before doing the test again with the additional criteria outlined in the following few chapters.

Exercise

If your script is completed, try the following exercise: take your lead characters and impose upon them your absolute, top-of-the-range choice of actors in the entire world. (Money is no object in a fantasy, so indulge yourself.) Now reread your script with those stars in mind, as if you have never read it before, and answer the following:

Is your script hampered rather than enhanced by personalities that could swamp it? Is it big enough in scope to warrant these stars? Are you, as a writer, going to disappoint a cinema audience who, because of the casting, will be expecting far more than your sweet and unpretentious tale of lost love? Are you in danger of compromising what you wanted to say, because the huge stars necessitate changes in the characters to people more charismatic, more worthy of being thirty feet high on a screen? Will you have to cut your script back, lose chunks of the story you wanted to keep, in order to give lengthened ‘meaty’ scenes to the stars?

If the answer to these questions is yes, most probably you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 Preparation: Before the writing begins
• PART 2 The writing process: Getting it down on paper
• PART 3 The completed script: Now the fun really starts
• Film and television references
• Bibliography
• Index